Raleigh TS #5

Date/Time: 6/5/17 (5pm)
Location: Grand Marc
Topic/Skill: speaking
Feedback provided to tutee: I worked with her on pronunciation of my name specifically because she said they don't have a sound for "r."

This session, I decided to ask Dasom about travel just like I did with Tingwei. It seemed to spark his desire to speak, so I hoped that it would help her speak more as well. She is usually very quiet, and each session, it takes her about 20 minutes to warm up enough to speak. She's still very shy about her speaking ability. I asked her where she would travel based on the food, and she said that she'd go to Italy for the desserts. I also asked her where she would go based on meal food, and she said Japan. She said that she loves Japanese food even though she doesn't like seafood. She said that she would go to Switzerland based on the scenery, and she would want to go with her best friend. She said that she would go to Vietnam if she could too because they have good food, and it's so close to other countries like Thailand. There are a lot of places that she wants to visit. After we talked about traveling, we talked about language itself. We talked about how it is to learn different languages, and we talked about how other languages differ too. We also talked about minimal pairs, and we talked about how my name is hard for people from Asian countries to pronounce. She said that in Korean, they don't have r's, so my name is pronounced lolly just like the lollipop song. It was a really fun conversation, and I'm glad that she was able to talk more today. She seemed to be in a great mood and was excited about everything we talked about. We also talked about different pets that people can have and watched some videos about animals that you can have as pets in America that are a little bit weird and unexpected. It was great to hear her relax and speak more, and she's making progress just by being more willing to practice her speaking.