TP #6 Dana

     Starbucks was once again the location for our tutoring session. Takuya had apparently been partying it up over the weekend, but had decided to come out despite his hangover. I was impressed. I might have cancelled if I had been him.

      During this meeting we worked on intonation and word stress. I wrote out the same sentence a bunch of times, underlining one specific word in each new sentence. The first sentence lacked an underlined word. For example, “He isn’t flying to Paris tomorrow.” Takuya read the first sentence as it was written. It sounded flat and didn’t connotate anything other than what was stated. I asked him to read the second sentence, making sure to emphasize the underlined word. The second sentence read as, “He isn’t flying to Paris tomorrow.”

      “What’s different about the second sentence compared to the first?” I asked. He didn’t know. He couldn’t hear it. So I read the sentence to him so he could hear it from the point of native speaker.

      “You’re saying that he isn’t flying to Paris tomorrow. Maybe it’s someone else?” He got it.

      We went over the rest of the sentences, emphasizing the underlined words, and I asked comprehension questions. After completing the “Flying to Paris,” exercise, I had Taku work on two more sentences with varying underlined words. He did well, however by the time our hour was up, he was ready to head back home and rest his poor aching head. Hangovers will do that to you.