TP_child - Session 1

I had my first meeting with little Jun on Sunday night. I was very nervous beforehand because I've never really done anything like this before. He is a really sweet kid though! He is very easy to work with, despite being a little unfocused at times (but weren't we all at that age?). To prepare for our meeting, I made up some worksheets for Jun to work through so that I could better evaluate his skills with the English language. The first consisted of fairly simple questions that I asked him to answer in complete sentences. He wrote one-word answers to most of the questions, however, upon asking him to explain his answers through speech, he was able to give much more adequate responses. He is lively and eager to learn, so I think he was happy to talk to me about his answers.

The second worksheet I made consisted of a paragraph in which I made twelve deliberate mistakes; some mistakes were spelling errors, others were grammar errors, and so one. I had him read through each sentence to see if he could spot the mistake right off the bat. For some, he was able to spot it right away (ex. he knew that "much amazing things" should be changed to either "a lot of amazing things" or "many amazing things" and that the speaker in the paragraph "hate[s] grapes" and doesn't "hate grape"). Others were more difficult for him (ex. the correct spelling of "restaurant" and he difference between "desert" and "dessert"). I helped him with only a few of the solutions, but he was able to figure most of them out for himself over time. I was very pleased with this! For those that he didn't know, I made sure to explain them to the best of my ability, as you can see in the picture below.

These worksheets took up about half of our time. I had two more activities for us to do. One involved him reading through a small book with many silly pictures called "The Meaning of Life" which, in retrospect, was much too advanced for him. The other activity was a quick spelling quiz. Instead, he had a book of his own on which he had a test in school the following day. He read it to me, stopping to ask questions here and there, or stopping because I asked him a comprehension question on that particular page. He seemed to understand the content pretty well, but had some trouble understanding some of the terms (ex. I had to explain what "vertical" meant; I also explained "horizontal"). His mom then showed up and ended our session. She is very excited that Jun will have two tutors (as Emily is also working with him). I am looking forward to working with him more!