Looking for suggestions for private tutor activities

[dtails]

Anyone have good suggestions for activitiies, games, or materials for a lower intermediate student (can hold a conversation but want to improve speed and accuracy) working with a private tutor?

 

I'm currently studying at a University in Taichung, Taiwan and I am finishing PAVC book 3 soon. I just found two private tutors to improve speaking my speaking with more one on one time. I have seen people on here recommend Taiwan Today as a supplemental text so I will work with a high-quality tutor on that book. However, I can't afford to see this tutor more than once a week so I have a second inexpensive tutor. This tutor has a good ear and corrects me often but she isn't as well prepared. So I want to prepare more activities and materials.

 

Any ideas? Thanks guys!

[Mr John]

Hey there,

 

I'm in a similar position to you, so I was kind of hoping to cherry pick the best ideas from this thread. Unfortunately, there are no takers - as of yet. I think that may be because this topic has already been covered in various other threads. The problem is - without the right keyword - they're a bit hard to find.

 

What do you do at present with the less expensive tutor? At the moment, with mine, I choose a topic which interests me, pre-learn the relevant vocabulary and talk about it as best I can. After that, I usually write a short essay using as much of the new vocabulary and grammar as possible.

 

The problem with this method is that my interests are usually well above my language level. The other is that it's a lot of work to keep thinking of ideas and prepare and review adequately.

 

My short to medium term goal - like you -  is to improve my conversational skills, but I'm struggling each week to talk about more abstract topics like feminism; the mind; philosophy; politics etc. This despite the fact that I'm often lost for words in simple daily situations.

 

I saw one thread based on making up stories about pictures in class. Although it sounds like it could be a bit hit and miss, it might be worth trying it just to mix things up.

 

Apart from that, there was a thread written by Tamu that I can't find anymore. In it, he was taking about how to move vocabulary into the "active" catagory. As I recall, he made a list of words he was trying to master in Anki, then went through them with his tutor. I think both he and the tutor took turns making up sentences. The tutor would then choose the appropriate option in Anki, based on how well he had understood and been able to use the word.

 

Having said all that, given that you're actually in Taiwan, I would consider using that second tutor in a different way. If they agree, I'd just get them to hang out with while you handle your daily life. Then they could give you feedback about mistakes you're making and more natural ways to express things.

 

Not sure how helpful that was. Here's hoping someone else jumps in. 

[dtails]

Thanks for the ideas! I want to try the picture activity, It sounds along the lines of what I'm looking for - more creative sustained use of the language. I feel like I have made thousands of unrelated sentences just as regular vocabulary practice but it gets so dry. I also use anki religiously with preset textbook decks and also everyday words I come across.

 

I currently do vocablulary practice where my tutor or partner will descibe a word or situation that relates to the word (without saying it) and I need to guess the word, then we switch turns.This works well for smaller sets of very new vocabulary i've seen once or twice and also with large sets of older vocab - obviously the trick is to not make it too easy. Another game is to say a word and the last character needs to match the first character of the opponents word. Homonyms are allowed but the tone must be the same.

 

We always start out with some pronounciation practice and tongue twisters - I have a good book for this with some advanced areas such as sentence and speech stress called Mastering Mandarin Pronunciation through E-learning (though I rarely use the interactive CD, it seems good). Then we generally talk about any movies I have seen lately or books I am reading and I describe them or general chit chat.

 

That's about it. The post you mentioned by Tamu about active vocabulary sounds really interesting, I would love to see if it you manage to find it.

[Mr John]

Cool, I might try a few of the activities you mentioned out myself.

 

Here's the link to Tamu's post:

 

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/43882-vocab-from-passive-to-active/