Stan_TP8

Friday, 7/27 (yes...I'm a bit behind), I met with Soufiane for a tutoring session. The plan was to work on lesson that combines speaking, listening, reading, and writing. My intention was to select a reading material that was appropriate for his level, have him read it aloud, and write down some details about the passage without referring to the text. Then I would read it aloud to him(so he could hear the difference and perhaps would have a better level of comprehension when he didn't have to focus on reading), and again,  have him write down a few details. Then we would do this again with another passage, except I would have him read a section, then I would read the following section, and again he would write down details. Then we would switch, I read the section he read, he reads the one I read. Upon arrival to our meeting place, the CIES lounge, I had a change of plans...

When I arrived, Yuki and Soufiane had just begun watching "Howl's Moving Castle," an awesome movie written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli. This movie is made stylistically in Japanese animation fashion, and was intended for both American and Japanese audiences. Yuki had set it up to play audio English, with English subtitles. I told Soufiane, "I had a plan for the day, but if you are interested in watching this movie, we can use this for the lesson." He replied, "yeah man, it's cool. Whatever ever you want to do;" an open-minded optimistic response that I would expect from Soufiane. So I told him to take notes on the movie so that he can tell me what is taking place in the film. When we finish watching the film I will have some comprehension questions for him. Through out the film, Soufiane was the one with the questions. He is very inquisitive, so if there was a part he did not understand, or a phrase he was unfamiliar with, he would ask me. At one point he asked why the subtitles don't match with the spoken words. I was hoping he would notice this. I explained that the reason for this is, that the spoken word is the dialect that was intended for the American English speaking audience, where as the subtitles are a more direct translation of the Japanese script that was intended for the Japanese audience.

We followed the film with 20 comprehension questions. Some of them were a bit advanced for his understanding and required some explanation. When we finished the lesson, I asked that he write a summary of the film over the weekend so we could go over it during another session.