Yesterday I met with Toshie for our first meeting as conversation partners. Prior to meeting up we had added each other on Facebook and exchanged a few messages. Toshie had asked if she could bring her daughter and I was more than happy to have her come. We met at Atomic Coffee on Tennessee St. and both showed up about 20 minutes early.
Because this was our first meeting I mostly tried to ask a lot of questions about her strengths and weaknesses and her previous experiences learning English. She seemed to have studied quite a bit of English literature while in Japan but admitted that she needed to practice her conversational English the most. I recommended that she go to the movies with her daughter and we laughed over the recent Monsters Inc University movie, which we both loved.
Toshie expressed a lot of concern over mastering English so she could advance academically. She wants to get her masters' in International Affairs, which is conveniently my major. Toshie told me about how she would like to teach in Japan and tried to encourage me to consider teaching there as well. She said that most English teachers in Japan are not native speakers. I have heard nothing but wonderful things about Japan and have learned a bit about their pop culture so we were able to make small talk over that as well.
Toshie and I spoke for a while over what we could work on for our next meeting which we planned for Friday. She was very honest with what she was most concerned about which will help me better prepare for our next meeting. I asked her to bring some of her homework for us to work on for next time and told her I will try to find some practice tools to bring in as well.
From my understanding Toshie's grammar seems to be excellent but she wants to focus mostly on becoming more fluent. She was very sweet and so appreciative of my time and seems to be the perfect student.
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