Isabel TS #15

 Remote 4:08-5:08

06/01/2022

Remote Session #2 With Gwan-Yong Na

We began the session with open discussion. I asked Gwan-Yong Na about his recent trip to Tampa. He drove with a group of ESL students from Tallahassee to Tampa for Memorial Day weekend. There, they stayed in an Airbnb. They spent a day at Busch Gardens (from 10am to 10pm), but he could only muster up the courage for one rollercoaster. Though, he did enjoy the Congo River Rapids. He expressed the weather was "crazy." This was because the weather alternated back and forth from clear skies to thunder storms throughout the day. They spent another day at St. Pete Beach. This was when I learned Gwan-Yong Na cannot swim. He took lessons as a boy, but has since then forgot. After this delightful conversation, Gwan-Yong Na asked me about my recent car accident (Fair trade no?). 

For the past few sessions, Gwan-Yong Na and I have been practicing the "R" and "L" sound. Today, we reviewed both. He struggled with words, such as "vocabulary" and "regularly." Breaking apart these words by syllable helped Gwan-Yong focus on each individual sound and pronounce the word altogether. He found the words "rarely," "rollerblading," and "railroad" to be the most challenging. He tended to not pronounce the second "r" in rarely, which made it sound like "rail-ly" or "really." I had him repeat "rare" many times and then add "ly" after a certain amount of repetitions. This helped him focus on the way his mouth moved to pronounce the word, so he could do it effortlessly over and over. For the word "railroad," he would often flip the "l" and second "r," pronouncing "rairload." He still needs to practice that one. A pronunciation technique I like to use that I find helps Gwan-Yong is making note of parts of words that sound like other existing words. For example "central," "tral" is pronounced like the word "troll." Another example is "trial" can be split apart as "try-you'll." "Fluently" can be broken down to "flew-in-tly." My personal favorite of the day was "clarinet" as it became "claire-a-net." This technique allows Gwan-Yong to make connections between English words that create similar sounds. These unique pronunciation hacks stand out in his brain, making it easy for him to remember how to pronounce the word the next time it comes up.

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