ET: When I was ( ) years old, I took up (A)
The first few minutes were spent on doing a bit of catching up since I hadn’t seen this particular student in a while. She was quite busy with her work and wanted to ask me what I would be doing for the holidays. She also mentioned that she had spotted me waiting for the train on the platform of Kyobashi station the other day. It was too bad that she was on the other side of the tracks otherwise we could’ve had ourselves a good conversation. After a bit of a pause, she opened her notebook and said, “When I was 15 years old, I took up tennis.”
Item: Use to
This was the first time that she had seen this item so we started off with the flashcards. After she had matched them up accurately, I set her to work building sentences with them. For example, “She used to ride a motorcycle, but now she drives a car.” The cards proved to be quite effective and it didn’t take long for her to pick up on the lesson direction. When I began to ask her if she had used to play sports, cook, or have a part-time job, she revealed that her life had changed quite a bit after she had graduated from high school. She used to be really into tennis and cooking but now she does neither. Instead, she prefers to window shop and doesn’t want to cook when she can be watching TV.
Routine: 5
I asked her about her schedule and then got into Routine 5, checking to see if she’d had an appointment in the last few days. Verifying that she had had an appointment, I asked further questions to see who she had met up with, where, and for what purpose. She had been through this routine a few times already so she managed it very well. I was even able to throw in a few extra questions for more intricate details which she was able to provide me with easily.
One point: I couldn’t (a) because (b)
I started off by asking her if there was something that she had wanted to do but couldn’t. She thought about it for a few seconds and then shook her head, indicating ‘no’. So I gave her an example, “I couldn’t go to Egypt this past August because I spent all of my money in Toronto.” She gave a cry of understanding and quickly said, “I couldn’t go to Hawaii because it was too expensive.” Just to make sure that this one point was okay, I urged her to give another example. She tried again with, “I couldn’t eat too much chocolate because I’m on a diet.”
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