Jennifer_TP12

Today I met with Youyoung at the Leon County Library. I had gotten an email from her the night before saying that she had "big news" about her and her family. It turns out she is moving back to South Korea ASAP for two years! Her husband got a job right outside of Seoul at a University. Youyoung told me that her family was probably going to move back at some point, but neither of us knew it would be so soon! I was very happy for her, but sad I wouldn't get to see her anymore! We will still have a meeting this Saturday and next week, but her husband's job starts in September, so they have to move fast! It is a very interesting situation with her youngest daughter though - Youyoung has two daughters (one in Kindergarten who can speak English very well but wasn't born in the USA, and a two-year old). The two-year old was born here, but when she is 18 years old she will probably need to chose if she wants to live in South Korea or the USA since she has dual citizenship. Youyoung stated she still wanted to work on the TOEFL, because there many jobs in South Korea that require a certain TOEFL score because you will sometimes work with foreigners. I was sad to hear she was leaving, but very excited for her. I am hoping to stay in contact here and there with her! We ended up working on the writing section of the TOEFL, where you have to read a passage, listen to a lecture contradicting it, and then write about the differences between the two. I had her do a practice test of it before, and her language and points were very clear, but she only got halfway through the essay and didn't write too much. I reinforced the Intro-Body-Conclusion style of American writing. I also stated that the best way to think of writing is in "Threes". We generally like three main points, about three sentences per paragraph, and three paragraphs in the body. I also went over how to make an outline and told her to jot down her simplified main ideas for each paragraph. This helped a lot as she usually didn't make an outline. The outline helped and then I timed her for 20 minutes as is the case on the TOEFL. I stopped her in the first five minutes though because I noticed she kept rewriting her first paragraph. Turns out she was trying to get every little grammar detail correct before she moved on to the next paragraph, which made it clear to me that this is why she couldn't finish her essay before. I told her to emphasize the "message" first like we discussed in class, and then go back and fix her grammar if there was time. This helped significantly and she managed to finish all the essay, and most of her ideas were clear. Before she was in the 2-3 range according to the ibTOEFL rubric, but now she's moving up more to the 3-4 range. I was very proud of her. I explained why and how she improved, and we went over any grammar corrections. I will miss Youyoung, but at least I'll get to see her two or three more times! :)