On February 1, 2019 from 12:45 to almost 2:45 pm, I had my first session with my new tutee, Mohammed Alfsufyani, at CIES. This was an assessment and diagnostic meeting, so I could gauge what level he is at and what he wants to work on. He told me his session ends at the end of February and that he just wants to focus on reading. I gave him a reading to look over to see how much he understood and he told me it was challenging for him. Level 1 and 2 readings he can understand but level 3 is difficult for him, so I am going to focus on giving him some short, intense level 3 articles, timing him, and giving him questions because he wants to improve how fast he reads. I learned that he is from Saudi Arabia, has traveled to over 40 countries, is studying anthropology and philosophy, has 12 siblings, has kids (who attended school in Florida for 5 months before leaving back to Saudi Arabia), loves to try new foods and travel, and likes to cook. We will be meeting twice a week for the next four weeks.
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...
Comments
Post a Comment