Recordings from individual language lessons - how to use them?

[TiredTuesday]

DS wanted to do 2 languages at GCSE but wasn’t able to because he had to fulfil some EBacc requirements to make the schools statistics looks good and he also wanted to do DT so we decided he should do DT at school and we could get a language tutor. So we did and he’s been having individual tuition since the 2nd week of September.

The lessons, which are over zoom, seem to be going well and he’s enjoying them. The lessons get recorded (yes, we signed all the appropriate paperwork). But we don’t really know what to do/how to effectively use the recordings. He’s watched them back. The first one he decided he hated and wasn’t going to watch them again. But this week he’s decided to watch them all, seems to have got over how strange it is to see and hear himself on a recording and noted a few things he missed in the lessons which is a good thing proving they are useful for him. But are there better ways to use them? More effective? Different ways to use them? Really I’m after are there ways which they can be used to get the most out of them?

I tutor MFL, sometimes over Zoom, tho I have never recorded the lessons tbh. Seems like it might be a good idea tho.

What kinds of things is he doing in the lessons? I presume he is working on tasks relating to the GCSE course? So for example if he works on a reading task with his tutor, could he find the task in the book (or on screenshare) and try and work through it again - what did he get wrong? Which words did he not know?

For a speaking task - say they had a conversation on hobbies - he could look again at his answers and work out ways to improve them - could he had added an opinion, something in a different tense, a comment about another person (so not just Ich spiele but also Mein Bruder spielt)?

It's about revision and extension as far as I can see. Any help?

Sorry I just saw that he has only been doing the lessons for a couple of weeks. Don't know why I envisaged a whole block of hours of work to look at. Still tho - if he is doing (say) an hour a week 1-1, there might be at least half a dozen bits of vocab to note down, perhaps a couple of points for each skill?

I don't have directly relevant experience to quote but have thought of two things. When I was quite little and had not long been learning the violin, my mother was ill and couldn't attend for a while and we tape-recorded our lessons. We literally played the tape back and "re-did" the lesson at home as part of our practice. The other example was when I started university. Two of us were doing extra subjects (non-UK) that sometimes had lecture clashes. So at lunchtimes we sat down and talked through the lecture we'd been at before exchanging notes.

So from both of these experiences I would say, consider watching the recordings in the spirit of "let's do this lesson again", and see whether that proves useful.

Some great suggestions @clary. Thank you. I have noted all of these down and DS can try them out to find out what works/doesn't work for him. - He is learning german actually.

Ah yes, sorry, when reading that back it does sound like he has loads of recordings. He only has 3 at the minute but this will build over the next 18 months so by the time he hits GCSE revision he will have a whole bank of them to pull on.

He' s having weekly 1-1 with a native speaker who is trained to teach german to foreigners but is, for whatever reason, based in the UK at the minute. The tutor knows the GCSE syllabus and they are doing work related to it - speaking and listening, reading, she gives him homework to practice writing and exercises to reinforce the lesson and she dedicates some time in the lesson to go over anything he didn't quite understand or needs more work on. He is likes how much time he gets to practice speaking which seems to be a direct contrast to the language GCSE he is doing in school.

Recording the lessons I think is a really good thing. Watching a couple of them back, he noticed in this weeks that he managed a whole 7 minutes speaking german and actually understanding what was being asked of him and pushing through with the conversation before they had to revert back to english. This has really boosted his confidence and I think seeing little things like that, which you don't notice in a lesson, provides confidence that you can do something because there is cold hard proof that you have done it before.

There was a bit of paperwork around GDPR and recording of a minor and permissions which we had to fill in. There is also a message at the start of each lesson which has to be accepted for the lesson to be recorded.

@Pythonesque "lets do the lesson again" approach also sounds like a good idea. Maybe pausing it and expanding or changing answers as clary suggested. Especially if he could revisit the lesson in maybe a month or so and include the new content. I like it.

make sure he creates some kind of index of the lessons as he goes along so if he does want to relisten to one he can find it easily.

That’s a great point Teen, thank you. Yes, this is certainly something that will be needed that I hadn’t thought about.

I think you’ve had some really good suggestions. I would just add:

How about taking on the persona of another person and becoming a third person in the conversation? I’m not very knowledgeable about German, perhaps @clary can correct me if I’m wrong, but I know with Polish, the way you construct sentences/word endings differs depending on your physical gender identity (Byłem/Byłam (I was) for male/female). Could he pretend to be the other gender and answer again? (Please don’t take that the wrong way, I’m meaning it might help reinforce the gender differences)

Identify areas of good and weakness e.g. was the teacher asking most of the questions and he answered? Could he try asking a question to the teacher? Or make a list of questions he could ask the teacher next time they cover this/a similar topic?

The gender thing in German is really about nouns (there are three genders for nouns); saying I am clever would be the same whether you were male or female. Unlike French, there is no difference in the adjective endings for male and female either. Tho professions are gendered der Lehrer (male teacher) die Lehrerin (female teacher).

Good idea about questions for the teacher - what board is he doing? in AQA GCSE students need to ask the teacher-examiner at least one question in the speaking exam.

He’s doing AQA. So great suggestion about questions for the teacher.

Thank you everyone. He’s took the advise to try and index the recordings and made a start, although I feel like I will end up stepping in and setting it up properly, but at least he’s having a go.

He likes the suggestions from you all and is looking forward to giving them a go before his next lesson. He’s very enthusiastic about the whole tutor and learning German at the minute - long may it last.