Heather - Tutoring - Week 1

I am doing my tutoring through the library's literacy program and tonight was my first time meeting the woman I will be tutoring. It was really just a get to know each other session and I really enjoyed spending time getting to know Chomy.

Chomy is quite outgoing, bright and is from Korea. She moved here a year ago with her husband and son. She has a degree in English Literature, which she got at university in Korea. She has also taught English to kids in her home country! She was very talkative and excited, happy to finally have a tutor (she had been waiting several months)!

Her proficiency in English is a little higher than what I was expecting. Its really nice to be working with someone who is good at communicating her thoughts and feelings, but I feel it will also be more of a challenge. Why? Because it means working on more complex and difficult aspects of the English language and probably dealing with plateaus. Chomy and I talked a little bit about that tonight.

She really wants to work on vocabulary, but she also marked down that she wants to work on reading, listening and speaking as well. I think we need to work on listening because though she's good at communicating, I think she does struggle with listening comprehension more than speaking the language. I know that listening to the radio had the lowest rating on her language comfort survey. She and her husband enjoy watching a lot of movies and they watch them with sub-titles, which is helpful, but does distract from listening ( I know from experience). I do have to listen carefully when she speaks and I had to occasionally ask her to repeat herself to make sure I understood what she said.

I'm not sure where to start with our tutoring, but I can talk to Karen at the library and there are a lot of resources available. We did end our first session with the idea of my picking out a news article to e-mail her so she can read it, pick out words and anything else she is unfamiliar with and work on defining them. We would then go over it together during our next tutoring session and I would help her with anything she really had trouble with.

Overall, our session was great and I look forward to our next one, even if I do feel as though I am floundering with trying to find a solid starting place for our tutoring. I already have an invitation for dinner at her house to have traditional Korean food! I'm very excited about that. We ended our time together with a hug and Chomy meeting Carlucci who was also at the library. A good start, I think. See you soon!