Matthew TS #10

Tutee: Dojun
Date: 9/27/15 9:30-10:30 PM
For this session, I was expecting Dojun to present his homework from the previous session but he forgot due to the Korean Thanksgiving Day. Instead, I asked him to explain this day to me in a very conversational fashion. His speech rate was excellent! I don't think he thought I was testing him or judging him on his speaking. This made him more confident, which I think minimized his pauses. I was very happy since this is one of his main struggling areas while speaking. I complimented on this to let him know he did very well. After I learned about the Korean Thanksgiving Day and Korean family culture, I gave him a reading assignment on Thomas Edison. Before I asked him to start reading, I asked him if he knew who Thomas Edison was. He said "yes, that he was involved in electricity." I asked him if he knew any famous inventions and he was unsure. I then told him he invented the light bulb. He seemed confused, so I asked him if he uses light bulbs in his lamps. He became more familiar and understood what I meant then. This passage was more technical than other reading passages that I assigned him, so I did not expect him to understand every word. I told him to focus on the main points of the passage and the character of Thomas Edison himself. He did a very good job on objective facts about Thomas Edison but failed to produce accurate descriptions about Thomas Edison's personality. I think this exercise may have been a difficult read but the speaking exercise afterwords seemed appropriate. I think I will focus on more on character description vocabulary next week.