"Participation" in language tutorials? (1 Viewer)

[jaimebien]

I'm doing French Junior Adv 5 at the moment and I'm finding participation in the tutorials quite difficult. Every week, I tell myself that I'll find some point to contribute but mostly I'm quite intimidated because I'm not as fluent as I want to be. On the other hand, I'm finding participation in my other tutorials (all English-language) coming to me quite naturally, so I guess it's the French that's holding me back. Does anyone here have the same problem, and if so, how are you overcoming it? I'd love to hear from other students doing other languages too as I'd imagine it applies across the board.

At the moment, I best I can do is rehearse several points and then find a good spot during the tutorial to insert it. The thing with French tutorials is that they're not so much a discussion as a mini-lecture. The other tutorials I've had for English, History and MECO (from what I've seen so far) are more discussion-based.

Another thing is, how much does participation really count towards your grade?

 

[jb_nc]

tl;dr

 

[sandersen]

I did 1631 last year and I didn't participate as much as I did in normal tutes.
Who is your tutor? First sem i had Francoise, then Roland. What seemed to happen was that there were some people who thought they were awesome and you couldn't shut them up.
Especially last semester when we had to read three books that I couldnt afford, so didn't read, and so contributed even less, my mark dropped by 10 points even though my language overall was better. It does count, but it's the same as other tutes, if you have done the prep then you should be able to talk. Otherwise try and talk to the tutor and explain that you are finding it hard to participate, there are probably others finding the same thing, and they might be able to either help you or change some of the structure of the tutes.

 

[jaimebien]

sandersen, thanks for sharing. My language tutor is Charles and my reading tutor is Francoise (whose excellent). I agree about what you said about people who talked non-stop. Well, anyway, I'm starting to recognise my classmates (fellow tutees?) and the class is now smaller as many hvae dropped. So, I'm slowly starting to get more comfortable with contributing. Ooo, also, Charles remembers my name. That must be a good thing right? (Where name recognition = proof of participation)

When you talk to the tutor, how do you gently bring up that they should focus on time management during the tutorial so that we don't dwell too long on a subject and risk not finishing the work for the day?