Brittany CP-2

When I met with Gyusang a week later, I asked about his weekend. He told me his grandparents had come to visit from Korea, and his whole family went to SeaWorld. Having been to SeaWorld many, many times (for fun and for work with summer camps) I was excited to find out what he liked best! First I asked about a few different shows and rides I know of. Gyusang described the Shamu show and I was curious if he sat in the splash zone (where you're soaked with freezing water). He laughed and shook his head no, but mentioned all the children he saw with matching t-shirts who got soaked then started crying- to which I replied, those are the kind of kids I chaperoned at SeaWorld every summer! Gyusang seemed to find it hilarious that I got soaked with the little kids!

We talked about the rest of his weekend and how he spent Sunday working on a presentation for his speaking class and was up really late, so he was pretty tired by the time we met up. I was curious about his classes- what he liked most or what he found boring, and what his overall feeling was about learning English. Like most students I've asked at this point, Gyusang finds grammar to be the most boring, which is understandable. Keeping track of all the crazy rules that often breed confusion was stressful when I took a second language, but I was still in my own country. This made me consider what I could do in the future to make grammar lessons less arduous. Gyusang also told me that articles have been the most difficult for him as far as grammar goes, but that pronunciation is the other tricky point. In Korean, he explains, they don't have the 'ph' or 'f' sound and that 'l' and 'r' sounds give him a lot of trouble. I reassured him those were common and would likely get better over time, but that for living here only 8 months, his English is great! There have been very few times we don't understand each other in the course of our conversing!