Nic-TP2

Through the Leon County Literacy Volunteers Program, I have been selected to tutor AR, a Chinese man in his mid-30s. He is a former chest surgeon from SE China. His tutoring goals are to 1) Gain a better grasp of English Medical Terms and 2) Become employed in Tallahassee. He is currently working on obtaining an electrician certification from Lively Tech, and this is the field that he wants to work in. This is challenging because his two goals are quite divergent (As a side-note, this confused me for awhile because I didn’t understand why he isn’t working in the medical field. His doctorate from China did not transfer, so he is getting his electrician’s license for income while he steadily works on his American MD).

Today, he spoke of life in China and the main reason he came over: family. His pronunciation of English is good—I would place him in a low to mid-intermediate level. The most noticeable speaking problem is with his R’s/L’s (e.g. “really” is pronounced like “lily”).

We discussed what environment he learns best in. He said he prefers if I have the “patience of a grandmother” and speak slowly and clearly.

For homework, I assigned him to locate 20 medical vocabulary words he is having trouble pronouncing. I also said that we would spend the first half-hour of the next tutoring session just talking so he could work on his ability to speak English naturally. The topic I chose was family (since it is something he cares about).