Tony TS #2 - Dojun

 Date/Time: Sunday 2/2 @ 9:00am

Location: Zoom

Topic/Skill: Grammar pre-test/progress monitoring

I used some TOEFL practice grammar activities to gauge Dojun's comfort level with grammar. I also timed his responses. He speaks very well, albeit slowly. Out of three practice tests, he got 1-2 questions incorrect. Points of further emphasis will include conditional tenses and low frequency vocabulary.

One question he got wrong was: The new movie performed very poorly ____ the low ratings it has received by the viewers. He chose "since" rather than "due to". This was my first "Oh no, I only have implicit knowledge on this" moment. I tried to explain that the preposition "to" in "due to" helped to tie these two parts of the sentence together. For that reason "because of" would also have been correct if it was listed, but it wasn't (multiple choice). Hopefully it made sense to him!

For future sessions, I plan to move away from pre-made activities and start creating original ones tailored to his weak areas. Dojun is definitely an advanced learner, so I plan to use next session as another sort of progress monitoring session to explore trickier grammar concepts. I also want to incorporate more low-frequency vocab activities; I noticed that some expressions and uncommon words I've used have required clarification. For example, I said he "aced" one of these exams and he thought I said "eight".

As a less targeted goal, I want to help him improve the speed at which he processes and speaks English. I plan to implement (generous at first) time limits to our activities to see if that helps.


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