Jennifer_TP1

Today was my first tutoring session! My tutee is Yuki Nokatsuka, a Japanese student at CIES. I started off our session showing pictures of my family and my life. Yuki, a very energetic speaker, would chime in and talk about his family and interests as well. We both discovered we really like Star Wars. I asked him about his family, his studies, and his major at his Japanese university. He then filled out a Language Comfort Survey, a resource I got from the Literacy Volunteers of Leon County tutor guide, to help me understand how he felt about his English skills. While he was filling that out, I looked over some tests he had taken so I could better understand his current writing skill. I asked about his skills in English, and he stated that he loves speaking and reading, but is weaker at writing, listening, and vocabulary. He also stated that he forgets to use articles and prepositions in writing, which was a grammar terminology refresher for me! He also described that listening to the radio and natural native English conversations are particularly difficult for him. I described how we could work on listening examples during our sessions. I then asked him about what English goals he wanted to achieve while he was here for the next two months. He described how he is majoring in Sports Marketing and wants to work in America as a sports marketer. I suggested that I could bring practice materials related to sports so that he could be better equipped for his future job, while still learning valuable English skills. Yuki seemed very excited about that! We then worked on sentence structure and writing and feedback from one of his tests. Overall, I am very excited to be working with Yuki – he seems very self-motivated and willing to learn!