As a result of lack of practice, young students are not able to clearly construct sentences in a sensible order that will explain a thought or story. If the thoughts are not clear, the writing will also be obscure. Listen to the average young pupil verbally describe what they just read, for example. They often skip the essential parts of the story and use incorrect sequencing. If you had one average young student read a story and illustrated that story to another average student, you would have a completely different story or one that's degraded.
Tutoring Students To Think With Graphic Images
When tutoring English, it's better to have the pupils think in terms of images rather than in terms of language. Thinking in terms of a complex mix of words, phrases, and sentences to describe a thought is much more complicated than thinking in terms of one image. Like the saying goes, "One image is worth a thousand words." At such an early stage in their intellectual advancement, it's more complicated for children to think in terms of language than in visual pictures.
The idea is to tutor using simple mental pictures. For example, when a pupil is describing the physical appearance of one of the characters in a story, it's best to begin with a simple image of that character as opposed to a perplexing one of many qualities. That feature may simply be the sex of the character, for example. As such, the English tutor should help the pupil develop a simple picture that reflects only the sex of the personality. Then simply add features to the image as they become known to the student as he or she reads the story. Each time a new feature is made known, the feature is added to the image.
As the pupil has a clear image in his or her mind of the character to be detailed, the next step for Tutoring English is to create the words and sentences that describe the image. This is best done by choosing only one or two basic qualities of the character and select the nouns, verbs, and adjectives that describe that one or two featured image. The remainder of the sentences are basically describing the additional features of the character that the student has visualized. Once the description is complete, have the student compare his or her written description with that of the image produced in his or her mind.
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John H Chartrand is founder of Ottawa Tutors, a company specializing in tutoring in Ottawa, Ontario. As a 15 year Certified Teacher, John has avast knowledge in education. His website is full of fantastic articles on the subject of tutoring and education . Visit: http://ottawatutors.org
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