After my utter disaster called a first lesson, I soon settled into a good pace of learning with my student. Just to remind the not so regular reader of this blog - I've been tutoring a Chinese lady who is illiterate in both Chinese and English, plus doesn't speak much more English than "how are you, I'm fine". Or so I thought.

The amazing experience is watching the penny drop. When things that she knows but doesn't know quite fully suddenly make sense. Now she struggles with individual words, next, a full sentence appears, and the delight of understanding, reading, speaking. More than anything, we're enjoying the lessons, both of us.

Even more mindboggling is to see how much she learns between lessons. She is a very clever lady, I knew that from the start, she was simply never given an opportunity to learn, and now that she's got one, she takes every bit of it. She gets her 5 year old daughter who is learning to read at school to read her own work out to her, to revise with her. This way, both daughter and mother learn and practice their reading and writing. The beauty of it is that she comes back having progressed miles, she stuns me, every week.

Apparently, she even managed to ring her doctor to make an appointment. Without help. I have no idea how she did that, but never underestimate your learner! What I can see is that she can now write her own address confidently, she is much more confident writing in general, and takes pleasure out of reading words and short sentences. She loves getting things right, and will repeat until she is there. She has now taken full control of the learning, and no longer feels silly if she can't do something I ask her to do.

I am learning too. Mainly, that I can actually communicate fairly well with a person who I don't share a language with. gestures, pictures, and above all facial expressions go much further than I ever thought possible. We actually have a rapport, a rapport of smiles and the willingness to communicate.

So I'm doing the Introduction to Teaching Adult Literacies Learners (ITALL). Part of this qualification is to actually do it. So I found myself a victim, who I am now trying to make literate.

Today was the first lesson, and thanks to my profound knowledge of adult learning, I did it all wrong. Well, not totally wrong, but pretty much so. But being a reflective tutor, as the Scottish Social Practice Modell wants me to be, I can learn from this. So, let's reflect.

First lesson learned is that it's very difficult indeed to imagine how difficult it is for an adult learner who neither knows the alphabet nor speaks any English to understand the concept of letters, sound and name of the letter. My poor learner was utterly confused why "a" is called "ay", but sound more like "ae" in most cases. Or why "u" is called "yew" and pronounced like "a" in "bus. Unless you're Irish of course, but let's not go there. Explain this if you con't have a language in common. The interpreter helped but still, it's not easy. English is simply not that straight forward as would be helpful to an ESOL Literacies learner.

Next difficulty is that of learning goals. Now, my learner has really high goals, which I would really like to help her achieve, just that it's a long road, and I  can't get her to write letters, or understand phone calls if she can't even cope with three letter words. So at least I thought, let's do three letter words and get a head start. I was doomed to failure as three letter words are hard if you don't know the sound of even one letter and can't really sound things out. Also, three letter words have the disadvantag of not always being very relevant to the English she really needs. I mean, you hardly speak to or about a mop, do you? Hello mop, how are you today? What's your name? My name is mop. Oh, and there's bin. Big bin. Maybe there's a pin in the bin? Or even a pen? Have you seen pen recently? Mop, do you think pen might be in the bed? I'll ask cat if he has seen pen or pin in the bed or bin. Or maybe I should ask pig, or even dog? They are always about the bed.

So lesson two will be relevant, without any excuse. Use her name and address. Start with individual letters by and by. Spend half an hour on learning how to write name and address, and half an hour on four letters, a further half hour on small talk. Above all, don't scare her with three letter words that even I have hardly ever used (in fact, I thought mop wasn't an English word at all, I was convinced it was German. What do I know anyway?)

Well, at least I did well with the diagnostic assessment. Left school at six. Because parents couldn't afford to send the girls to school. She can use the pen, so her motoric skills are fine, she can draw letters, but can't sound them. She can copy her address but not write it from memory. She speaks only a few words of English. She really struggles with the letter "v" and any double consonant. "z" isn't easy either. But she knows what she wants, is happy to say hold on, this is too hard for me, and she's dead keen to learn. I'll enjoy this once I'll get the hang of it.

There is this homework group of secondary school pupils who are all ambitious yet underachieve due to English being their second language. When they speak, the speak with a Glaswegian accent. They are as giggly or boisterous as any kid their age. They have friends, from their country, form here, and generally get on well, as well as you can if you are an asylum seeker. Their problem is spelling and writing, and because they know they aren't as good as others, they have started hating anything that involves taking a pen in their hands and putting words onto paper. ...   more »