Today I met with Do-jun. He is in South Korea so we talk via Skype. Despite my planning it felt like everything was falling apart, as I was not as well prepared for the listening practice that he seemed very interested in. He was very encouraging about my teaching anyway. Do-jun inserts many fixes into his sentences, so he actually does a pretty good job of monitoring his speech. However it does make it difficult for me to tell when I should give feedback. It also makes it difficult to know what I, personally, can do to help improve his speaking skills other than just giving him practice time. His speech is slow and full of revisions, but tends to be fairly accurate in the end (minus one or two explanations that didn't come across very well). I was a bit surprised even.
While I knew that, in Korea, you are not expected to tip the waiter, I was unaware that the waiter is usually called when service is needed rather than coming around to check up on the diners. Do-jun thought that the American style of waiting tables was too much.
Yea my first tutoring session didn't go exactly as planned either. But sounds liked you rolled with it and made it work!
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