Caitlin TS #8

Date/Time: January 27th, 2016 3-4pm

Location: In the back of Hecht House

Topic/Skill: Pronunciation and Culture
 
Feedback provided to tutee: In today's session, In-hwa showed me her last speech test. She was very concerned about her mistakes. She had missed points on a few things and she was confused because she thought she had been saying exactly what the corrections said that she needed to fix. Several sentences were written on the paper and so I has In-hwa say the sentences back to me. One of the sentences along the lines of, "My family always supports me." But when In-hwa would say the sentence, it sounded like, "My family always support me." Each time, I would correct her and she got a bit frustrated at one point. She couldn't hear the difference between what I was saying, "supports," and what she was saying, "support." We had to discuss it a bit but we really just discovered that she was saying the word correctly but when she made the 't' sound in the word "supports," the last 's' got swallowed up. In her mind, she could hear it but even to a native speaker, it was impossible to pull the 's' away from the 't' sound, making it seem as if it wasn't there at all. We then practiced saying words and then sentences using the 'ts' combination. I would say the word or sentence and In-hwa would repeat it. After we did that for a bit, I started asking her questions that, "What does your mom want for her birthday?" which prompted her to use the present tense of 'want' and using 'wants' to practice her pronunciation of the sound in some context. It pretty much took the whole session and several examples for her to hear the difference and lots of patience from both of us but by the end, she really started getting the hang of it. In-hwa would even start to hear her mistake as she was speaking and self-correct.

Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Today, In-hwa asked me a few questions about American culture. First, she asked me what drugs I have tried. I found this absolutely hilarious because she is not the first Korean to ask me this exact question! This led to a bit of discussion about the American stereotypes in Korea. She also explained to me that her college friends wouldn't go out to eat with her very often and when then did, they usually didn't buy much or bought something cheap. She wanted to know why because she had thought all Americans were basically rich. She was very surprised when I told how poor most Americans are (although in perspective since our culture is rich compared to much of the world), especially college students. Another thing I learned was how important it is as a tutor or teacher to have abundant patience. Whenever In-hwa got frustrated, she would look at me and sort of regroup before throwing herself back into our partner work. I think that the more calm you are as a tutor/teacher, the easier and faster it is for the tutee or student to also calm down and resist the urge to shut down.