Lucas Erickson TS #14

On December 5, 2018, I had my last tutoring session with Zhuanling after CIES classes in the lounge. We worked on material for the SPEAK test. I used minimal pairs to help her comprehend the difference some vowels. The most shocking discovery was that Zhuanling pronounced the "short a" in macro and the "long i" in micro the same way. This was because there was no distinction between the sounds in Mandarin Chinese and some dialects can choose one over the other. It really opened up my eye to the help some of these minimal pairs can make even if I could not see the value of them from my perspective. We were visited by one of the professors conducting the SPEAK test, and she gave Zhuanling some reassurance that she would likely do well on the test.

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