Austin TP2

"Merde," was the word used to describe my tutoring partner's feelings on English phonetics. We must have spent the better part of two hours working on just how to pronounce certain words in English, let alone, what they mean, or how they are used. My tutoring partner Mikael (pronounced Me Chelle) explained to me how in French, each vowel only has one possible way of pronunciation. In English their are many, with exceptions. For example, the word Apple, begins with the letter "A", however it is pronounced "Aghh" when saying apple, not "ayy". Also, we went over how sometimes the letter "I" can sound like "e", as well as "Y". We focused on phonetics first because in our speaking excercises, I was having trouble understanding his accent. With reading and writing, obviously, their is no accent, and no voice.

After the first hour focusing on pronunciation and his accent, Mikael has question regarding verb tenses  and possessive adjectives. Specifically, singular versus plural nouns coupled with their proper adjective. For example, Mikael used the sentence "I gave them their books back", but he said it "I give them theirs books back". First, I helped him differentiate "give" and "gave", past versus present tense. "What about present progressive?" he asked. Ok. "I am giving them the books back". Or future tense, which requires the modal verbs "Will, shall, etc." "I will give the books back.....in the future."

Next, we went over the possessive adjectives, or determiners. If the noun is plural, like books, the determiner does not have to be plural as well. "Mines books" would not make sense, just leave the determiner singular: "mine".

Cultural note: Mikael's favorite food is "GABBA" which is an African dish of tuna fish, and rice. It is served regularly at the restaurant "SOCOCE" in Le COTE d'Ivoire, his favorite restaurant.