TP #4 Katelyn

I had my first tutoring session with both of my tutees today. Since it was such a beautiful day, I met Eun-kyoung and Joao outside of CIES and I think it will be our new meeting place. For our first session as a group, I thought it would be fun to have a debate on a common controversial topic. I had each student pick a side of an argument and defend themselves to the other student and myself. I read them a list of topics and they chose to discuss, "If the drinking age should be lowered," and "Should foreigners be allowed to vote?" These topics brought up many differences between our three cultures and the debate morphed into more of a discussion at times.

While we were talking I used many idioms that they had never heard before, including: "That would not fly," "I'll let that slide," and "Look at us, talking up a storm!" I had to explain these phrases to my tutees - a task I was not expecting to be as difficult as it was. I eventually got them to understand these idioms by using other example sentences to explain the unusual words.

For our next session, we want to work on something more academic. Since Eun-kyoung wants to work on her reading and Joao wants to work on his speaking, we came up with a plan. We will pick a new controversial topic for next week and I will assign them at least two scholarly articles about the topic. Then when we meet we will discuss our different opinions about the articles and go over any vocabulary they did not recognize. I think this plan will work to help both of my students on the areas they want to focus on.