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Savannah Cp#1

On January 13th, I met Sulaiman for coffee. We started discussing the worksheet given to us by the CIES staff but Sulaiman mentioned that he did not understand it, so I explained it to him and we went over what I had written. Sulaiman told me that he has been learning English for two weeks therefore, he is at a beginner level. We spent a lot of our conversation using google translate in order to understand each other. This reminded me of when I was beginning to speak Spanish and needed to make a lot of pauses to look things up. This memory allowed me to have a lot of patience with Sulaiman and to reassure him that I understood what he was going through, and I was not being judgmental. Sulaiman and I talked about our favorite movies and tv shows and how we use this entertainment to learn our second languages. He mentioned that he watches things for the first time in English with Arabic subtitles, then a second time in English with English subtitles. We also talked about our families and the cities we came from. What I took from this conversation was that I do have the capacity to be patient with someone who needs the time to develop their sentences in order to communicate. Additionally I learned that if the person understands you are there to help them and not to make judgements, their affective filter can be lowered.

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