Wednesday 23 April 2014

What to do for consultation

Not everything for English can be taught in the classroom. Sometimes, it is necessary to see your teacher for consultation to go through some finer details. The most common thing that students do for consultation is to go through work that has already been marked. But that is the least productive thing to do as usually, feedback would have already been given in class. Unless you have further clarifications to make or unless you have made some improvements after the feedback which you would like to check with the teacher, your time might be better spent on other things.

Here are some things you can consider doing for consultation:
1) Checking your corrections for marked work.

2) Do a comprehension on your own from the book "Distinction in O-level English" you bought last year, mark your own work, and identify questions which you need explanation. Let me know before hand which questions these are so that I can read the passage and prepare. We can then discuss these questions when we meet.

3) Discuss your essay plans with me to check if you have analysed the questions correctly, come up with workable points and put in relevant examples for the question. In 1 hour, we can easily go through 3 plans. And one of these plans that we have worked through together might just be the question that appears for the exams.

4) Work on specific essay paragraphs with me. These paragraphs can be a correction for your written work, or it can be a new paragraph you have written. For example, the article and question I put up on the cohort Facebook group on the Menstrual Man will make a good exercise in paragraph development. You can attempt writing a paragraph and meet me to go through it. Or you can create Intro or Conclusion paragraphs based on any given essay questions and go through it with me.

5) Write a full essay and meet me to go through the essay together. However, this is not the most efficient thing to do as we will probably take the whole hour to just go through 1 essay. Even so, we are unlikely to get to talk about everything you have written.

6) For early Term 3, you would probably want to practice your skills for the oral exams with me, particularly the conversation part.

To arrange a consultation, please check my calendar (which has already been shared with you on google calendar) and drop me a message on my mobile phone. When you have arrived for your consultation, please give me a call on my mobile phone as well as I might be held up somewhere. I am usually not at my desk. So there is no point calling my extension.


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