Charlie - TS#14

Date/Time: Wednesday, June 16, 9:00 a.m.

Location: Zoom 

Topic/Skill: Reduced Pronunciations - Speaking

Feedback Provided to Tutee: Today, DoJun and I went over reduced pronunciations / reductions. I had mentioned this concept in a prior session and told him that it was something we would go over. I began the lesson by just briefly going over what reduced pronunciations are and when they are typically used. DoJun was already fairly familiar with a few of the most common examples. We then went through 5 examples and I had him guess what various reduced pronunciations could mean. I made him aware of various patterns that are commonly seen with reduced pronunciations but noted that there aren't really former rules when it comes to this concept. I also made sure that he knew that this type of spoken English is typically only used when talking casually and with people that you know well. We finished the lesson by going through various sentences that contained phrases that COULD be made into reduced pronunciations. I had DoJun identify these phrases and, together, we identified how these phrases may turn into reductions. 

Lessons about the tutoring and/or the tutee that you learned: This lesson seemed to be very helpful for DoJun. Allowing him to take control of most of the lesson allowed him to think creatively and hopefully will lead to increased retention. As we went through the lesson, I even noticed specific patterns within the reduced pronunciations that I hadn't noticed before and was able to transmit those to DoJun. Laughter makes our lessons feel much more comfortable, rewarding and effective. I saw that, as it relates to reduced pronunciations, this type of speaking is probably not something that DoJun will use in speech any time soon. However, helping him to recognize where this type of speech might be heard proved to very beneficial. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Andrew TS#16

  Date/Time: 10/1/2021    9:00 p.m. Location: Conversation over Line Topic/Skill: Reading and Verb Forms  Feedback provided to tutee: While over the months I have been talking with Tina she has improved in many different ways; However, there is one area she has consistently  struggled with, verb forms. She tends do do fine at deciding which work verb would work best in a sentence but struggles to use the correct form of said verb in the sentence. To work on this for this meeting I prepared several worksheets for her to complete. The first was similar to ones I have had her complete in the past, consisting of a number of sentences with blanks and verbs next to the blanks leaving her to decide on the correct form of the verb to use in the blank. She did well enough with the earlier questions but started to struggle later with the longer or more complex sentences. I then reviewed with her what she got right and what she got wrong. After this, I had her practi...
Read more

Andrew CP #6

Date/Time: 08/03/2021 10:00 PM Location: Conversation  over Line Topic discussed: Video games, Mahjong, The Olympics Cultural and/or linguistic topics you and your partner learned: I was excited for our conversation  this time because  it had  been a while since me and Zhewei had a chance to chat. He recently moved and started a new job so he hasn't had to much free time to talk. He filled me in on what he had been doing and was curious how I had been spending my summer vacation. After I had told him it was mostly sleeping and playing video game our conversation moved in that direction. Zhewei told me about a lot of different games I had never heard of that were all developed in Taiwan. He also told me about which video games are most popular in Taiwan right now. However; Zhewei says that the only video game he really plays is online Mahjong. Since I have never had the chance to learn Zhewei taught me how to play. He did a very good job of explaining the r...
Read more

Andrew TS #14

Date/Time: 08/07/21 10:00 AM Location: Conversation  over Line  Topic/Skill: TOEFL Writing Prep, Free Talk Feedback provided to tutee: Since I had started talking with Yenzhou in a teaching capacity and not just as friends he has expressed a great desire  to practice his English as much as he can. To this end, I had him start keeping a daily journal in English. He has done a very good job with keeping up with it and he feels it has really helped his writing  ability. This meeting however; I wanted to put his new found writing  skills to the test, so jumped straight into an opinion essay. Yenzhou did very well, he only had minimal grammatical or spelling errors and elaborated well on his topic. After the essay we decided to chat. Since Yenzhou wants to start speaking more colloquial  English he asked me to teach him some American slang. After happily obliging  he taught me some Mandarin, Taiwanese, and Japanese slang as well. Lesson(s) about tut...
Read more