Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Sean TS #15

     This is the final night before Dorothy’s 2nd attempt at the TEFL exam. I asked her how she felt and she didn’t told me she wasn’t very confident. I know she has the potential and ability to get a 4, but the time limit that constricts her time for thought and processing pressures her too much and forces her writing to a 3. She said her plan B is to take the English test that is like TEFL but for England. So the day after she attempts the 2nd TEFL exam, she will travel to Georgia to take her British “TEFL” exam, which I hope she is more confident in.
    We practiced for the night two things. Typing fast so she could waste less time writing and more time thinking. This was difficult for her because she is not native to the English keyboard. She prefers writing on paper and says typing in the TEFL exams takes too much time and mental focus which is drawn away from thinking about her answer and acquired information. I advised she play keyboard typing games like I did. I even showed her how fast I could type, which as she tested me, was 115 WPM. This gave her encouragement and she told me she would try some typing games for her rest/break time after I left.
     The second thing we practiced was the TEFL listening and reading exercise where she must listen from one speaker, read from another writer, and then make a small essay involving her own opinion and reasoning. We also did an exercise where we wrote notes from a spoken passage and attempted to answer questions based on what we had. I did the note taking alongside her to show how I took notes and told her my tactics, my biggest being that notes and information are much easily remembered if one visualizes that information and makes art with it. Such as forming scenery, a painting, or a movie with the acquired information. She said she never tried that and will try that when she does her exam.

    I wish her luck and hope she succeeds in both, or at least one of these exams as she really can do great things with her English.

No comments:

Post a Comment