On Wednesday, I met with Bao in the CIES study room for her first tutoring session. Similar to the first session I had with her sister, I asked Bao questions about herself, such as, how old she was, where in Vietnam she grew up, how many siblings she has, what she's interested in, what her favorite subject is/major, what her favorite food is, and what she likes most and least about America. Once we got to know each other better, and I got a feel for what level she was at in her English speaking, I asked her what she struggled most with in class and what she would like for me to help her on. She told me she has troubles with listening and speaking, and that those are her two main focuses. For the remainder of the session we continued conversation and I corrected her pronunciation mistakes and helped explain and repeat things for her to better comprehend. For our next session, I told her we will focus on conversational skills and go to a coffee shop around town so she can experience other places of Tallahassee!
My next tutoring session was with Turki. We met at the Starbucks on Tennessee Street, the usual spot, and started the session with a causal conversation about life and his short term English goals. Turki decided he didn't want to continue with the second session of CIES classes, and that he wanted to rather focus solely on passing the IELTS exam. He said he found the CIES classes to be helpful, but also distracting. He said he thinks he's gotten the most out of his classes and that it would be more productive for him to study on his own. Where I don't completely agree with his logic, it is his life and I trust his decision making. For this session he brought his own material that he wanted to focus on. This time it was a reading passage that I even found to be quite difficult, and I was once again impressed by his far reach in practice and ability. The reading passage was accompanied by a set of numerous comprehension questions that we reviewed and answered together. The qu...
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