I met my second tutee, Koo, on Sunday afternoon in the Strozier library. Koo is from South Korea, and very energetic. For our tutoring session, Koo brought a speech she'd written for a presentation. Her topic was "Celebrity Pets." Koo is, also, quite hilarious. Despite a lot of errors with articles, possession agreements, and syntax, she was able to put together an engaging presentation about something I otherwise don't think about.
I was intimidated at the idea of going through all of her errors, as they appeared to me to be interlocked and layered. I asked her to underline all of the nouns and pronouns, circle the verbs, and draw boxes around things that celebrities say in her speech. After she completed this, we went over each noun to check if the proper article was used. She was generally able to figure this out once we explicitly decided which form of the noun to use. We addressed each verb used and she re-assessed the tense of each. I explained to her that when someone else speaks in her speech, unless she is giving a summary of what they say accompanied by their name, she needs to use quotations on both sides.
We went over a bit of pronunciation, which I'm not sure will stick after a single session. She was receptive to watching me model the words for her, and explain where to place the tongue, drop the jaw, or place emphasis on letters for different words. I got some weird looks after we repeated the word "chimpanzee" five or so times, but it was a cornerstone of her speech and I know she will pronounce the "z" and long "e" sounds like a champ when the time comes. Next time we do pronunciation practice, I'll book us a study room.
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