Skip to main content

Ashley TS #1

My first tutoring session was with an older woman named Manal from Saudi Arabia. This was my favorite meeting to date, for I found it to be the most eye opening; challenging the stereotypical norms I held about Saudi Arabia prior to our meeting. In the US, I find we often hear about Saudi Arabia tagged along with the words "no women's rights," "oppression," and merely nothing positive. After talking to Manal, who described Riyadh as her home that she loved and missed, it made me realize how much I was negatively judging and assuming the role of women in society in Saudi Arabia from a Western lens. I find it common that we as a western culture look down on the way women are treated in several Middle Eastern countries, from the clothes they have to wear to the fact they just recently got the right to drive. In our minds, at least among my peers, I find we view these women being forced to live potentially "meaningless lives" under the control of men. However, after talking to Manal I found she is currently pursuing a PhD, being paid to come learn English by her job back home, she has a driver that she appreciates (for she thinks driving would be scary), and doesn't mind the clothes she has to wear. She's raising two lovely daughters and brought one here to the US with her, while the other remains at home with her family. She spoke nothing but positively about Saudi Arabia, and it reminded me to always remember that although our cultures may be different, it doesn't mean one is merely "better" than the other. There is of course a difference in the level of rights women here have compared to Saudi Arabia; however, when we as a society try to improve these rights of women in places like such, we must remember the cultural implications of these attempts of change. Things may be depicted differently to those there than from us over here, and just because we can't relate, doesn't always mean its "wrong." When it came to tutoring we focused on practicing listening as well as speaking skills, and plan on working on composition skills during our next session.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ashley CP #3

My third conversation partner meeting was with Josue, my conversation partner from Paris, France. He suggested that we go to a restaurant for this meeting, and recommended the Colombian restaurant on Tennessee St. called "Super Perros". I had never been to this restaurant before, so it was interesting to not only converse with someone from outside of my culture but also at a cultural restaurant with an atmosphere and menu different than what I am used to. Most of the menu was in Spanish, so we were able to bond over trying to figure out what the menu was saying, and ended up sharing a lot of laughs over it. During our meeting, we caught up on how he was doing at CIES, what he's involved in in Tallahasee, and discussed deeper topics such as the current political affairs going on in France. This led to a grander discussion about American politics, and it turned out we had similar views. It was interesting to connect our ideas across border lines, realizing we all want the ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Angelena TS #14

On Monday, February 18 th , I met with Yahyia at CIES at 12:00.   He wanted to go over a reading passage that he needed to write a summary about.   He understood all of the main points of the passage, but just needed some help with certain vocabulary words.   Words included in the passage attuned, fraught, fixated, and obsessed.   I helped him figure out what the words could mean by using context clues from the sentence, which helped him.   Afterwards, I gave him synonyms for each word and would use the words in a sentence so that he could get an even better understanding.   Afterwards, I helped him write a short summary, but he seemed to have a good understanding of what to do for this and did not really need that much help.   When we were done, I told him to come up with at least two or three sentences for each vocabulary word so that he could get extra practice.  
Post a Comment
Read more

Savannah TS #7

Today I worked with Anibal on his speaking skills. Anibal is a post-grad student who wishes to take the TOEFL in order to apply for graduate school in the US. I would categorize him in the advanced level in speaking and listening. He has been in the US for about a year but has studied English as a foreign language in his home country. For speaking practice, I found some sample TOEFL questions online and asked Anibal the questions in the TOEFL format: I asked the question, gave him 15 seconds to think about the question, then gave him 45 seconds to answer the question. I thought it would be productive for Anibal and I to both listen to his responses so he could try to find his errors. We played back his recording and we both wrote down grammar, pronunciation, and structural errors we found. Surprisingly enough, I had Anibal describe to me the errors he found first, and he had written down all of the errors I had. With the exception of a few, he had noticed all of his mistakes. This show...
Post a Comment
Read more