Allison TP - 1

Today I met with XinWen for lunch. Since we only had an hour to spare including travel time to and from the restaurant, I decided that Panera bread would be a good location. On the short drive from CIES, XinWen and I got to know each other a little bit better. I explained that I am working with a placement company for TEFL jobs in China and introduced her to the term "headhunting firm". Perhaps this was a bit advanced and not very common, but it could be useful down the road when she is looking for jobs. During the drive, I learned that XinWen mostly prefers to cook at home because she often does not understand menu items or how to order food. Plus, she was not too thrilled with American cuisine. Thankfully, the food at Panera was pleasing to her palate. At first she seemed a little overwhelmed by all of the potential food choices. However, once I explained that she could do a combination of soup, sandwich or salad. She was quickly able to narrow down her options to wanting chicken noodle soup and a sandwich. (She did have me pick the sandwich, which she ended up enjoying.)

After conquering the mini lesson on how to order food, I began to assess her speaking ability and find out what her goals are for our tutoring sessions. She is in Group 3 for her Speaking and Writing classes. However, she is in Group 2 for Listening, Grammar, and Reading (She said she wasn't sure but she thought it was these levels at least.) For tutoring, she said she hopes to focus on verbs in general but also their conjugations. This makes a lot of sense to me considering they do not conjugate verbs in her native Mandarin language. Grammar seems to be her hardest subject. I am excited to hear this because I believe that grammar is one of my strong points. She said that she also hopes to practice her pronunciation and learn some new vocabulary that she'd use in her daily life. At this point, I asked her if she knew the words for the parts of my salad. I proceeded to teach her about lettuce and croutons. Explaining the purpose of a crouton was a bit difficult because I then had to explain the concept of toasting bread. She had also not learned the verb to toast yet (and also, naturally toaster). For our next tutoring session, I think it may be helpful to bring her to my apartment and have her identify what objects she knows and also point out some new ones (including food items in the fridge) that she might not have learned yet. I think that this idea has the potential to greatly improve her daily life vocabulary. The conversation flows easily. Out of personal curiosity, we discussed different Chinese dialects. At this point, I had to speak some Mandarin for her to understand what I was asking her about. We were able to quickly move back to speaking English though and I taught her the word "dialect".

Moving the conversation back to her motivations, I asked her what some of her hobbies are. Like me, she enjoys singing and dancing. When I suggested that we incorporate music into our tutoring, she agreed that this method of learning could be very helpful for her. At the end of our meeting, I was especially happy because XinWen told me that she can tell that she will enjoy my tutoring methods very much due to my dynamism (my word, not hers of course). She explained that in the past her tutoring sessions have been very strict and all about books, but she prefers to learn in different ways. It just so happens that I hope to teach in different ways. Overall, I think this was a perfect match for a tutoring partner (and CP too) and I can't wait to teach her more!