For Language Partners

Your Role as a Language Partner 

Practice sessions with a Language Partner are an essential part of the Self-Directed Language Acquisition Program. Your role as a leader of these sessions is vital to each student’s language learning. You are providing the students with the opportunity to practice what they are learning.

Your goal is to help students learn to communicate in a language you already speak and, perhaps, read and write. It is important to remember that you are not expected to be a language teacher. You are not expected to establish a curriculum, explain grammar, or organize the students’ assignments. Students in the SDLAP must take responsibility for their own learning. You are a mentor and facilitator.

Your Responsibilities as a Language Partner 

Students in the SDLAP establish their own learning goals and, based on those goals, create learning plans to meet their goals. They are responsible for letting you know what they are studying so that you can create activities to help them practice.  You should tell the students to notify you at the end of each week about their goals for the next week’s sessions.

At a practical level, however, you will work with the SDLAP Director to establish a basic syllabus for the practice sessions based on an initial assessment of the students’ needs and interests. Speaking practice will focus on communicative tasks and the cultural behavior appropriate to them. You will use a combination of repetition and role-plays to help students learn to speak fluently. You may also prepare listening activities. If students are learning to read and write, part of the practice sessions may be devoted to verifying students’ abilities to write the vocabulary they are learning and to comprehend texts they have chosen.

Your primary responsibilities are:

• to be prepared to lead the practice sessions;
• to facilitate student practice during the practice sessions;
• to track students’ attendance and participation in the practice sessions;
• to report to the SDLAP Director on students’ participation and progress using this form.

Guidelines for Practice Sessions 

1 – 4 students will participate in each practice session group. Each practice session group has two 50-minute sessions each week.

1. Decide with the students on the topic for each practice session; post the topic to the appropriate group on theSDLAP ning.
2. Conduct the practice sessions in the target language.  You may use English to provide cultural context, but this should not be more than five minutes of each session.
3. Begin each practice session with a review of the vocabulary and structures to be used in the sessions’ activities.
4. Be sure to correct as many errors as possible. Focus especially on correct pronunciation.
5. Speak at your normal speed, since that is what students need to learn to understand.
6. Avoid giving any linguistic or grammatical explanations.
7. Do give students information about appropriate cultural behavior, using the target language as much as possible.

Use this form to report on the students’ participation and progress.