Kersten TS #15

On Tuesday, March 7, at 4:30-5:30pm I met up met with my adult tutee Xiaoyu in Dirac library. She told me she has to lead a discussion in her class because her teacher is having every one of her students lead a discussion on different topics. Xiaoyu’s topic is medical marijuana. She didn’t know how to present her discussion so I gave her a general outline she could use. She already had her own outline, so I just gave her pointers on where to go next. The outline we worked out together was to first introduce the topic of medical marijuana and define it. Then to give more background information about it, such as how marijuana is grown and how long it has been used medicinally. Then she would say the advantages and disadvantages associated with medical marijuana, and based on the information she gives, then hold a class discussion on whether the use of medical marijuana should be allowed or not. Finally, based on the class’ overall opinion on the topic, she will come to a conclusion.

Kersten TS #14

On Tuesday, March 7, at 3:20-4:20pm I met up met with my adult tutee Xiaoyu in Dirac library. She told me she advanced to the level 4 reading class which I think is super impressive! I congratulated her on her accomplishment. Because she is now in the level 4 class, the reading material she has is a lot more difficult in my opinion. The article she was assigned has to do with trilingual people learning a new language. A lot of the vocab I thought was really advanced, but Xiaoyu seemed to understand most of it and only had a few questions about vocab. She also had a worksheet on the phrase “when was the last time you…” She has a question regarding whether or not you always have to use simple past tense after the word “when” I told her no, that is not always the case because the word “when” can be used in any context and isn’t just exclusive to the past tense. We then took a break for ten minutes before starting the next session.

Jack Buck TS#15

I met with my adult tutee, Claudia at 3pm on Thursday, March 9th at CIES. Claudia didn't have any homework, since it was right before spring break, so we worked on speaking exercises. I would ask her questions, and she would respond using complete sentences. As this was our last session, we also talked for a little bit. She told me she was heading down to Miami to stay with her Brother for spring break, and I told her about my plans to go on a cruise.

Jack Buck CP#6

I met with Xueying Liu today for a quick lunch at the Oglesby Union. Xueying said she had a lot of midterms to study for, and so we could only meet for a little bit. I told Xueying about my plans to get my Master's degree at Tianjin University, and so we talked about Tianjin and how different it is from Beijing and where she is from, Harbin. She told me that the dialect in Tianjin is really different than Beijing and the dialect that putonghua is based on. She also told me what to expect when it comes to weather and climate.

Jack Buck TS#14

I met with PJ on Monday, February 27th at 6:30pm. In this session, we continued reading the book, Hatchet. We're trying to finish the book before the end of our tutoring sessions, so we got through three chapters. Throughout, I checked his comprehension by asking comprehension based questions. I also had PJ summarize the story up until the point that we had read and he managed to include all the relevant plot details.

Sabrina CP#6

I met with my conversation partner Eunyoung at food truck Thursday after the last TEFL class (02/23/2017). Most of the people in class came, and a few others also brought their conversation partners (Eunyoung also brought one of her Korean friends, her name was Zoe!) We all had fun trying the different foods and having some beers. Eunyoung, Zoe, and I went around looking at the different shops and talking about the cool handmade trinkets we found (we didn't buy any because they were too expensive). It was a really great group conversation and I had a great time.

Sabrina CP#5

I went to the conversation partner soiree at Bob's house for my fifth conversation partner meeting. My own conversation partner couldn't make it, but I had fun chatting with everyone else's partners! I met a Chinese girl named Irene, and we chatted about different types of food and about the differences between Chinese/Japanese/Korean language. We all played some games together as well--we played charades for a while and some of the conversations revolved around our game. It was really fun!