Just call me Mrs. Sharon

I had my first private tutoring session today and I have to say that I am quite proud of myself. I never thought I would enjoy teaching English, but one-on-one it can be more than just teaching English, it can be a cultural exchange and an opportunity to be creative through lesson planning.

My student is another volunteer from SCC, who I offered to take on for a much reduced rate because she is also a volunteer and couldn't afford my exorbitant rates. She asked if we could meet one day a week, for two hours and our first lesson took place today.

To prepare for the lesson, I wrote up a basic assessment including a section for writing, reading/comprehension, listening comprehension and conversation and made a list of seven main components of my ESL lessons: 1. Speaking, 2. Reading Comprehension, 3. Listening Comprehension, 4. Writing, 5. Grammar, 6. Pronunciation, 7. Vocabulary. I then wrote up a basic outline, time-wise, of a two hour session. For the Listening and Reading Comprehension, I printed out two articles from the BBC online news, one on a woman's fight for her right to wear a headscarf, hijab, in her position as a television anchor in Egypt and another on the conflict between Thailand and Cambodia over the land surrounding a temple recently awarding the designation of a World Heritage Site.

I began the lesson by asking her to write a paragraph entitled, "All about me," to learn more about her and to gauge her writing ability. Then we spent about 45 minutes practicing conversation skills, aka talking, with each of us talking about our families and our hobbies and places we've visited. After a 5 minute break, I read her the article about the Egyptian woman and she was able to follow it and was curious about why them woman would choose to wear a hijab. Then she read the article about Cambodia to me and underlined the words she did not understand. We read through it again and I explained the definition of each word. Finally I gave her a homework assignment and asked her what she thought of our first session. She responded that she had enjoyed every part of it and it was the best English lesson she had ever had. And she seemed to genuinely mean it. I was thrilled and thanked her and told her that I was glad she had enjoyed the lesson and that I looked forward to tailoring future lessons to her interests and language learning goals/needs.

It was a really neat process and I was amazed at how well it went. Through the readings, I will be able to bring up different topics and talk about how they relate to Vietnam - like today when we talked about women's rights in Vietnam after the article about the Egyptian women and she said that in more urban areas there is relative equality, but there is still a big preference for male children in more rural areas, because women leave their family's home to live with their husbands family and son's stay behind to care for their parents. Or so it goes in theory, according to my new student. She said that she often hears of daughters still doing more to care for their own parents, even from then home of their in-laws, than the son that lives in their home. She told me the story of a neighboring family in which the father is desperate for a son and so his wife has had five baby girls in quick succession over the past five years. She says that she doesn't understand why the father is so desperate for a son and why the woman puts up with him. We talked about the power of learning, both in the sense of early indoctrination of certain ideas by parents and the larger society as well as the freeing nature of a broader education from certain ingrained beliefs.

When I had her read the article on Thailand and Cambodia, we talked through certain vocabulary words and in assessing her pronunciation, we discovered some specific trouble spots to focus on in the future.

All in all, it was an extremely enjoyable experience. I may not be making much money, but I am learning through the process, not only about how to teach English, but about Vietnamese culture and my fellow volunteer. I am looking forward to tailoring the lessons to different topics of interest to my student and in seeking out interesting readings and pertinent vocabulary lessons. Now I just have to break into the next income bracket...