I met with Dojun for our weekly Skype session on Monday,
February 11th. We talked about the Lunar New Year, which was last
week. We did not have a tutoring session since last week because of Lunar New
Year since he went to visit his family in Busan, which is his hometown. He taught
me more about what Lunar New Year is and he explained some common traditions
and ceremonies for ancestors. According
to Dojun, people get about five days off from work and school. I asked him if there are any well known
parades or marches like the United States has for Thanksgiving, but he said
there are not any. We then talked about transportation and I had
him explain different types of transportation and compare the times it would
take to get from one place to another using each method of transportation from
Busan to Seoul. I learned that it takes about five hours by car without
traffic, three hours by a fast train, and only about one hour by a plane. Dojun needed help explaining things in the
past using the expression, “used to be”. I told him how he would be able to use
that in a sentence, and he then asked me if he needed to include a specific
amount of time. I told him that he does
not have to, especially if it is already understood through context, but it is
useful. He then shared that he needs more
practice in his listening and speaking skills, so I suggested watching some
movies, documentaries, or TED Talks.
My next tutoring session was with Turki. We met at the Starbucks on Tennessee Street, the usual spot, and started the session with a causal conversation about life and his short term English goals. Turki decided he didn't want to continue with the second session of CIES classes, and that he wanted to rather focus solely on passing the IELTS exam. He said he found the CIES classes to be helpful, but also distracting. He said he thinks he's gotten the most out of his classes and that it would be more productive for him to study on his own. Where I don't completely agree with his logic, it is his life and I trust his decision making. For this session he brought his own material that he wanted to focus on. This time it was a reading passage that I even found to be quite difficult, and I was once again impressed by his far reach in practice and ability. The reading passage was accompanied by a set of numerous comprehension questions that we reviewed and answered together. The qu...
Comments
Post a Comment