2 VIP Class Notes (Consultant)

It was great to see Angela after lockdown. She seems more energetic and I was really glad. I was trying to explain lockdown to her but she didn’t seem to really understand, but that’s okay. It was nice to see a familiar, happy face. 🙂

Today we spent half of our time reading “a private conversation” from New Concept and half of our time reading a storybook called “Olivia”.

We went through the story of “a private conversation”, looked at the new words, and talked about the key points of the plot. This was a really challenging passage for Angela, especially with the vocabulary. I spend a lot of time explaining keywords such as “private”, “conversation”, “theater”, “behind”, “attention” etc. Angela can grasp some of the meaning but not entirely. There is a word list in the New Concept book and I asked her to find the meaning of some of these new words below, but she did not really understand the instructions and had difficulty finding the words below. I believe the material is also conceptually challenging for an 8-year-old child. The joke in the passage is a bit hard for her to understand. I think what Angela really needs now is a better grasp of sight words and basic comprehension.

In the latter half of the class, we read the book “Olivia” together. The content was more age appropriate and the language was a lot easier for Angela. We discussed some of the art that appeared in the book, and the emotions of the main characters. Angela had some trouble with sight words such as “sometimes”, “favorite”, and “dressed”, which shows that we need to work harder on the basics in the future. There are certain sight word games that you can play with Angela at home to get her familiarized with them. I also realized that she has trouble understanding some of the things that I say. Listening to English every day is a long project, but it really pays off. Listening is the easiest route for a child to gain competence in a language. I encourage Anglea to listen to things she likes every day and get familiar with more basic English sentence structure.

I could see that Angela really tried to pay attention today, even though some parts were more challenging. I can also sense a stronger desire to express herself. She has more that she wants to share, which is excellent. With this growing urge to express herself, she will surely practice more and gain tools along the way. It was a pleasure to have a class with Angela today and hope to see you next week.