Tutoring #2 - Ruth

 For my second tutoring session with Ruth, we met via Google Meet. My first reaction to this session was that Google Meet is not a good option for English tutoring, especially for someone who is not learning at a very high level. It was hard for both Ruth and I to understand each other because we were not face to face, couldn't read each other's body language, and the online format made it harder to read lips and listen effectively. I will definitely keep this in mind moving forward - a good lesson to learn! Before this session, I created a Google doc with the outline of our activities/curriculum for the day: this included pronunciation activities, common English mistakes for Spanish speakers, and a culture section about Lousiana, her future home. We began by touching on a common mistake by Spanish speakers, one being the addition of the "e" sound to words that start with S. For example, Ruth would pronounce the word school, "eschool" - this is because Spanish doesn't have words that start directly with a double consonant sound like "sc". This was very difficult to explain and put into practice - partially due to the online format and also because it is a unique concept. We spent time practicing sentences like "SpongeBob SquarePants speaks Spanish at school", to practice diving straight into the S sound. Overall, this was a difficult session, but good experience into discovering different ways to teach one concept.