Genevieve TS #11

Wednesday August 12, 2015 1:55 - 3:00pm I met with my tutee Junnho Byun. He's 11 and he's visiting from South Korea for the summer. The assignment I had was writing essays, particularly using good topic sentences. I showed him the worksheets I had (which he ended up wanting to keep). I explained the formatting of an essay and I explained topic sentences. I told him there were two kinds of essays we'd be working on today, one addressed learning English in the United States and the other involved creating an imaginative story from a list I provided. I asked him which one he would like to do first. He wanted to work on the American English essay first. I asked him if he was familiar with thought bubbles and he was. After I clarified the task further he began by brainstorming on paper. He paused and asked me how to spell "language". Once he had his ideas down he began with the writing part. He asked if his first sentence could be a question. I told him that was actually a great idea. In his conversational speaking (different from reading out loud) his intonation is very good. In fact, I don't think that I would be able to tell he is a non-native speaker from just conversing. However, last time, when we were practicing his reading skills, his intonation was monotone, though his accuracy and pronunciation was excellent, yet again, it could be age appropriate and wouldn't necessarily clue me in that English was his second language. Writing however, was a different story. Once he completed writing his first essay we reviewed it together. He correcting his errors. He often omitted the article "the" and sometimes his words were in an order that did not fit the patterns of English though I could clearly decipher the meaning he was intending to convey. We went through all these corrections together. We also discussed word choice. For example he used the word "correct" where "helpful/beneficial" would have been a better fit so we talked that through. Then we moved on to the next assignment. This time I gave him a list 3 part list: activities - running, climbing, swimming, flying, golfing, boating, sailing, skiing; characters - elephant, horse, pirate, captain, sailor, musician, cat, dog and to this he added parrot; locations - mountain, beach, ocean, desert, forest. He asked for clarification if a pirate would be boating or sailing. We discussed that pirates were around before electricity and gasoline were so that a pirate would be more likely to be sailing than boating. He picked sailing, pirate, musician, cat, dog parrot beach and ocean. He asked if he could name his story and I told him it was excellent to have a title for his story. I gave him an extra large colorful sheet of paper for his story creation. This time he didn't need a thought bubble brainstorming session and he got right to writing. His creation was delightful and I really enjoyed reading it. His story was layered and interestingly complex and seemed to be far beyond the his age level. I was really impressed. We reviewed it. Again the article "the" was often missing. What was really great was after I pointed it out twice Junnho proactively took it upon himself to correct the rest of the document. That was great to see. He used excellent topic sentences for all his paragraphs. Working with Junnho is a pleasure. He is a very focused student. I also appreciated how respectful his whole family was of his studies, and they kept the house very quiet so he could fully focus during the tutoring session.