Today was the day that I finally met with my other adult tutee, Boram Kang. Today we did a brief needs assessment and I learned that her main focus is on learning more about American culture and also learning more slang/ "SAT words" to improve her overall fluency. She is definitely an advanced student. While she speaks mainly Korean, she does use English while out-and-about, like at the store. She plans to enter graduate school to teach English (ESL) and would like to polish her skills before she goes. I was personally in awe of her drive and motivation!
She found that studying English in an academic setting in her homeland was discouraging and very tough. It was, as we discussed in class, very mistake-oriented and anything that could be marked down, would be. Kang found her overall fluency (and motivation) improved through using media like movies and music to help her learn English. One of her favorite things to do is watch American TV drama series like "House of Cards" (with subtitles on just in case of course).
Unlike my other student, this tutee likes to read for pleasure; one of her favorite authors is Nicholas Sparks. I had brought some books along with me to help gauge reading skills (A Wrinkle in Time, Flash Fiction Foward, and Reading Ethics) and she immediately went for the flash fiction book. She read two stories from it and we were able to discuss a lot of interesting words and language usage as well as differences and problems between our cultures. When discussing after we had finished the pieces, she automatically tried to use the new words she had learned (like "crusty" to describe a person). I think I will implement this in my own learning of Japanese and try to make my other tutee do this. The challenge here will be to find enough material to cover and finding good, engaging discussion points.
No comments:
Post a Comment