Hi! Happy Epiphany to all those who celebrate it!
In two days I will finally tutor my first group conversation in Italian! I would have never imagined I could gather four Italian students until a few weeks ago.
I’d like to receive some suggestions on how to best tutor such a conversation, especially in relation to the reports. Should I write a single report for everybody or separate reports, one for each student?
Thanks,
Michele
It depends. I prefer to write an extra report to all partners in the group conversations because the character of mistakes could be different, but some american tutors write a common report to all with main mistakes of all members.
I have mostly very experienced LingQers in my group conversations, so at the start I basically said “How do you want this to go?” and listened to the answers.
I generally write a single report, but then my group conversations are usually with advanced students, and they don’t contain corrections so much as suggestions for further reading and listening, based on whatever we discussed.
Helen, you are very lucky! My students will be beginners and intermediate learners, so there will be quite a lot of mistakes to correct.
very very beginner jaja .you will have a lot of work to do mike 
Of course, I will not correct all the single mistakes, unless any of you guys is willing to give me 1000 extra points! 
Mike, I write the reports individually in the discussion report and then copy and paste them into each persons report so that they all get the full list of Suggestions. They get individual comments in the lower section.
My main task is to keep the conversation flowing and to avoid talking too much myself (sometimes difficult for me). It is important to make sure that all get about the same amount of time. You sometimes have to cut short those people who talk too much and encourage the shy ones.
Thanks, Steve. I’ll try to do my best, even if I’m always part of the shy ones who don’t manage to start talking when they are in a group…
mike we are in the same group
Yes, but I will be the tutor, so I am not supposed to be shy!