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Jack TS #1


My very first tutoring session ever with TEFL was with Renata, a student from Brazil. Since I know Portuguese, I was able to understand why Renata was struggling with the subjects she was hoping to review: pronouns, modal auxiliaries and prepositions. Renata showed me a worksheet from her class that showed all the different pronouns in English: subject, object and possessive. Renata was struggling a little bit to understand when to use subject versus object pronouns, as the difference between these two is not quite as prevalent in Portuguese as it is in English. I struggled with teaching them to her at first since we had just started TEFL class, but we were able to work together to figure things out, using example sentences and simple explanations. For possessives, I noticed Renata had written the Portuguese translation next to the words, so I made sure she understood what they were in English. Discussing modal auxiliaries was less of a challenge because modals tend to have a regular pattern and just require practice and review. Prepositions, however, were the most challenging because their use can vary greatly between languages, especially since English has a quite a few, relatively speaking. We were able to come up with a few examples and review the worksheet, and I think the review went really well and Renata seemed to be understanding a lot better.

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