Activity B

Making tutoring communication understandable

These practical tips address the communication fears of new tutors.

Discussion using two handouts

Materials and equipment

Handout 11.11: Tutoring Communication Tips
Handout 11.12: Having Trouble? Helpful Sentences

Preparation

Copy handouts.

STEP-BY-STEP PROCESS

  1. Hand out Tutoring Communication Tips and review it with tutors. Emphasize that the most important part is to be relaxed.
  2. Emphasize that underlying all the communication tips they use, tutors need to consider how they can communicate their respect for the ESL learners. The learners are competent adults with a lifetime of experience behind them – they just happen to not speak English!
  3. Ask tutors to underline one or two of the tips that they really want to remember.
  4. Hand out Having Trouble? Helpful Sentences. Tell tutors that active learners need to be able to ask for help to make communication understandable. This list includes some phrases that they should teach their learners. They should encourage the learners to use these or similar phrases in tutoring sessions and in their daily lives.


A mouse saved her young from a ferocious cat by barking, “Bow-wow.” After the cat ran away, the mouse said to her offspring, “See, children, it pays to know a second language.”

Efstathiadis, circa AD 93