Alexandra TS #5

On Friday, May 26, 2017, from 4:00pm to 4:45pm, I met with my child tutee, Pais, at his house.  The kids seemed to remember us, and they came right over to work on their English.  Pais and I continued to work on his alphabet.  We were a little distracted by his siblings, but I tried to get them involved learning too.  We again practiced writing letters and identifying them.  I brought some alphabet blocks, so it would be more of a game.  It worked a little.  We also practiced naming colors.  I used markers and colored paper to work with Pais.  Of course all the little kids wanted the markers, so next time I think I will use colored pencils instead.  Pais said he likes to play Uno, so maybe next week we will play it to work on colors and numbers.  Though Pais sat with me the whole time I was there, it was obvious that I could not keep his attention more than thirty to forty minutes.  Hopefully over our visits he will get comfortable working with me on his English.    

Barbara TS#7

This conversation started out with discussion of idioms or sayings such as, “you made my day” or “I dropped the ball.”  Then when I asked Dojun how his day was, he said, “non-stop” which was also funny and we both laughed.  I asked him what that meant and this question led to a conversation about the busy day he had with a meeting of 6 teams working to handle a full schedule of flights to Incheon (spelling could be suspect) which was the S. Korean version of going to Hawaii.  He gave me some really interesting information about the planes and the flights and how the winds work east to west and vice versa.  My understanding of these air concepts is limited but his is not and he understands how the headwinds work and the impact on flights.  As a result of discussing Lowe’s on Guam, we talked about big American stores like Walmart and Costco.  He was familiar with Costco and wanted to know the difference with Walmart.  I tried to explain that Costco and Sam’s Club were membership stores and that customers had to join.  Walmart, on the other hand, is a huge store in which anyone can shop.  He also asked about K-Mart and I explained that many of these stores are closing.  I tried to get the concept of the “big box” store compared to the individually owned stores across using examples and I think that he knew was I was saying.  Dojun is teaching me to be precise when I speak.  When he makes a comment about anything, he usually gives an example.  He said that he liked to shop in K-Mart for presents and then said, “for example, I buy dried fruits like mango” to bring back.

Barbara TS#6

This session was very informative because I asked Dojun what had helped him the most in learning English.  His response was that the best way to teach was to consider the student’s level of achievement in English.  For example, if a student’s level was too low, he/she could not follow the conversation.  If the level was higher, then it was important to direct the training accordingly. He said that he liked everything about learning – speaking, listening and free talking. He also said that learning about culture was very important and that it was helpful to learn about American culture or traditions particularly in the areas of political issues, movies, pop songs, American celebrities, drama and day-to-day readings. As an example of culture, Dojun told me about funerals in S. Korea.  He said that the people are loud and that they drink a lot of alcohol.  They talk about the (dead) person to each other and don’t want the person to be sad.  The family serves a meal and people eat and enjoy.  This concept gives me pause because I just attended a funeral this week-end and this type of response was not the case.  I hadn’t really thought about it but after the memorial service we went to the home of the deceased.  There was a lot of food but the talk was muted and not happy.  There was sadness everywhere yet we called it a celebration of life. 

Dojun then went on to say that American culture is more excited than English culture.  We talked about the differences and he said that Americans are more eager to talk and explain things to listeners.  He thinks that American jokes are childish, particularly knock knock jokes.  I couldn’t stop laughing at this comment because I had never thought about it having been raised on these jokes. Dojun cannot understand why they are funny.  (I still think they are.)

We then switched to teaching grammar and discussed some verb forms that he found confusing:  have to, want, should and shall.  I gave him sentences with each verb and explained how each is used.  We then ended our session with a discussion of idioms and euphemisms.  

Sarah TS #5

Date/Time: 23 May / 7:30 - 8:30PM

Location: Tutee's home

Topic/Skill: Reading comprehension and pre-writing i.e. organization

Feedback provided to tutee:  My child tutee accidentally forgot his book that we were supposed to read together at school so we started one of his I Survived books instead, and it was clear that he was more than familiar with the material since we breezed through the first few or so pages. He ended up telling me that he has taken a quiz on the book before so I helped him with some homework for the remainder of the session. He was instructed to write about a past event or memory and he wanted to write about a recent field trip he took. I showed him a basic mind map to help him outline the major things that happened and gave him an example of how I would fill it out if I was going to write about what I did over the past weekend.

Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: I learned to be flexible during this session. As soon as PJ told me he had already read and been quizzed on this material before, I asked him if he would like to use our time working on something else and he brought up his writing assignment to work on instead.

Sarah TS #4

Date/Time: 22 May / 6:00 - 7:00

Location: Starbucks

Topic/Skill: Reading comprehension and speaking practice

Feedback provided to tutee: Nanami and I started this session by going over the passage along with multiple choice comprehension questions that I brought to our last meeting. She seemed to have no problem getting them all right so I asked her to summarize the passage aloud, which didn't go as smoothly. Although my tutee didn't seem to have any problem reading and understanding English, her pronunciation was difficult to understand at times. I pulled some practice prompts from TOEFL practice websites and listened to her answer them. I stopped her when I didn't understand and we practiced saying words like "situation" together. I suggested that she keep track of such terms by writing them in a notebook and later listening to native speakers say them on Youtube. She was receptive to the idea and I think from now on we are going to do more speaking and listening practice in our future sessions.

Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: I have learned that my tutee's English reading, writing, and grammar knowledge isn't on the same level as her speaking and listening ability.

Colleen TS #7

Date/Time: May 27 2:00-3:00 PM

Location: Starbucks
Topic/Skill: Minimal Pairs and idioms

Today Abdulrahman discussed "face your fears" and recapped some terms from before when talking about cars and the word "absorb" and the various uses it can have. We took time focusing on minimal pairs. He knew he has trouble with "b" and "p" so we took time to focus on this in particular. It was fun and we had good conversation about driving in Saudi Arabia versus the U.S. We also worked on some vocabulary regarding types of cars. 

Alexa CP #4

Date/Time:May 26, 2:30-3:30

Location: Oriental Markets/Publix
Topics: Food

For our 4th tutoring session, I decided to take Nanami to some oriental markets because she missed Japanese food and needed some ingredients for Japanese cooking. When trying to find markets online, I was surprised to find that there were only 2 in Tallahassee and neither were centered around Japanese food. However, I figured it was worth a shot and took her to them. It was a great opportunity to talk to her more about the food because there were things that she would want to buy, and I didn't know what it was because i couldn't read the writing on the packaging. When we were done with that, we stopped by Publix because she needed some things from there as well. It was interesting to see the interaction between her and the cashier. I'm not sure if it's because of the difference in cultures or lack of understanding, but the cashier would ask questions, and she would not respond. However, in terms of speaking to me in English, it has been really cool watching her confidence increase.