My first tutoring was with P.J. He was extremely shy at first but when we started getting into the material, he opened up more. We started with introductions and he felt a little more comfortable speaking with me once I explained that I was in his exact same position of bilingualism eleven years ago.
I decided to focus more on word problems in mathematics than anything else. We used his math textbook. Anytime he had a vocabulary question about an unknown word in a problem, I would pull out my phone and google it so he could see an image.
His math is extremely advanced and he can do certain long division problems easily but there were certain word problems we encountered that he didn't fully understand. For example, he would be confused when a problem introduced various variables and we had divide by one number and not another. By the end of the tutoring session (the last 5-7 minutes), he would get off-track and start telling me about his life and Korea and asking me about my school and general questions about civil engineering. I'm glad that he was able to open up more and feel comfortable around me.
One instance where he got sidetracked was when we got to a word problem that focused on a recipe for the design of a concrete mix and I was able to actually show him of a video of me making concrete in one of my classes. Once he saw that video we were able to finish the problem swiftly because he understood why he was doing the problem.
My focus next week will be to keep doing word problems and make sure he is fully understanding every aspect of the word problems and explain them in ways that interest him and try to relate them to ways you would use math in real life.
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