Alexandra TP 3

TUTORING PARTNER 3 – Dongsoek, Meeting 3

Over the past few weeks, I’ve continued to work with Dongsoek, who I must say, is fast becoming a good friend, especially since he is now a regular at the Coversation Club which Mario and I lead at the Globe, and apparently at other weekly club meetings as well. His friendly demeanor and work ethic make him a great student to work with and he’s willing to try anything, but, to my pleasant surprise, feels comfortable enough with me to express his doubts about certain methods or approaches.

For instance, during our last session, Dongsoek, informed that a colleague had commented on how his accent was changing, apparently in an unfavorable way. I talked to him a little more about this concern and asked him if he thought it was connected to our lessons. He said that it was not entirely the case, but that he thought it had something to do with it. This surprised me, especially since we have been working together on conversation and he has made considerable strides (his pronunciation, though still distinctly Korean sounding, is much sharper and his consonants are clearer).

It was only when, I found out that this colleague was a girl from South Korea, and that this girl had known him since the beginning of his time at the CIES, that my fears and conflicts were assuaged. This is not to discount her opinion, but, by talking it out, we came to the conclusion that it was likely that what the girl was responding to negatively was simply a linear, change- in fact his progress- which now makes him sound different than when he had a much thicker and very typically Korean accent.

I assured him that by my ears at least, he now sounded much more articulate, and had what seemed like far more confidence. Just the same, I asked him if there was anything else he wanted to work on in order to quell his insecurities about speaking and accents. He said he was uncertain about intonation. This makes perfect sense. Dongsoek has been making very good progress in pronunciation, but I had neglected to work with him on sentence cadence.