Yesterday morning I met up with
Abdullah for a tutoring session. This session did not have too much structure
to it; however, I do believe it was useful. He came over to my house, and after
a brief chat I suggested we play Scrabble. He agreed, and told me he has seen
this game around CIES. So I briefly explained the rules to him (simple enough),
and we began to play. Now obviously I have a tremendous advantage in this game,
being a native speaker (not to mention my brother and I won a Florida team
Scrabble tournament and competed in the National scholastic tournament when we
were in middle school; true story), so the score wasn’t what was important
here. This was a good way for Abdullah to have fun with the language and get
creative. Furthermore, Scrabble requires some attention to word formations and
patterns, and as the game went on, Abdullah started playing better words. I shared
some strategy with him, such as the ol’ plural trick.
This was also a way to introduce
some vocabulary, but instead of just telling him what the word meant, I also
made him write the word down. After the game, I quizzed him briefly on the
words. I was aiming for reinforcement (it may not have been super effective
either way), as that is the way to commit words to memory. It’s very difficult
to hear the definition once and remember it. After the game we hung out for a
little and watched some soccer (listening practice?).
Very nice idea. I remember when I was in Russia I bought the Russian version of scrabble and I can remember how incredibly hard it was. What a good exercise I might try this with one of my partners or dominate my wife in it later.
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dave
I like how you had him write down and later quiz the vocabulary. This is the kind of focused learning that you the teacher can motivate our students to do.
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