Since I was all ditched hardcore by one of my TPs a while back I asked Karen from the library to pair me up with another student, Kim. Kim is a woman from South Korea who is here with her husband and two children. Like my other tutee BJ, her husband is a visiting scholar. While here she is taking classes at ACE 4 days a week and volunteers at her kids' school and wishes to meet with me twice a week! I have been so inspired by these relationships from tutoring and conversation partners. These new friends are so industrious in their approach to learning and immersion.
Kim and I met up last Monday and she was very eager to get right into it, telling me she really needed help with speaking and conversations implying that two hour sessions would be fine with her (though that is not fine with me). I talked her into keeping it a an hour and a half twice a week and seeing how that goes.
We did listening exercises with clozed transcripts. I gave her (par her request) homework of listening to one news article and telling me about it the next time we meet.
Which was yesterday. We spent the time talking- Thanksgiving and the Korean equivalent chusuk which is a time to praise the ancestors for the harvest. We talked about my family "Oh! You don't live with your parents? Your brother lives in a different house?" We talked about how in the United States it is a sign of independence and maturity to move out of your folks house as opposed to the expectation in Korea to remain living with one's parents til marriage, men and women alike.
We did more listening exercises, I decided to go up to an advanced dialogue despite her protests and afterward though she claimed to only understand 40% she answered all the questions right. (Much like the students in the last class observation I had with Debbie.) Kim listened to an article about what is going on between South and North Korea. For next our meeting she will first write her summary and then talk about it to keep the explanation succinct.
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