Last week, seven Migrant English Tutors met at the delightful Beasley’s Teahouse. Over a relaxed lunch, we chatted about our experience as tutors, sharing challenges, successes and suggestions for improving our approach for better results. The tutors ranged from those with many years’ experience to new tutors with just a few weeks spent with their learner. The discussion was quite wide-ranging, touching on many questions tutors had about both their tutoring and their learners.

One common shared experience was the benefit of identifying the learner’s interests and then delivering material related to the learner’s previous work, passion or interest. When learners could associate the new information with knowledge they already have, they were more eager to learn and better able to relate to and recall new information. An example was a shared love of weekend markets which prompted one tutor to conduct their tutoring sessions at a wide range of local Sunday Markets. Another tutor has a learner who was previously an early childhood educator, so she framed her lessons as if coming from a 3 year old child. For a tai-chi teacher, vocabulary and pronunciation were focused on the concepts of body meridians, energy flow, breath and natural health.

We discussed the question of boundaries and where to draw the line between being a friend and a tutor. Is it essential? When is it time to withdraw from a tutor-learner relationship? Sometimes a learner is really seeking a friend, a social connection with their workmates or a sense of belonging to their community rather than having a strong desire to become fluent in English. If this is the case, it’s important to encourage them to engage with their community in order to build relationships and friendships with others. The tutor can help with this and then continue in a supportive role.

A challenge for one tutor is with a learner who is highly English-literate, able to read and write with great proficiency but challenged with spoken English. It was suggested that these learners would benefit from tutoring sessions with small groups of three or four, where they would have to speak with each other, thus improving their spoken English. The idea that tutoring for small groups be trialled next year, for selected learners, was floated.

A great resource was suggested. “Bluey” is an animated Australian program which is wildly popular around the globe. Made for kids (and their parents), it provides wonderful insight into Australian family life and culture through a family of Blue Heeler dogs. Using simple language, the episodes are only 7 minutes long. You’ll find hundreds of episodes on iView for all learners who’d like a better understanding of the culture.

With the constantly increasing number of requests to Manningham U3A for one-on-one Migrant English Tutors it’s becoming more important to not only continue to train new tutors, but also to ensure we are delivering our assistance in the best way possible. Sharing ideas and experience is a great way to move this forward.

Catherine Bullard

Migrant English Tutor, U3A Manningham