On January 22 I met Yi Luo outside of Strozier. Yi is a graduate student studying statistics. She is very fluent in speaking English but would like more experience speaking with people in English because most of her friends only speak Chinese with her. She mentioned that she struggles with confidently speaking with some of her students and professors. I could tell that she prefers to speak slowly and perfect rather than quick and with a few mistakes. I told her that the most important this is communication. And no one expects for anyone to speak perfectly. She saw the prompts for the conversation partners and thought they weren't very natural -which I agreed- and we decided to talk about our own ideas. We talked about a large variety of things from being introverts to her hometown to our favorite foods. I really enjoyed talking with Yi. We decided that for our next conversation we would meet at her favorite Chinese restaurant in town. This conversation was very meaningful to me because it taught me that even advanced English language learners need assistance with advancing. I am excited to meet with Yi some more and to have more conversations with her.
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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