VoRTCS - Volunteer Refugee Tutoring & Community Support Program

Getting to know your family

It is important to make an effort to learn everyone’s names as quickly as possible. Make sure that you don’t anglicise anyone’s name or give them a nickname unless they ask for one. The family will appreciate your efforts to learn and pronounce their names correctly.

The first few weeks is a great chance to find out more about your family and the country that they came from. The family may be eager to share their culture with you, and discussing differences between their culture and Australian culture is a great lesson in itself.

Remember to share information about yourselves; otherwise your family may not feel comfortable sharing information about themselves. Discussing your occupation and hobbies may introduce new vocabulary and reveal things that you and your family have in common.

Importantly, find out what your family need from tutoring and take the time to introduce them to the VoRTCS tutoring program -some families will not know much about how you can (or cannot) help them. Also find out what they enjoy doing – this may provide the basis for a future lesson, a focus for tutoring sessions overall or even a ‘field trip’!

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