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TS #16 Madison Elford

08/12/2021 9:00am - 10:00am Paper Fox Coffee Cafe We reviewed more GRE questions today. He brought his textbook, and we worked on questions together. I taught him more about root words, and prefixes/affixes. If he can at least figure out a partial meaning of the word, it increases his chances of passing the English part of the GRE. He says his math score is very high, but his reading and writing skills are not high enough to pass. He hopes to take the GRE again before the end of the year. I suggested more review with root words to gain more overall knowledge of word meaning. I also gave him a couple of vocabulary lists from Quizlet and Anki to help him recognize more difficult words. He said he wasn't good at memorizing words, but I told him that if he at least recognized more words, it might increase his chances of selecting the right answer. Even I struggled on some of the questions, so it definitely is hard to pass. I really hope Hengwei is able to pass the GRE so he can start h...
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TS #15 Madison Elford

08/11/21 9:00am - 10:00am Paper Fox Coffee Cafe Today, we reviewed more GRE practice questions. It felt similar to the last session in which I struggled to answer a lot of his questions about the ones he got wrong. There wree even a few where I felt the GRE practice questions were the ones who got it wrong. I suggested he used a more official site for practice questions, or use an official textbook instead. The website he was using just wasn't going to help him learn more about English. Beyond that, we also reviewed root words. A lot of his questions contained words that he didn't recognize, so we reviewed a lot of root words, prefixes, and affixes. Tomorrow is our last session, but we will continue to review root word meanings to help him prepare for the GRE. 
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TS #14 Madison Elford

08/05/21 9:00am - 10:00am Paper Fox Coffee Cafe We reviewed GRE practice questions today. He would take the quiz, and then we would review the questions he got wrong. Some of the questions did not make sense to me, and I struggled to explain a lot of them. They used weird words, or what I would have thought to be the wrong word based on context clues. I also really had a lot of issues explaining context. These questions were fill-in-the-blank sentences, so context was a nessesary thing to figure out the right answer. The best way I could find to explain it was to tell him to look for key words, and judge meaning off of those things. Even though it was a rough session for me, I still think it helped him a little. 
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TS #13 Madison Elford

08/04/21 9:00am - 10:00am Paperfox Coffee Cafe We reviewed a lot of reading comprehension questions today as Hengwei prepares for an English exam. These questions were difficult, and I would argue needlessly confusing. As a native English speaker, I would have even been confused on some of the ones Hengwei got wrong in the practice questions. I even noted that some of the questions simply didn't make sense. Beyond that issue, I did my best to explain why he got some of the questions wrong. It was not easy. A lot of the questions had fill-in-the-blank that could only be answered through deep inference of the English sentence leading up to it. I had him do a few more practice questions so that we could work together to find the correct answer. In this, I showed him a few extra steps to take when trying to find the correct answer. We would read the sentence together, and then decipher what it could mean if we ignored the blanks altogether. Then by taking our possible meaning, we would...
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CP #6 Madison Elford

Date : 07/31/21 Time : 12:00pm - 1:30pm Location : Azu's  Topic Discussed : Ordering Food, Talking about University Cultural topic : We spoke a lot about upcoming classes, majors, and specifically things about computer science. Computer Science is Hengwei's major.  Personal Thoughts : This time, we went to a Chinese restuarant. This was Hengwei's way of thanking me for all the help in the tutoring sessions. It was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot about Chinese culture through this. My boyfriend and Hengwei have become really good friends because they share the same interests and are both in the computer science major. We had a lot of fun, and both learned a lot about each others cultures through this. Although this is technically the end of the coversation partner meetings, we both agreed that it is fun to hang out together, and will most likely continue to meet and explore what Tallahassee has to offer. From what I've gathered, Hengwei's experiences with his Ameri...
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TS #12 Madison Elford

9:00am - 10:00am Paper Fox Coffee Cafe We reviewed some verb and noun uses today. Some were confusing for him because some words can act as both a noun and a verb, such as gerunds. We also looked at different forms of words and which can describe a noun compared to which can describe a verb. Adverbs were a little harder for him to understand. I had trouble explaining a solid way of identifying adverbs other than the "ly" they usually have at the end of the word. Other than that, I told him to look for what word the adverb/adjective is describing. If he can identify it as a noun or a verb, then the describtor can be identified as either an adverb or an adjective. But in the case of gerunds, it was especially difficult to make that identification for him. Another fun thing we talked about was Justin Bieber. At our last conversation partner meeting, I overheard a justin beiber song and said "ugh". He asked me today why I didn't like him, so showed him Bieber's ...
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TS #11 Madison Elford

9:00am - 10:00am Paper Fox Coffee Cafe Today, we worked on word emphasization, and pronunciation. Since meeting Hengwei, I have noticed that when he talks, he does not emphasize words or take pauses in logical areas. It was something I hadn't even thought of as part of English learning until this point. I realized that in Chinese, emphasis can't be shown through tone because different tones change the meaning of the words. So today, we used one of his old discussion posts to work on showing him where emphasis should be in each sentence. I started by having him read the sentence aloud, then guess where the emphasis would go. I would then read the sentence (giving a little more emphasis that I would have naturally to give hints to where it would be), and then have him underline where it would be if spoken aloud. Then I had him practice the sentence again with emphasis. I also showed him where pauses in sentences go, and how long they should be. I wasn't sure how to describe i...
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