On Tuesday, May 13, I met with Zoe and her mother at their apartment. Upon arriving, Zoe's mother told me her daughters' needs. She said Zoe has difficulty in conversation: using the appropriate articles and determiners in her sentences. However, for her age, Zoe's reading and writing skills are excellent. Zoe's mother had a reading passage ready for Zoe and I to complete together, "Zebra News". Before we began tutoring, I wanted to break the ice with Zoe, and asked questions about her interests, her desire to learn English, and her favorite subjects. I found out that Zoe attends the first grade, loves science, and aspires to be a dentist or United Nations member.
I then asked Zoe to look at the images in the article and to give me a prediction: "What do you think the article will be about?". This allowed Zoe to introduce the topic to herself, using her own imagination, as well as practice her English conversation skills. Afterward, Zoe read the article out loud and completed sentence-response questions. Zoe would stop when she did not understand the meaning of a word. I advised her to point out the word in the passage, read two lines up and two lines down, and decipher the word's meaning through context clues. We were able to complete the article and Zoe learned new vocabulary words like "herding" and "gnu" and "wildebeest". When I told her the definition for wildebeest, she explained how Mufasa dies in Lion King trying to save Simba from a herd of wildebeests.
Before I left, I noticed that Zoe had famous paintings taped around the walls of her room. Zoe explained that she loves art and hangs images that are "funny" to her. "The Arnolfini Portrait" by Jan van Eyck is the "funniest" because "the lady has a horn on her head, a dog is just standing there, and the man's hat is too big for his body". During our next session, we will use Zoe's favorite paintings to practice English conversation.
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