March 21
I met In-hwa in the common room at CIES in the afternoon. It was a beautiful day to be outside so we went out to the courtyard to become acquainted with one another and to begin our tutoring. In-hwa has studied English for many years in Korea, but because of the heavy focus on reading and writing competency and the lack of focus on listening and speaking in the Korean approach to English education, she finds it very difficult to link ideas together fluidly and does not usually think in English; instead, she usually thinks in Korean and then translates what she wants to say into English. In-hwa also communicated to me that she often has great difficulty pronouncing words correctly and wants to work on producing better English sounds. After doing a bit of evaluation orally, I had In-hwa write for 10 minutes about her trip to New York that she took for spring break so that I could see where her errors were and how difficult it was for her to generate written language quickly. For our next meeting we will work on minimal pair pronunciation drills, and work to prepare arguments for debate topics that will be used in her speaking exam next week.
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