Jennifer_TP9

Today I met with my awesome Japanese tutoring partner Yuki! We started the lesson by going over a paper he wrote that his teacher graded (it wasn't a paper that was required to be corrected by the student). At first it seemed like Yuki just wanted me to correct it, but I knew that wouldn't be helpful to understanding his errors, so I had him look at what the teacher said was incorrect, and infer the correct answer. The essay was about the similarity and differences between American football and Rugby, and Yuki made some very good points in his essay. He even taught me a little about how you would say some of the terms in Japanese which was very fun! He did a great job of recognizing his errors. Mostly he forgets prepositions and articles in his writing but doesn't realize it until after someone points it out. To take a break from all the writing and grammar, we turned to some listening exercises. I had Yuki answer aloud a pre-lesson question before each listening exercise, which was great practice for speaking with little time to think. Then, we read over the questions and listened to three exercises. I chose the easiest exercise first, and Yuki got 100% and said it wasn't hard. When I moved to the medium level, however, Yuki got a 20%, but was able to recognize his errors. Yuki thinks listening is his weakest skill after writing, so it seems he's in between levels right now! Yuki and I also went over some vocabulary words he wasn't familiar with that the listening questions asked, such as describe, infer, purchased etc. At the end of the lesson. I gave him a handout where he had to fill in the correct article for ten different sentences. Yuki got over half correct, and was able to recognize the correct answer once I gave him the paper back graded. I think I will try to focus my next session with him on articles and prepositions, because that seemed to help him a lot during the lesson. I always enjoy tutoring Yuki because he tries very hard. He even said I was the best tutor he's had so far, which really made my day! :)