TP #2: Thomas’ Snowsuit, Apostrophes, and Different Strokes

September 5, 2013

              Jih-Long to me, so I’m doing my best with it. She is from Taiwan and lives with her brother, an FSU student. Her parents are currently in Shanghai on a business trip.

Today I met another of my tutees, Chih-Jung. I was planning on group tutoring, but my other tutee, Yaneli, has a TOEFL class at 3. She and I rescheduled for tomorrow. Chih-Jung generously offered for me to call her “Judy,” but I can’t get over feeling like it’s a cop-out. I want to try to say someone’s real name, even if I mangle it in the attempt. Chih-Jung sounds more like

            Chih-Jung is very self-assured and interested in English. After chatting about ourselves for a time, I asked if she would read for me in English. I brought along the children’s books I plan to use with P.J. and spread them out for her to choose. She quickly selected Thomas’ Snowsuit, a goofy story illustrated by Robert Munsch. I was only planning on asking her to read one page, but she dove right in and read the whole book. I’d estimate it to be a 2^nd grade level, and she spoke quickly but paused for punctuation. She also seemed familiar with the majority of the words. Her few pronunciation errors were with the words floor, done, Thomas’, and argued. I guess I could have asked more comprehension questions—I did ask a few, like “Who is that character? How are they feeling?” which she answered confidently. I was assured by her laughing quietly as she read. If the humor of the story is translating, I think the comprehension level is pretty high. Humor always seems to be the last thing to come in a foreign language. I recall sitting in a movie theater in Costa Rica, surrounded by laughing moviegoers at the movie Kung Fu Panda, completely bewildered. They spoke too fast for me to understand the jokes!

            After reading, I discussed the word Thomas’ with Chih-Jung. She said it simply as Thomas, and I informed her that English insists you make an awkward double s sound at the end of the word. We then practiced on the name Bess’. I reviewed how apostrophes show possession, which she was familiar with. We also discussed how one apostrophe can change the meaning of a sentence: the boy’s hat versus the boys’ hat indicates a different number of boys.

             Following the last chapter in Snow’s book on vocabulary, I mentioned the possibility of a vocabulary log to Chih-Jung. “Of course, I want to do what helps you learn the best, and everyone does learn differently….Can we try it though? Do you have a notebook?” At this, her eyes widened, and she whipped out a notebook. She opened it to a page full of English words and their Chinese translations.

            “This is from a Ted Talk I watch the other day,” she told me. I saw words like statistic and linguistic. I was duly impressed.

            “Is this for a class?”

            “No, this is at home. I listen at home.” I told her she was doing a fantastic job and the tidbit about the thousands of words English language learners need to speak English fluently. She definitely is in charge of her vocabulary learning! I want to mention to her next time that she should also write down the original sentence or phrase she found the word in, or the dictionary example if she can’t.

            I asked Chih-Jung to write me a paragraph about where she’s from and who she is. She seems to have a strong grasp of the present tense, with correct subject-verb agreement and even some compound sentences. I noticed a few errors, and I think I’ll make notes on her paper per our new writing correction symbols to discuss next time.

            I then wanted to test Chih-Jung’s grasp of other tenses. I thought out loud, “I want you to talk about the past….What did you do when you were little?”

            “Ah, we have a swimming pool at the back of (“Behind?” “Yes!”) my house. My dad and I go swimming, since I was 10 years old,” she told me. We had a fun discussion of the different swimming strokes, which I mimed and then wrote on the board. Chih-Jung studiously copied them down. She swims a lot here in Tallahassee. From our continued conversation, I surmised that Chih-Jung is familiar with the past tense but has not yet acquired it. She correctly conjugated verbs in the past tense when I gave them to her separately or wrote them on the board, even irregular ones like think and eat, but I didn’t hear her consistently speak in the past tense. I think we will practice more of that next week.

            To wrap up, I asked Chih-Jung if she had any specific questions for me. “Yes, how do you think I can speak more fluently for conversations?” she wanted to know. I told her the more English speakers she can practice with, the better! I reminded her, “You are surrounded by English speakers.”

            “No,” she responded. “Chinese at home.”

            “Yes,” I said, “but on campus, there are tons of English speakers, and in Tallahassee! Have you thought about joining a club?”

            “Can CIES students do that?” she wanted to know. I checked with Ms. Kim, and presumably they can. I warned Chih-Jung about dues (“that means money”) and encouraged her to look up FSU clubs on the internet and bring in 3 to tell me about next week.

            I enjoyed meeting with her and assured her she will have just as much to teach me as I will to teach her. “I’m not an expert,” I reminded her. “I’m still learning to teach English, and I don’t know the rules to speak it—I just do it. I have to learn the rules!”

            She laughed. “Yeah, like if I teach Chinese! I don’t know the rules; I just speak!”