Ted Hong - TP2

On Thursday, May 10, I met with both Nok and Rose to go over some speech and listening exercises. I wanted to use a more visual approach, but I couldn't procure a room to do that at the time. I did bring a book of short stories which proved to be very effective.

The two seem to like to work together in the tutoring sessions but it feels like the sessions aren't quite effective. I'm not certain that I'm dedicating enough time and help to either of them. I'm trying to figure out if I can do more of interactive/partner exercises or if I should split the sessions up in a normal fashion and center the focus on one student while allowing the other to audit/participate. Decisions, decisions.

In any case, in helping Rose, she showed me a writing exercise that she did in class and asked to specify why we don't write "two pieces of breads" instead of "two pieces of bread". I explained as best I could but I couldn't offer the definitive rule as to why it is so. I got my point across and she seemed to understand it but I realized now upon thinking about it, I could have come up with a far better explanation. Plural measure word of an object...

Yeah. I lied. I don't know how to explain it. Two sheets of paper, two slices of bread... but then there's two stacks of cups, two types of machines... If anyone can offer some assistance on this matter, that would be fantastic. Any sort of rationalization for this form eludes me. I just bought 2 grammar books today so maybe I'll be able to figure out an explanation some time soon and report back.

Rose also told me that she had trouble being understood on the phone as well as understanding people, like when she has to spell her name out. I explained to her that the phone connection has a lot to do with it. Sometimes it comes out muffled, even if not, people still have trouble discerning if you said "Ed" instead of "Ted" and other similar sounding letters (B, C, D, E, G, T... etc). So I thought I might introduce her to something like the NATO phonetic alphabet (like A=Alpha, B=Beta, C=Charlie) but with more everyday items (apple, bike, car) instead.

I had the two of them read several passages aloud from my book and we covered some vocabulary they had trouble with. Their reading ability is not bad at all, while there was a bit of some word slip ups (substituting different words) they were pretty accurate in speaking.

A couple of words we worked on were suspicious, bracelets, gusto, oddly.

Other than that, it was a rather straightforward tutoring session.