Julia TS #7 (Berkay)

 Julia TS #7 (Berkay)

Date/Time: Wednesday February 11th, 2026 5-6 pm 


Location: Virtual (Zoom) 


Topic/Skill: American Poet Sylvia Plath/Intensive Listening


Feedback Provided to the Tutee: I provided Berkay with a mental schema for the audio we were about to listen to. He then engaged in a level-appropriate intensive listening activity about American poet Sylvia Plath and her life and work. For more linguistic work, we reviewed the questions that would be asked when the audio was finished, and Berkay was allowed to take notes as the audio played. We listened to the audio in full, and then I showed Berkay the questions, and we talked through them. I provided a transcript of the audio we would go through, based on the questions he didn’t know or got wrong. At the end of the session, we debriefed the passage and went over anything he didn’t understand. 


Lesson(s) About Tutoring and/or the Tutee: I learned the importance of scaffolding and linguistic support. Berkay had been struggling with listening, and in this session I introduced a TOEFL-adjacent passage that he might hear, and instead of asking open-ended questions about it like he might be asked on the TOEFL exam, I instead asked him multiple-choice questions, and then at the end reviewing the multiple choice questions and answers, Berkay was confident enough to talk about what he had heard when prompted with open-ended questions.


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