Written Conversation
Conduct a conversation with your
learner but only in written form. Write a question to your student and give
him/her the paper to write an answer on. Go back and forth until your learner
has had enough! This can be used to get a writing sample to determine needs for
planning future sessions.
Journal Writing
Assign weekly reflective writing
to your learner. Suggest a topic for
writing his/her thoughts, perhaps on something you discuss during your session –
for example, an experience in the past week, description of a place or event,
opinion of a current news item, etc. Write a response after each entry in the
journal but don’t correct it unless your learner asks you to. Use other opportunities to mark writing and use the journal to increase writing.
Some of our learners' biggest English need is to improve their writing so they can enter post-secondary options and/or cope in the Canadian workplace and society. They need to write email, notes to a child's teacher, etc. But it's not easy! Spelling, word order, grammar, sentence structure... One-on-one tutoring can pinpoint the problems and help overcome them.
