Monday, November 25, 2013

Bobby - TP_child 6

Jun and I had out last session on Friday. His mother told him that he had to be especially attentive this time, and that's exactly how he was for the whole tutoring session. As usual, Jun had a book that he had to read for school. We deviated from the "Magic Tree House" series in favor of a chapter book called "Miss Mary is Scary," about a 2nd grade class whose substitute teacher is apparently a vampire. We read through the book, pausing here and there to talk about vocabulary. We also talked a bit about American slang and British slang (Miss Mary was from England). I explained words such as "y'know" and "bloody" and "sup." These were all foreign to Jun. I'd also like to take a moment and talk about how the book was written...in my opinion, the writing style did not seem appropriate for children. The author had characters blatantly insulting other characters (the main character kept saying that people "looked weird" and retorted with "so is your face!" at times) and one character even described a microscope falling on a teacher's head. Very odd. I also taught Jun the importance of italics while reading, and how it can change the meaning of a sentence. One thing that Jun had trouble with was pronunciation of "z". There was a character named Zack, but Jun kept calling him "Jack". I think this problem could be easily solved with an exercise in minimal pairs. Overall, I think I have learned a lot working with Jun. I think I like working with kids more than adults just because I love to see how their abilities grow. Jun tried to give me one of his toys at the end of our session, I think to thank me for working with him. I respectfully declined because I didn't want to take one of his precious toys, but I appreciated the gesture! :)

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