Ning TP#0

Friday before last,  August 30th, I met with my children tutees. At first, I thought that I was only meeting the father of the children. However, it turned out that he interpreted the e-mail as the first tutoring session. Instead of only tutoring 2 children, he asked if I could include one more which I agreed to.

My original two included Sally and Rayna. Sally is an 11 years old who arrived in States from South Korea only 3 years ago. Rayna is 12 years old and came about the same time as Sally. The two go to different middle schools, but are both in 6th grade. Jason, the shy, but excitable little brother of Sally, is 9 years old who is in 3rd grade.

As I was not prepared in the slightest, I took out my notebook and started to make conversation so I could gauge where their English levels were at. To my surprise, none of the three had a heavy accent, nor could I not understand any of their words clearly. Almost all of their grammar that was spoken were not misused, and if there was a problem, they'd correct it right away. I began the conversation asking for the origin of their names. Jason told me that his Korean name was J__ S_n (I apologize as I do not speak Korean, so when he said his name, it was too fast for me to catch the first time). Since it started with a "j" sound, and it sounded similar to his Korean name, he chose Jason. When I asked which he preferred to be called (I believe that being called your original name is very important since that is the one you're used to, as well as what your parents wanted to call you), he wanted to respond that he wanted me to call him by his Korean name. Before he could, however, his sister immediately interjected by responding for him saying "Jason."

My original intent was to lower their affective filters in the case that it was more comfortable to be called their original names. However, I assume that as they are supposed to be immersed in an English speaking environment, the parents, or the children themselves, wanted them to be called by their English names. 

The biggest part of the evaluation was explaining the origin of my name, as my name consists of a story about my family, Chinese traditions, and Anglicization of my name. It seemed that these children understood all of the points of my story.

Before moving on to the next task, I asked Sally if they had a previous tutor, and if so, what did he or she do. This was to get a better understanding of what these children have been working on. To my surprise, the answer was playing "Apples to Apples," a group card game. This game would be a very good way to improve vocabulary.

Afterwards, we each wrote down questions to be asked, which include, but not limited to:

"What is your favorite color?"
"What is your favorite animal?"
"What is your favorite book?"
"What is your hobby?"
"Who is the person that you look up to?"

Again, these questions were answered clearly. Of course, being children, they had enjoyment from filling in the blanks for each other, but at the end of the day, it seemed that each of the three had a good command on the English language.

Previously, I did not want to write this as a Tutor Partner session because there was no tutoring involved at all. However, I believe that this would be a good preface for future tutoring sessions with these children.