Martin-TS#15

Today, my Hispanic tutee and I met for two hours ( a double session). This post is covering the first hour.
I brought along his two previous sessions' original writing samples with the corrections on them and decided to try dictation. I read his first sample with the corrections included, and had him copy it down on a separate sheet of paper. He couldn't manage full sentences, so I would read 2-3 words, and he would write those down within a reasonable amount of time. His spelling was still far from perfect, but his approximations were much closer to the actual word through this activity. For example, in the first piece, he had written "one day, I wake up" and, after hearing me say "one day, I woke up," his spelling approximation became "wok." In his second piece, about the beach, the word "beach" (originally "beetch") was now "bech." "Happy" went from "hapi" to "happee." Minimal pairs are the main thing he still struggles with even at his advanced speaking level ("velvet" is "welbet" or "belbet"), and often, when writing, this confusion becomes translated into his spelling. I told him to "write it down how he hears it" instead of writing it as he says it. This seemed to help give better approximations to his spelling.