Leading a Session - #2

The other session I had today was much more productive than the first. The consultant I worked with this time gave me almost complete control of the session and only jumped in once or twice when it was obvious I was struggling to think of an explanation for why a sentence didn't work. I greatly appreciated her input because a lot of times I was thinking about the problem in a way that made it much more complicated than it was, and the other consultant's suggestions were much easier to explain and implement.

The student in this session was also an ESL student, and she wanted to go over a case study. She read the paper aloud, and we stopped at the end of every paragraph to go over any errors or rewording that might be needed. Some of the errors were simple grammatical ones, but I still made sure to try and explain them as best I could, such as when a subject was missing or unclear, or why a comma might be needed in a certain place.

Other times sentence rewording or restructuring was needed, and if I offered a suggestion, I made sure to ask if it made sense to the client. Sometimes when I did this she pointed out how she worded something the way she did in order to emphasize a certain point or to refer to a different object than I expected. By keeping her involved in the process, I was able to help make her work more clear and to serve the purpose that she had originally intended. I feel like that concept was lost in some of the other ESL sessions I have observed, so because of the lack of dialogue between the consultant and the client, the client's sentences no longer did exactly what they had intended them to.

I also made sure to point out strengths in her paper. In some paragraphs I saw no need at all for changes, and I mentioned how she did an excellent job incorporating and explaining examples from the case the paper was analyzing.

After the session the consultant who sat in with me told me I had done a good job in engaging the student and keeping her involved, which made me really happy to hear. She also said I had good body language and explained things well to the student. I hope I continue to perform like this, and I'm also interested to see how these skills will help me in a session with a native English speaker.