Jennifer_TP10

This morning I met with Youyoung, the Korean mother I tutor at the library. I wasn't able to meet with her last week since she couldn't get a ride to the library and when we rescheduled I was sick, so this was our first time meeting after a week and a half! I decided to work on reading since we had focused exculsively on listening and speaking so far. I prepared two reading exercises that were similar to what would appear on the TOEFL, since she will take the test in late August. I first had her skim through the passage for three minutes and try to describe what the passage was about. Then I had her read the questions and answers so she would know what to look for in the passage. Then I gave her fifteen minutes to actually read the passage and answer the questions. Youyoung got nine out of ten questions correct, a huge improvement from the 50% from the practice TOEFL! The next artcile was slightly harder and talked about psychometric tests and interviewing. I had her guess what psychometric testing was, which she guessed was a mental disease. Then I asked her how that could relate to interviewing and she immediately understood what psychometric testing was. I again had her skim the passage for three minutes and try to exaplin the main points, read the questions, and then read the passage and answer the questions. She got eight out of questions correct - still a big improvement from the practice TOEFL! I think reading the questions first to try to get the keywords and main points really helps her look for the correct answer and understand the reading better. At the end of our session, I asked her if she knew the Tallahassee Baptist Korean Church since I was thinking about doing my Cultural Immersion Project there (I noticed she wears a ring with a cross on it). She stated a freind of hers goes there, but she herself is actually Roman Catholic and goes to a Korean Catholic Church in town. It was very cool learning about her and her religion. Overall there was some great progress at our session today!