4.3.08

Becoming a tutor (2)

A girl wrote me an email after reading my last blog.

She wrote:

Hey, how was your lesson plan going? Good to hear that you've got a teaching job! It sounds really good for you. I actually couldn't have a good teacher for reading English novels at uni and I felt quite boring at that time. However, when i read your blog, i realised the teacher should have wanted us to know something as you think. Do you know what i mean? I didn't understand not only the contents of novels but also how the teacher wanted to tell us. Although i have taken the teacher training course, i couldn't even try to understand the teacher... Bad student me.... As you wrote in your blog, some students have already discouraged in reading English novels. It's sometimes more than just boring: quite painful for students who don't like foreign languages. Hopefully, you'll show how English novels are interesting... (Do you think what i wrote is pressure?? If so, sorry about that...)

I heard that it's not that the book is boring but that the reader is bored. If what I can do is to show students why I find something interesting then it shall not be too hard for me to do. Through interesting works of art they get engrossed in the world of words (in English) and from there they pick up useful phrases and expressions which later transform into their own and stored in their minds to be used in occasions.

This is not to be accounted in the syllabus, but to be kept in my mind only and shown in my teaching.


I want to remind myself that students are not going to immediately improve their language skills through my course. No tutor is as influential as that, and a course, no matter how significant, is just a tiny part of a student's entire process of learning. If they ever are so clear about what they genuinely want to learn, that is.

I suppose I find it important to share with students how to become a learner, or reader in this case. With enough support, they will be able to learn/read things on their own, rather than always being in need of instructions. I am not saying I can do this systematically myself, though.


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