For my second meeting with Jiyeon I planned a lesson consisting of expressions of agreement/disagreement that would be common for speaking, as well as a list of common American slang and idioms (randomly chosen from a large master list). I told Jiyeon my plan and also told her to let me know if I was speaking to fast or if anything was unclear; to this she said that I was fine, and that just listening to me speak was great practice for her. So after a few minutes of discussing our weekends, I began going through the list of expressions. I wasn’t quite sure of her level yet, so I check with her if most of them seemed familiar or not, and I found about 50-75% of the expressions were new, if not just unsure of the meaning. A particular phrase “I couldn’t disagree more,” prompted Jiyeon to ask about modals (could/should/would/might) that have been confusing her. This tangent eventually morphed into the lesson, and, thankfully, technology is great and I could quickly find some examples and practice quizzes on my laptop to check her modal comprehension. I think Jiyeon understood by the end, at least better, and I explained that they are tricky because we use them in our speech so frequently and the meaning and word choice varies so much depending on the context, but that now that we went over it she would likely notice it when people speak, and in turn, learn when specific modals are used most commonly.
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