Today, I had an impromptu group visit with one of my conversation partners and one of my tutoring partners at the 3p tea time. Neither of my partners had met each other before today. We enjoyed sharing many things about American, Korean and Taiwanese life.
My conversation partner is Korean. She is a newlywed, who married and moved to Tallahassee with her husband, only a month ago. She is studying to be a teacher and her husband is studying sports management. She would like to improve her listening skills. In Korea, she briefly taught the equivalent of our high school students. She currently attends level one classes.
My tutoring partner is from Taiwan. She has been here for eleven months and is currently attending level four classes. Her goals for tutoring are to improve her speaking clarity and polish her grammar. She was a practicing nurse in Taiwan for four years and is scheduled to take the Florida nursing license exam in August. We are planning during our sessions to work with the licensing exam materials to ensure as much vocabulary and comprehension skills as we can for success. She is concerned since three of her friends have already taken the exam, but did not pass. I hope to find an RN who would be willing to share pointers with this student about taking the exam.
We had a great time with the girls speaking to each other in English and covering all kinds of topics. Our conversation ran the gamut from learning about their families and mine; to all the places that I've lived; to Thanksgiving dinner and gravy; the definition of greasy versus gravy; favorite new American foods; my Taiwanese godson; the tradition of cooking meals for friends with new babies; Sesame Street and Elmo; and housecleaning my "killer dust bunnies."
We've set a schedule to meet on a regular basis, and hope to take some "field" trips out and about together.
Now, if I could just catch up my other elusive butterfly, she is supposed to be a conversation partner as well as a tutoring partner. We've texted, emailed and met briefly--I love a challenge!
Little Debbie! Thank you so much for sharing. I have some posting to catch up on and you have given me some insight for my future meetings. Thus far, I have only met with my tutoring partner once. I have met with my cp's on multiple occasions now, but I have never talked with any of them concerning their English goals(seems like a common sense question)!!! Definitely a good way to get some insight into how to structure our meetings.
ReplyDeleteAlso, concerning your TP the Taiwanese Nurse...I am a former nursing student, and though I have never taken the boards, I have a number of great contacts. I also have a lot of resource including nclex exam books (the format for the boards). Let me know if you would like me to pass it on...
Thanks, Stan! I may get with you at some point as my student has questions on aspects of the exam. If you have any contacts with nursing students that are part of an exam study group, I'd appreciate that information. Cheers!
ReplyDeleteI don't have any contacts who are part of an exam study group per se, but I do have friends who have already taken the exam. Most of my "nursing" friends are either in school, or already nurses. Nursing school is pretty difficult, so most of those who are in school are focused on the content they need to know for their class work, which also prepares them for the NCLEX.
ReplyDeleteJust had an idea...If you want to, the three of us could get together sometime, and work on some nursing specific stuff. More than anything we really need to prepare her for the structure of the test. This is material/content that should be familiar, but she may have never encountered questions like this. If I brought one of my books, and we sat together and went over some of the information/questions with her, it would not only help her prepare for her test, but it would also help her with her English. We all might learn a little something ; )
ReplyDeleteLet me know what you think : )