|
 |
Advice on working with a language partner | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| sjones134 Newbie Qatar Joined 3228 days ago 5 posts - 6 votes | Message 9 of 10 20 June 2015 at 6:32pm | IP Logged |
|
Thanks speakeasy - that looks awesome will have a look through tonight..
Cheers 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 4910 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes  Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 10 of 10 21 June 2015 at 5:54pm | IP Logged |
|
Hi sjones134, welcome to the forum! Here are a few things I’ve done and tried in language exchange and tutoring sessions, maybe some of it is of interest to you.
A) Select an article; read it before the session and check or at least mark unknown words; in the session, let the tutor quickly read the article; start by summarizing it (maybe with the help of the tutor); get your tutor to ask questions about the article and the topic, get a discussion going; ideal are short articles (three or four paragraphs); any topic of interest goes, but my experience is that ‘lighter’ topics (society, lifestyle etc.) relevant to the target culture often work best B) Select a topic of personal interest with high communicative value to you (e.g., ‘a day at work’, ‘my family’, ‘my favorite holiday’); prepare the topic a bit if you have time; in the session, explain what you want to say as best as you can; engage in a back and forth so that the tutor understands what you want to convey; get the tutor to tell it back to you in their words; take notes, then work with the tutor through their native version; at the end of the session, it’s your turn again - try to use the new words and phrases (let your tutor help you if that feels better); optional: follow this up by writing a short entry on lang-8, work through the corrections, and then repeat the topic with your tutor a week later; optional: make a recording of the native version(s) for later review C) Picture description, or better: work through a wordless picture book; for details see here and here. It’s usually easy to regulate whether you want to focus on the picture/story (focus on expanding vocabulary) or use the pictures only as an inspiration or to structure the session. Instead of picture books, you can also try this with holiday (or other) pictures of yours. These three suggestions have one thing in common: there is some structure, something to fall back on in case the conversation falters (as can easily happen at the intermediate level). Edited by Bakunin on 21 June 2015 at 6:33pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
