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Jack TS #16

For my last tutoring session (sorry I could not complete more), Somaia and I continued playing some online quizzes for grammar review for EFL students. We continued reviewing the perfect tense and contractions, areas on which Somaia has been hoping to work. She is pretty good at knowing when to use the present perfect, but finding the irregular past participles, using contractions and conjugating ‘have’ are more challenging. There were quite a few instances where Somaia was able to answer correctly right away, but there were quite a few times she needed a moment and would occasionally need some help. She is getting a lot better at knowing when to use contractions and past versus present, but it was still really good practice, especially with those irregulars. She keeps saying that she is just going to have to study, and I wish I could tell her that there was a simple rule or hint to follow, but it is probably more complicated than that and practicing is probably the most beneficial r...
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Jack TS #15

For my last meeting with Giancarlo, we just chatted. He has been studying hard for the GRE, namely the math part at this point, which I do not think I can help him with very well, so we just met to talk and practice. We met at Strozier again and talked about my graduation and how excited and ready I felt. I had a special ceremony on Thursday night called Cultural Graduation, which is put on by the Center for Leadership and Social Change, an organization I have been involved with since my freshman year, and incorporates Seminole traditions. Then on Friday I was going to have my Florida State ceremony, which a lot of my family members were going to attend. Giancarlo is excited and hopeful about starting at Florida State, to take on this new challenge and continue his education with professors from whom he is excited to learn.
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Jack TS #14

Today I met with Giancarlo for one more essay review session before the GRE. His mistakes come from the fact that he is trying a little too hard to transfer vocabulary and usage from Spanish over to English: he pluralizes adjectives, uses direct translations and sometimes just writes the Spanish word. Another thing that is a little harder for him is article use, as those are also used differently in Spanish. Sometimes he will put ‘a/an’ or ‘the’ in a place where they are not needed, or leave one out where it would help make the sentence a little more specific. Also, demonstratives (this/that) versus articles (the vs. a/an) can sometimes be a bit troubling. That aside, his spelling is pretty great and he is usually pretty good at fixing his own mistakes. The only issue is that he is only going to have thirty minutes to write the essay, and that is a challenge for any level of English speaker. If he keeps practicing, though, he should do really well.
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Jack TS #13

Today, Somaia and I met in the computer lab at CIES, where we got to play some online grammar games for EFL students. There are lots of resources available online and it was a fun way to practice grammar concepts with which Somaia had been struggling. We practiced the perfect tense and irregular past participles, which was really helpful for Somaia. These really are concepts that learners just have to memorize and practice, but Somaia is really trying to learn these forms instead of just skipping them and using any old form, which I know can be common amongst EFL students. Her troubles are also common for native Arabic speakers, like the pronunciation difference between certain voiced and voiceless consonants in English such as /b/ and /p/. I also mentioned some times when I frequently used the words, putting things in context to take the strictly academic sense out of what often comes with these online quizzes.
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Jack TS #12

For this session, Giancarlo and I started reviewing his practice essays for his upcoming GRE. He has been timing himself, doing his best to just write out the whole essay in the amount of time he will have during the test, thirty minutes. We went over his practice essay and reviewed some of the mistakes and pointed out some things he was doing well, his spelling is usually pretty good. All Giancarlo really seems to need is to keep practicing. It sucks that he has to take this challenging test at the same time and level as students who have been speaking English their entire lives. Even students who are native speakers of English struggle with this test, so Giancarlo is doing really well at being able to pull through and come up with a pretty great essay for his level of English. Also, as an engineer, I hope he is able to pull off the math part of the test!
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Jack TS #11

Today, Somaia and I met to talk a little about grammar, but we also just talked. Somaia’s fluency is really good, even if her grammar from a prescriptive perspective is not the best. Sometimes she would use the simple present tense while talking about the past, and I try to correct her a little to nudge her in the right direction while letting her practice her flow and just having some fun chatting. We talked about cultural and dialectal differences between Arabic speaking countries and even within Saudi Arabia. Somaia was from the West coast of the country whereas my conversation partner, Sulaiman, was from Riyadh, the capital. Riyadh is a very cool, modern city, but it is in the middle of the desert with absolutely no water around, and Somaia’s hometown is really close to the sea. We also talked about similarities and differences between Islam and Christianity, which was really interesting and a cool cultural opportunity for both of us.
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Jack TS #10

During this session, Giancarlo and I continued to go over his application essay for graduate school, the deadline for which was approaching quickly. He had written quite a bit more since our last meeting, and we were able to go a lot deeper in depth about common patterns in Giancarlo’s mistakes (article use, direct translations, etc.) and ways to make the writing sound more formal. We also went over some of the grammar errors in his writing, which he was still making. This was a little disappointing as we had gone over this already, but I know it can take some time for the skills to set. However, Giancarlo was able to pick up on his mistakes more quickly this time around. He is identifying his mistakes after he has made them, which is okay for an application essay draft, but an obstacle to face when writing a GRE essay. I reminded Giancarlo to talk to experts about the content of the essay and help get tips on the best ways to get his point across and sell himself in order to get the...
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