During my second tutoring session with Yujeong, we met at Dunkin Donuts on Tennessee, and she came armed with a lot of questions for me. Most of them were to do with grammar- gerunds, tenses, etc. I explained the concepts of 'about to' and 'almost' to her. And how to use almost in a sentence. She had a question about "I studied" vs "I had studied," and wanted to know the difference. That is one of those cases that honestly comes down to memorization. In colloquial American English they are often interchangeable, but I explained she still had to learn the difference anyway. And proceeded to help explain them in more detail. Many of her questions involving tenses had to do with when in time they happened. So, for instance, for most of her questions she would draw a small timeline and wanted me to help her visualize when the event had happened. Like how "studied" implies a one-time thing, whereas "studying" implies an ongoing action. That was a central part of our session.
Despite her issues with verb tenses, I think that her speaking skills are very good. She mentioned that she had a class with my conversation partner, Ahmed, which seemed odd to me because she seems to be more advanced than he is, especially in speaking.
She also mentioned that she wanted to read more in English and to be able to understand more common English- not just sentences she reads in class. She mentioned wanting to be able to understand people's Facebook statuses- casual English. So I told her I would start to send her articles I saw online.
She mentioned that her favorite genre of books is romance. She has read Twilight, so I am going to find a level appropriate book for her to read that she will like. I think I am going to bring her Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. I think it is at a good level and definitely fits her personality.
No comments:
Post a Comment