Ning TP#3

On 9/9/2013, Monday, I met with Ooki for the second time. Last time I met him, it seemed that he was lacking in terms of transitional word usage, so I made that a point in the tutoring session for the day. In preparation for the lesson, I looked at the website http://www.studygs.net/wrtstr6.htm and reviewed a little bit. When our tutoring session started, I asked Ooki what he thought usage of transitional words is for, to which he replied,”… to make essay smoother.” This shows that he understands the concept of transition words, but is unfamiliar with using the words.

In his essay about Hiroshima and Kure, we could only count to two in terms of how many times he used transitional words. To fix this problem, we went back and edited the paper (which had already been turned in and graded). Since the paper was about the similarities and differences between Hiroshima and Kure, we used some contrast and comparison words, such as on the other hand, similarly, and in contrast. Of course, prior to the editing, I gave him example sentences to work from. For example, using on the other hand and similarly, I said, “In Japan, there are mostly only Japanese people. On the other hand, in America, there are many people that come from all sorts of cultures. Similarly, Malaysia also has many people that come from different cultures.” I asked if he understood what that meant. To gauge whether or not he understood the example sentences from listening, I wrote down the sentences after asking him. During conversation, I introduced the phrase melting pot since America and Malaysia was introduced in conversation in the context of a cultural melting pot.

For the most part, Ooki seems to understand the concept of these words relatively quickly. However, what he makes up in understanding a concept, he lacks in knowledge. For example, it was brought up that he did not know what a clause was, or the differences between the (definite and indefinite) articles. As time ran out, I told him that next tutoring session, I would focus on these grammar points.