Late Sharing

After three weeks of tutorial, it’s time to share some of my experiences.

Major Weakness from Students’ Point of View

In the first lesson, I asked student for reasons of joining this tutorial. Weak vocabulary accounts for most of their answers, both in ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ classes.

So I never strived to finish the whole material as I believe it is not realistic. I just focused on vocabulary and sentence structure within the material, which students shall be able to handle and use easily in their essay.

How about Music?

In the second lesson of Class A, I asked students if they want to learn more English through listening to English songs. They were a little bit hesitated. (I guess they have no confidence in their listening skills.)

I encouraged them to have a try, giving them a lyrics printed which just requires them to play simple fill-in the blanks. After they saw the lyrics, they felt relaxed apparently.

Before playing the song, I explained all the words which they did not know.

Just playing the song through my mobile phone was proved to be feasible as over 90% of my students gave me the correct answers for all blanks.

But, the overall response was so-so and I believe it was due to the song chosen.

Response was more encouraging in Class D. I asked students if they want music and this time, they responded quickly and positively. Also, a fast song was being requested. (This time, I guess it is due to their energetic character, not their confidence in listening skill.)

Different from the song selected in Class A, which just provided them a limited number of new words, the song selected comes with two interesting idioms, “as safe as houses” and “who’s wearing the trousers”. Students were so enthusiastic when they learnt what these mean.

An Unexpected Gift from Students

So now here comes the third lesson for Class D. Just like all lessons before, it overran. As it was already 19:15, I did not plan to conduct the music session this time (I also decided so for Class A). Yet, except one girl, all students were unwilling to leave and asked for the music session.

What surprised me was that one student said he now could sing the whole song which I played in the last lesson. Another student also expressed that he felt superior when he shared the idioms learnt with his classmates. He even discussed with an English (I guess may be an English tutor/teacher in his school) about what ‘as safe as houses’ means.

Lessons Learnt about Song Selection

I intentionally choose songs which are not too ‘old’ for the sake of generation gap minimization.

To filter out songs with f-words, of course, takes some times as most modern songs have some………

Response of the song played in Class A is so-so as only about a few words are found to be new to students.

The songs played in Class D are more popular among students as interesting idioms or words are learnt. In particular, they will remember such idioms or words easily if they can use them in daily conversation, though in Chinglish I believe.

Summary:

Song	Response
Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now	So-so
Never Let Me down Again	Good
The Girl from Yesterday	Good

Link of Lyrics Prepared (I may adjust the selection later due to response of the students):

https://www.sendspace.com/file/xxqtrg

Credit to Mr. Wong and Janice

No diplomatic words. Really heartedly thanks to Mr. Wong and Janice’s briefing, various techniques taught are used (U-shape seating plan, encouragement etc.) and they work quite well.

Fred

Class A & D