Katelyn TP #1

My first Tutoring Session with Eun-kyoung

I met Eun-kyoung today at Starbucks for our first meeting. We spent this session getting to know each other's backgrounds and what she wanted to focus her tutoring sessions on. Eun-kyoung is from South Korea in a city outside of Busan. She was surprised to find out that I am interested in going to Busan myself to teach English. She has only been in America for two weeks and has only seen Tallahassee. I told her that she should take some trips to see some other cities in America. We discussed my hometown, Orlando, and I encouraged her to check out Disney World since she has never been to a theme park.

Eun-kyoung plans on moving back to South Korea to teach English and move forward in her career. She has studied mechanical engineering and theology and has taught English at a South Korean Hagwon for 3 years. Because of this she is more comfortable with grammar. In our sessions she wants to focus primarily on reading and vocabulary. She told me that the most difficult activities she has to complete in class are the reading passages. Eun-kyoung has trouble fully comprehending the passages in the short amount of time allotted to reading in the classroom. We decided that a good activity for our sessions would be to have her read over articles and then discuss what she understood and did not understand. We will also focus on comprehension by having Eun-kyoung both talk and write about the articles she has read. Eun-kyoung also requested that I find an entertaining English novel for us to read together. She would like to read on her own then discuss the story in our sessions. Does anyone have any book recommendations? She has already read, The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Hunger Games series. She is looking for something closer to the Hunger Games since it is just for fun (but not Harry Potter).

Our first meeting was very enjoyable and I believe we will work well together.