On the 23rd of August, Emily Sun from the East Cobb Branch participated in the English Tutoring Program and tutored for 1 hour.
This program’s goal is to provide English guidance to the elderly who do not know much English. Volunteers are needed for 1 on 1 tutoring sessions. By helping these elderly improve their English, the goal is to make communication smoother and life easier for them.
Since I had access to a Zoom account, we talked on Zoom for our 1-hour session. The senior citizen that I taught had worked at a grocery store before, so she knew English, just didn’t know how to pronounce all the words she came across. We chatted for most of the session about random things from our current situation with the COVID-19 to our favorite foods and what we ate that day. After a while, the pupil pulled up a few paragraphs she came across when reading articles. She would then read a sentence, and I would either approve or tell her how she should pronounce a word she pronounced wrong. If she got stuck, she would spell the word out to me if I don’t figure it out first, then I would pronounce the word and explain the definition to her.
Overall, the session went pretty smoothly, but there were a few minutes of silence between each topic. Nothing went wrong, although sometimes we would spend a few minutes figuring out how to show the other person a picture or message on our phones. Next time, since she learned how to share media with me this time, things are sure to go smoother. We have nowhere else to go but up.
Reported by Emily Sun
Participants: Brian Kuang (1 hour), Jay Pan (2 hours), Emily Sun (2 hours), Terrence Xia (2 hours), Jonathan Bao (1 hour)
