Zeb TP#2

      Tuesday afternoon (the ninth) I met with Haneul Chae for our first tutoring session. She is from South Korea, and has a very good grasp of English grammar and good vocabulary; her main weakness is word pronunciation and intonation, and she also has some weakness in reading comprehension. The first 15-20 minutes were mainly spent in getting acquainted and discussing various aspects of our own language learning and cultural experiences.

After discerning what Haneul's main weaknesses are I determined that it would be helpful for her to have a brief overview of some basic phonics (mainly focusing on vowel sounds and the fry/fly syndrome). I pulled some diagrams and illustrations of the long/short vowel sounds out of the recesses of my memory, and after dusting them off a bit we went over them with her repeating the sounds after me. There were several vowel sounds in particular that she was struggling with, and I noticed with interest that some of them were sounds that L1 Spanish speakers would struggle with. We did this for around 10 minutes.

For the remainder of our meeting I had Haneul read aloud various short stories and news articles that she had in her folder. As she came across words that were difficult for her to pronounce we would stop and work on it until she could pronounce it well a few times, and then she would continue reading. After going over each short story or article and focusing on pronunciation I would quiz her about the content of the story in order to gauge her comprehension, and then I explained the meaning of any words, terms or cultural expressions that weren't clear to her. I wondered if I shouldn't be focusing on comprehension first and pronunciation second, but at her level it seemed more natural to deal with the errors as they came and then step back and look at the broad picture.

As we finished up the meeting I mentioned a few things that I would try to have planned for the next session that I thought would be helpful, and we agreed to meet at the same time next week. I left feeling that we both had enjoyed the meeting and found it to be helpful in addressing our individual needs (hers as an English student and mine as a prospective teacher).

One thing that I pointed out to her is that her aspiration to speak English just like a native speaker may be more appropriate to have as a very long range goal, instead of her immediate goal. I mentioned various L2 Spanish speakers that I know who have lived in Spanish speaking countries for decades, and while they are totally fluent and very proficient in the language, it is still readily apparent that they are not native speakers. I assured her that as long as her speech and use of English is accurate with good pronunciation and intonation she need not be ashamed of any lingering accent that may persist.