Tutoring Boram

It's been a few weeks since I started tutoring Boram. She's originally from South Korea but studies in China. She arrived here in December, right when our busiest weeks were about to begin. So things were pretty haphazard- a class today, canceled tomorrow, classroom interruptions, etc. Like a lot of non-native English speakers, she too has a pretty good grammar grounding. In a written test, she'd probably score high. But putting that knowledge into speech is where the problem is. She's here for just two months, so is really looking for a crash course. Owing to that, we haven't been able to work through a "normal" text- normal meaning one that's designed to be studied over a course of 4 months or more. So we just rip things off from a text here, a text there and ESL stuff on the internet.

The other day we practiced sentences she might say if she goes shopping to a big mall. Stuff from "Excuse me, where is the ladies clothing department?" to "Do you do alterations?" These few weeks being my precious weeks of break time before another term begins, teaching isn't high on my to-do list. However, of late, I've been beginning to enjoy my daily two hours with her. There are little things that happen in these two hours that I have begun to look forward to. For example, her Korean candies. Boram has a sweet tooth. Oh yea, I told her what "sweet tooth" means. Anyway, everyday she brings two candies. Sometimes more. Sometimes yummy ones like pumpkin candy. Or some hard-to-distinguish flavoured candy which had "Good for Women" written in Korean on the wrapper. Sweet moments, really. Pun definitely intended.

We learned some prepositions yesterday. She said they will be useful. So I thought I'd give her some more. Secretly weaseling my way out from lesson-planning. Our time of meeting being post-lunch, she was drowsy and the prepositions weren't really helping. So we just sat and talked. Of course, as we chewed on the yummy pumpkin candy. I then asked her about her favourite childhood memory. This was after an explanation (with a diagram, stick figures et al) of "childhood." Once she understood, she immediately said her favourite childhood memory is from when she was 5 years old. She hadn't begun school yet because back then kids in Korea weren't sent to school until they were 6 or 7. So for a year, her family lived in the countryside. She began to draw a diagram as well as she tried to articulate her memory. She drew two houses and some fields. Rice fields, as she later specified. With her limited English vocabulary, she told me that living there by the rice fields where after the rains she would see rainbows, which she said were really big. Predictably I was drawn in to her telling of her memory. And for a few seconds, we sat there with silly grins, staring at her scribbly drawing of what was supposed to be the rice field and their house. Silly moments I seem to thrive on. Silly moments I seem to live for.