Sunday I met with Jeffrey for our fifth lesson. Mr. Kang spoke with me before to tell me that they would be traveling for a while soon, and that this might be our last lesson. I explained that I since I would be continuing TEFL in the summer, I would be glad to keep Jeffrey as a tutee. He said he would talk to his wife and get back to me; I got an email from Mrs. Kang the next day saying that they are very happy with Jeffrey's improvement and would be glad to continue our lessons into the summer. It felt great to have my work appreciated, and I'm grateful to the Kangs for this opportunity.
Jeffrey and I didn't do anything out of the ordinary this lesson - he came to the table with like 20 superhero books picked out, and we picked two out of the pile and read them together. Jeffrey's reading skills have improved fantastically since our first meeting. He insisted reading the books himself, without any help, and scolded me when I tried to chime in. I did end up helping him, but he was reading relatively challenging books on his own with maybe 80% fluency. It was really cool to see this growth in him.
To wrap up, Jeffrey and I did some worksheets again reinforcing vowel sounds. Surprisingly it was easy to keep him on task this time. He pronounced the words well, distinguishing between long and short u's with ease. However Jeffrey was still having trouble with the underlying rule: in practice he could sound the vowels fine, but he had difficulty explaining why. For example, when a short word ends with e, typically the preceding vowel is long, and trying to impress this on Jeffrey was near impossible. This problem surfaced with the word cute, which he pronounced 'cut.' Regardless for the most part Jeffrey makes these phonetic distinctions unconsciously, and what's important here is automaticity, not strict knowledge of grammar rules. I'm sure before long Jeffrey will recognize these patterns in a more concrete way.
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