ESOL Tutoring Project

Elizabeth Cole (),

Nancy Winbigler ()

Project Description

In this project, students from Reading, Writing, Spanish, and Inter-cultural Communication classes at PCC work one-on-one or in small groups with low-level ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) students who needs tutoring in literacy skills, vocabulary, sentence formation, etc. The tutoring takes place during an ESOL class, and all activities are planned and supervised by the instructor. Instructors of the Reading, Writing, Spanish, and Inter-cultural Communication classes offer this as part of an optional class assignment as an incentive to the students. The assignments ties the tutoring to material the students are covering in their courses.

Steps Involved

  1. Get support from administration
  2. Identify which programs would make a good match for project
  3. Recruit faculty from these programs
  4. Each faculty develops a reflection assignment to correspond with this project
  5. Each faculty recruits tutors from their classes
  6. Look at class schedules to determine optimal tutoring time
  7. Conduct a mandatory tutor orientation
  8. The ESOL instructor creates class assignments/activities that can be done in small groups with the tutors.
  9. On the days of the weekly tutoring, take attendance and quickly explain to the tutors what the ESOL students are working on. Help the ESOL instructor form the small groups and oversee the tutoring.

Pitfalls and Tips for Administering the Project

  1. Tutor and ESOL student absences and tardiness
  2. Spanish students assuming they will get to practice their Spanish.
  3. Extra work for ESOL faculty in creating materials for the tutoring sessions
  4. Extra work for the Writing/Reading and Spanish faculty in creating corresponding assignments. Challenge of making them relevant to the original course
  5. Extra classroom management challenges (class size doubles). Space limitations.
  6. Tutors may lack skills and need coaching

Tips for Organizing and Using a Large Group of Tutors in your Classroom

Groupings: Because of absences, it is very difficultto maintain the same groups week to week

1. Decide the basis of your preferred groups or pairs. Same or different L1s? Same or

different gender? Use regular partners or, or shake things up?

2. The day of the tutoring session, list students in attendance and put them in groups

(in writing). If you have moreor fewer tutors than you expect, you can adjust.

Just make sure each group has at least one fairly verbal, outgoing student.

3. Walk around and observe how groups are working. If you see a problem, gently inter-

vene, modeling the correction. Take notes and give feedback after class. If you

have a difficult student who is flourishing with a tutor, consider keeping that pairing .

Activities: There are certain activities which lend themselves beautifully to small

tutoring groups, but in fact almost anything has worked!

1.Conversation: Start each session with conversation. At the beginning of the term you

can structure this with questions, but by mid-term just remind the tutors to get

acquainted with students who are new to them, and start with five minutes of small talk.

2.Information gap activities: These can be frustrating to explain and supervise in a whole

class setting, but work very well if you have one tutor and two students.

3.Pronunciation work: Oral reading or minimal pair work. Students enjoy practicing

in a low-stress environment, and feedback is quick and easy.

4. Games : No lengthy class time is needed to explain the directions, and the tutor

can play along. Board games, card games, and charades all work very well.

5. Reading and discussion: A very rich activity, especially if you use something

likeEasy English News, or something from the True Stories series.

6. Short structured writing activities: The tutors aren't experts at teaching writing,

butthey can get students started, keep them on task, answerquick questions, and help

with formatting (indenting, skipping lines, etc.)

7. Role plays: Tutors can play receptionists, clerks, bosses and teachers.

8. What doesn't work so well: Reviewing and correcting homework, editing student writing,

or explaining grammar. This can work well with selected, trained "homework" tutors,

but is problematical with a large group.

Getting the most out of your Service Learning Tutors: Give them a handout with the sequence and description of activities. Review it with them before they go into the classroom. Ask them for feedback after the class. Thank them frequently. Email them ahead of time if you need them to come prepared. ("Please bring pictures of your family." "We'll be talking about pets.") Pay attention to what is going on in the classroom, and address problems promptly.