Katie- TP 1

I met with the first of my tutees, a Korean woman named Jia, on Thursday afternoon at Strozier. We spent the majority of the time getting to know each other and talking about what she hopes to gain through our tutoring sessions. Jia is a CIES student on break, hoping to continue improving on her English despite not taking classes this term. She told me that her biggest trouble is that she really just doesn't enjoy studying. My biggest challenge will be attempting to find fun ways for her to practice English. Until then, because her schedule is so open, I’m hoping to meet with her more often, possibly two or even three times a week. I think having someone to study or spend time with will make the task of studying English less daunting, and some of our sessions could be light, fun things like watching a movie for listening comprehension.

Some other things that came up during our meeting were that she feels her grammar is really lacking in comparison to other Korean students, and her foundation in grammar appears to be a little weak. The next time we meet I intend to go over the Group 1 PDF file provided with her for some basic review. She doesn’t like reading, either, so we’re going to go through a book together. I think by reading a book together I can help her with her pronunciation and guide her through any grammar questions she might have. As we get further through the book I might ask her to write a short response every few chapters in the book so we can discuss what she thinks about it afterwards. Jia also told me that because her CIES courses were strongly centered around the TOEFL exam, she wants to continue doing some TOEFL related things as well, even though it seems that she doesn’t plan on taking it, so that will be something for me to look into for future sessions.

Overall, Jia is a very nice girl and her English seems very good for someone who has only been here for eight months. I’m excited to be working with her.