Jaime TP1

On Thursday I met with Yasuko for our first one on one tutor session. Yasuko is beginning to write her first essays, and was having trouble organizing her thoughts on paper, which seemed to be a fitting tutoring session after Tuesday’s class.
For me, explaining writing is often tricky as there are ‘more ways than one to skin a cat’ and I wasn’t sure how to approach this topic. (Besides refraining from creepy idiom usage as it’s probably best to keep CIES students from roaming about comparing their actions to skinning small cuddly animals)

We began by an explanation/pantomime of brainstorm. I tried to get Yasuko comfortable talking about her hometown Asakusa, which happened to be the topic of her paper. As she spoke, I wrote down her ideas on the wipe off board, and she did the same in her notebook. Afterwards, we reviewed what she said to try to find a general theme that tied everything together. That theme was traditional, so we deconstructed the ways that Yasuko considers Asakusa traditional and then formed these points into an outline format. Towards the end of this Katie came over and was able to explain a couple of grammar points using her Japanese skills. Before we ended the lesson, I decided to give Yasuko a couple of examples to try to organize her ideas into an essay format. “I like studying in the U.S.”, “I like animals”, and “I like living in Asia” were several of the practice prompts we used. In the end, Yasuko was more comfortable with the tasks of brainstorming and organizing her thoughts.