Chris TS#16

Today I observed Joel's tutoring session with his adult tutee, Kwon. Kwon is also my conversation partner, so we already knew each other.

Kwon had finished his exams at CIES and seemed relieved that he was finished. He showed Joel and I an award he had received at CIES for English composition. He seemed very proud of this to say the least. Joel asked him what he wanted to work on and he said speaking. They began their session with a conversation about Kwon's English history, starting from the time he began studying the language in middle school. Kwon said that in school he learned a lot of grammar and formal expressions, so when he came to school in America, he felt like he wasn't able to understand the language as well because it wasn't expressed the same way as in his studies. One thing he especially noticed was Anerican humor was hard to understand. He said he would be watching a movie with friends and everyone would laugh but he wouldn't understand why. Joel mentioned that American humor is sarcastic and sometimes vulgar, so for a second language learner, this may prove difficult. They both acknowledged that because of cultural differences there may be some jokes that second language learners may never understand.

We watched a few video clips to illustrate the examples of different types of humor found in Korean and American television. Kwon told us about "Konglish," which is where Koreans use English words but they have a different meaning to Koreans. For example the word "hunting" does not mean pursuing animals as game, but instead used as a word for picking up girls. This was the first I had heard of this and I found it really interesting!