Heather - Tutoring - Week 4

So, this week Chomy and I met with success in getting together for a tutoring session. It required my going to her apartment and learning how to juggle teaching her and the demands on her attention by her two year old son! All in all it was quite a successful session, even with Sanghoen's interruptions. (He is a bright, energetic and outgoing boy.)

I decided that we would approach things differently this week, so with Scrabble, a dictionary and a Scrabble word finder book in hand I set off to my tutoree's residence. I decided to use Scrabble so we could work on vocabulary and so I could get an idea of what she knew. Turns out Scrabble is not necessarily the best game to use when trying to determine someone's receptive/productive vocabulary level. As she used her pocket translator/dictionary I was having flashbacks on games I had played with my family and the heavy dictionary use of even my veteran Scrabble player Grandma. In a stroke of genius I realized all was not lost due to having determined early on to keep track of the words we used so we could review them together. When we were setting up to play her some came over wanted in on the action too. She asked if he could have some of the pieces to play and I agreed. He watched us and set his pieces up the same way as us! Fantastic! Soon, though, he lost interest and returned to entertaining himself. I kept us playing long enough for her to get a few points ahead of me and declare her the victor. I wanted her to walk away from this encouraged and with a certain sense of accomplishment. Chomy is quite bright, she caught on quickly though there were a couple points we had to go over a few times. And no, we did not strictly play by the rules. I wanted her more focused on producing words than understanding the ins and outs of a new game.

The list of vocabulary we developed through game play became the object of our homework assignment for this week. This is so she could spend time working with the words by putting them into sentences using the different meanings and tenses all in the hopes of making the words both receptive and productive. Of course our list was a little lengthy so I only selected a few words for her to do this with suggesting if she felt up to it she could do it with other words from the list. I picked what I felt were the hardest words from our list. We also worked on grammar correction by using the e-mail she sent me, which was almost flawless.

Our time together was mixture of studying and socializing. When I arrived she was happy to see me and had cooked food! She was also very happy to share Korean teas and coffees with me. I'm beginning to get the idea that Asian cultures are hospitable...? This has certainly been my experience with Xin and Chomy. The Korean she made me was a tea made from corn. She showed me the Korean characters on the bag, said the word and told me what it meant (corn). Thus I learned my second word in Korean. Roughly, its pronounced ohsusu. Throughout our time together and interaction with her some as well I managed to learn a few words in Korean with, what Chomy says, good pronunciation. ^_^ We are set to repeat our tutoring session next week and I am also invited to supper afterwards for home-cooked Korean food. We ended our time together talking about her frustrations with somethings that are going on in her life, especially since the car accident, and playing with Sanghoen. It was good time, a good day and I was tired by the time I left, even with having slept late. I walked away from this tutoring session feeling good, feeling like we both did well. Maybe I am finally getting my feet under me, building both comfort and confidence. Maybe the pieces are starting to fall into place, which makes me happy/satisfied.