Ted Hong TP10

On Wednesday, I gathered the troops Butsawan and Rose for a tutoring session.

Butsawan had just gotten a Merriam-Webster Dictionary app and we all had a lot of fun messing around on it. It had the option for a vocal input so you could just say the word and it'd bring up the word and definition. I have to say, it is certainly praiseworthy how diligent these two work at pronunciation. I have a lot of respect for them. More so because I can see how hard they're working and how they're progressing.

The two of them had trouble saying some words and wanted to test me if I could discern what they were saying. The dictionary couldn't determine what they were saying sometimes, but I assured them that this problem exists with native English speakers, as well. The hardware's still in development. Honestly though, this would be a nice little teaching aid during lectures. I know sometimes, I'm stumped when I have to articulate an explanation and this is like... BOOM! THUR' IT BE! Awesome.

One of the words I didn't pick up on was "staggering" until Butsawan acted it out. Rose tested me with "glow", which I understood just fine. The concern was that she added an extra throat emphasis on her "guh" sounds. Something I've tried to help her overcome but to no avail. Kind of hard to break that habit.

I apologized and told them I was a little under the weather. They weren't familiar with it but after my explanation, they ended up liking it, or were maybe even familiar with it. Worked on a couple other phrasal type deals like "figure it out this problem". [Figure out this problem/figure this problem out/figure it out].

Just some notes I took down in remembering to address for future sessions: persian/person/per/purse/purr, surfer/sure/sir/, the subtle "s" sound, stress sounds on dessert/desert.