Savannah TP #3

This time when I tutored Jun I used both pictures and conversation questions to facilitate conversation.   I had a picture of a flooded area with a man in a shopping cart carrying water.  The questions included "what are some beautiful places in your home country?"  "Where would you like to go?" "Name and explain some heroes from your country."    "What's your favorite part of the day? Why?"

He successfully named some nice places in his country and did okay trying to describe them.  The descriptions were shorter than I would have liked.  He named some places he would like to visit too,   He told me he likes Miami a lot because it's pretty and busy and the building are tall and shiny.  He said he liked seeing the beach but he never went on the beach at all.   He asked me what my favorite city is and why as well.  I told him I liked Seattle a lot.  I wasn't sure if it was okay for me to talk for a second or if his parents prefer him to talk 95% of the time.  I wanted it to seem more fun for him and less like an extension of school.  He said he wanted to go back to Miami.

Things got sticky when we got to the heroes of your country.  I should have been more culturally sensitive and done some investigating before asking that question. He didn't say a word and I think I hit a cultural brick wall.  I hope I didn't seem rude (although I don't doubt I did) and when I noticed something was going on that was bigger than me and my ill-thought question I quickly went on to the next question.

We talked about these playing cards he likes to play with his friends that are popular in Korea.   I would like to see if I could get a hold of some to play over Skype.  I think he would enjoy that a lot.  I spoke with Jung, his mother, about how his elaboration was lacking and I asked her what she recommended to help.  She said a vocabulary list may help.


I feel like this session I learned a lot from Jun, especially about cultural sensitivities.