Jackie TP-4

After our break tutoring, Jia and I were caffeinated and ready to attack more issues. We really covered an extensive amount of material in two and a half hours--I was pretty shocked and really, really happy, especially when there were breakthroughs!

We continued with writing and grammar exercises. We started with actually going over the student essay we covered in class that we declared a level three. Jia is a level two in writing and grammar, and a level 3 in speaking and listening. Yet like I said the last post, she corrected it easily. She thought it was rediculous that this person could be a level 3--which makes it confusing if she is actually in the wrong level or if we incorrectly placed that person in a higher level. I'm unsure, but it's probably our mistake as I'm learning speaking/listening/writing/reading/grammar are all different worlds. This led to a discussion on the word "awkward" that led to her saying a lot of things she thought were "weird" were "awkward" and then they didn't make any sense. Hahah--but then we discussed pronunciation due to this; including, "Orlando," "sheet" (instead of saying something profane..), the word "creepy," and how the l's and v's in Korean are missing. I loved that, because it's funny how we always consider our language the only way--but what if your tongue had never made that sound?!

After giggling a lot, we talked about her writing and that she wanted to write complex sentences. So, I did my lesson plan for Independent and Dependent clauses from my grammar log. It was extremely difficult for her; it was probably an i+5, but I warned her, explained things to her extremely slowly, and gave her the lesson. I showed her many examples and asked if she had questions. I went over coordinating conjunctions that could connect clauses so that she wouldn't be lost in how to complete these sentences, and then let her do the activity (which mainly consisted of writing a longer sentence from parts of sentences I gave her). She eventually learned what "WHO" was, which was difficult for me to know that she didn't know what that was, and after that, she slowly pieced together her sentences. It was beautiful! I was so ecstatic, as was she, when learning how to write a longer, more complex sentence.

My favorite sentence, though, before we left All Saints, was "Oranges are harmless fruits."