A few months ago I took an four new English students. I now have Armelle (age 7), Clement and Thomas (16 year old twins), Arnaud (a 30-something lawyer), and Julia (age 12). I've been having the greatest time tutoring them!
Armelle is the little girl I've had since February. Since she's only 7, most of the English we're learning together is by rote, but we have a lot of fun anyway. Today we went over question words - who, what, where, when, why, how, and the ever important phrase "what happened?" - and played reporter. We took turns being the journalist and the policeman, and made up news stories in French, using the English question words. Now that I've discovered what an amazing imagination Armelle has, we've been doing a lot more games like this that demand creativity. In one of the rounds where I was the policeman on the scene, Armelle asked me what had happened. I replied, "Armelle fell in love with François." She shook her head gravely and said, "No, not François. Lucien!" It was the funniest thing.
Clement and Thomas, who I see individually, just meet with me for an hour of conversation a week. They have a very good grasp of the language, but are going to Andover for a summer program in July and want to practice colloquial English. They've been recommending me bands and underground concert venues - I feel like such an old lady for not having been to these places yet!
Arnaud is fantastic. As a lawyer for top European private equity firm, he does a lot of work with London, but his English fluency is pretty much limited to the written word and his grasp of complex grammar is, like mine, tenuous. An English teacher at a girls' boarding school just outside of Paris meets with him once a week and they do real grammar and vocab work together, and then I meet with him once a week and we review, do reading and reading comprehension, and practice conversation. We've been reading Frankenstein, and had an amazing discussion about the man/God, creation, nature, and goodness/evil/original sin. It was very cool.
Julia sees the same English teacher, and meets with me once a week just for conversation. She's 12 and a little shy, so sometimes it's hard to draw her out, but once she starts talking she's on fire. I feel so victorious when I get her going, when she forgets to be nervous about speaking in English and just runs with it!
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