Tutoring

Today Tuba wanted to practice speaking. She has beeen listening to a cd of English conversations at home that she uses to practice. She had dictated quite a bit of the dialogue, which was impressive. We went over the few questions she had regarding some vocabulary.
After about fifteen minutes, I told her that I did not want to go over prescripted conversation. I thought it would be much more helpful to her if she would answer the questions as I asked them.
The conversation theme was a party theme. She did a pretty good job, but she is spending too much time thinking. I asked her to just say whatever she was thinking and we would correct it as we went. I told her that sometimes when people are learning a second language thier worries and fears about producing speech incorrectly is actually more inhibitive than actually producing incorrect speech. This seemed to help some and she began to loosen up and not think quite as much.
The other problem she is encountering is trying to use such formalized speech when she is in a casual conversation. I spent some time helping her to know when the correct time, places and events when formal language is more appropriate and when it is not.