Rick Shemanski TP#1

For my first tutoring session I met with Anton Benzin. I met Anton at the CIES building and we walked over to atomic coffee. At first I asked Anton where he was from and what he was studying. I learned that Anton is from Russia and has a Master’s degree in tele-communications and data sharing. I asked Anton what he thought of the situation in Ukraine. In response to this question Anton spoke with great knowledge and motivation. Before Anton was responding in simple sentences but now Anton was forming arguments and supporting them with reasoning.  After some small talk we moved into some pronunciation practice. In his e-mail, Anton stated that he wanted to practice his pronunciation –er, -th, and the meaning of some common idioms. 

First I had Anton read a list of common words that had –er endings. Anton did very well and seemed more advanced in his language skills than I prepared for. Next session I will prepare with more advanced words. We continued to practice pronunciation for another 15 minutes, I corrected Anton’s speech when he made a mistake but overall Anton had strong speech skills. Next we went over commonly used idioms. I assembled a list of 50 commonly used idioms, and asked Anton to tell me what he thought they meant. I would say the idiom and then use it in a sentence. Anton did not know what a majority of these idioms meant but he copied down 10 idioms and used them in a sentence of his own.

We finished up our session with another informal talk about Tallahassee and college life in general. We exchanged contact information and decided on meeting times for next week. For next session I plan to use more challenging and advanced material. For speaking practice, I will design 10 questions:  5 informal and 5 formal. Anton will then have to respond to the question in 15 seconds or less. We will also learn 10 more idioms and I will provide some sentences to help him remember and understand the idioms.