Marco TS#14

Dojun and I met again for the last time, it was bittersweet. I've grown fond of this dude, he's a cool guy, but we finally did ti and completed our lessons needed. We started today with basic conversation again, he was telling me about work and I told him about what i was doing in my lab and the schedule I was working on. We then got back to the tongue twisters but we focused on sh/ch tongue twisters. These weren't as hard for him as R/L tongue twisters but we worked on it anyway. Afterwards we did revisit the R/L tongue twisters and I could tell how he lost the habit of practicing it. But he did get it back up in no time. All he really needs is mouth exercise practice to get his pronunciation down perfectly, which is really just developing habit, and forcing himself to use more articles and propositions in complete sentences. Other than that he's pretty well off at least for conversation and as a tool for communication.

Marco TS#13

Today I wanted to get Dojun talking a lot, so I asked him what he did during the day. He mentioned he went to go see a movie with his girlfriend. I didn't know he had a girlfriend so he went on to tell me how they met, how long they've known each other, their time in college, the fact that she still lived with her parents, which transitioned us into his living arrangements. He mentioned that South Koreans usually live at home until they get married, when I asked why he lived alone, he stated that it was because he had to move for work. We then spoke about the military at length and his time in the service in the Air Force. So for about the first 35 minutes he was telling me about all this as I coached to on how to conjugate verbs properly, use complete sentences, pronounce different words, arranging sentence structure and so on; though to be fair he is already fairly good. Finally we revisited the tongue twisters, but this time I made him say them faster than he was used to; and he did fantastically well. I have tasked him with continuing his practices with the tongue twisters and to get faster, but he is well on his way to being very proficient in the English language.

Marco TS#12

Today I had Dojun listen to what I do lab. Since he wants to improve his listening i was explaining the procedures we do in lab and how we record neurons' behavior. Granted that this is a very specialized subject in it of itself, he was very proficient in understanding the basics of what I do and was able to keep up the conversation and answer my questions accordingly. After the work in lab I explained how the nervous system works and the mechanics neurons use to communicate. Again, despite the fact of this being a very specialized subject, Dojun did very well in understanding the concepts and answering my quiz questions afterward. After that we went back to tongue twisters. His proficiency with the letter L is far greater than with the letter R, but he has shown great improvement in both respects. To kind of switch things up we went over the "th" sounds, which he had to trouble with, and the "sh" sounds which was easy for him as well. We finished on the R's and L's again and left it at that. I'm very satisfied with his progress on how to differentiate the R and L sounds.

Marco TS#11

Dojun and I skyped again and picked up with the tongue twisters. We went over the tongue twister list with R's in it and he did great. Right at the start of the session when I asked if he'd see the video on pronunciation his clarity was shockingly good. I was very pleased with how well his pronunciation had improved in a matter of hours. We continued with the R list tongue twisters and he is definitely improving. After some practice with the R tongue twisters we went onto L tongue twisters which I assumed would be harder for him, and I was right. But he still performed admirably and his pronunciation is greatly improving.  After some practice going back and forth  with the tongue twisters I left him the assignment to read over them and try to be able to say them faster next time we meet. Finally we continued with out conversation exercises where he explained the current sate of affairs South Korea and North Korea are in currently due to a land mine that was planted in the South Korean territory by the North Korean government.

Marco TS#10

Dojun and I had to reschedule due to a work emergency he had. When we did skype we went over pronunciation, mainly the difference between "r" and "l". I showed him the "Friends" video we saw in class where Chandler and Phoebe go to buy a ring and I had him describe what was happening to me. This video was actually very useful due to words like "haggle", "marry", "ring", "credit card", "carat", and other such words with L's and R's. After that I had him explain to me what had happened at work and why he had to reschedule the session so I could get him speaking. His proficiency is advanced enough that he is able to use shorthand in conversations but I had to remind him to use complete sentences and avoid vague words like "thing". Finally we went over tongue twisters to help his pronunciation with the R's and L's and I left him with an instructional video on how to pronounce them.

Marco TS#9

I skyped with Dojun and we had a rudimentary assessment session. It was 9:30am here and 10:30pm in Korea. He told me that he works for an airline and compared it to Southwest in the US or Air Hawaii. Dojun is a flight planer for a Korean airline and mentioned that he wanted to improve his English to be able to interact with more people around the world, but also because at his work he needs to sometimes interact with people from Japan or China and as a result they resort to English to communicate. Specifically he mentioned that he wanted to improve his speaking and listening. So for our first lesson I showed him 10 sentences that have words spelled exactly the same way but have different meaning. Such as "produce" as a noun and "produce" as a verb. They are spelled identical but the meanings and the way they sound are entirely different. I plan to continue with the speaking  and listening lessons so as to fit his needs.

James CO3

8/13

Today I observed John Doe's lvl 3 reading class.  I really like how he leads his class, very casual and relaxed learning environment.  He also uses the board very well.  I think I learned a lot about how to start a class by just watching him.  He wrote vocabulary words on the board even before the start of class and when a new word would come up, he would stop, write it on the board and give a definition.  He also encouraged class participation by having he students spell the new words first and having them try to explain them.  He explained the "Cornell" note taking strategy, something I had never heard of, and how to take good notes.  His rate of speech was level appropriate and had visual aides to assist in explaining new vocabulary words.  I think I will definitely incorporate some of his techniques into my own teaching lessons.  I also like being able to observe classes like this online. Are there more available?