This tutoring session was again at The Sweet Shop, making up for the lost tutoring time we spent chatting about the struggles of life abroad. Today Turki was more focused, not being affected by the emotional turmoil he was dealing with last time, and we were able to get right to it. He brought in a reading exercise that he found online from some kind of IELTS practice exam that was specifically targeting comprehension questions. Most of the questions we worked on were True/False questions based off of a three-page passage. I found these questions to be very tricky for someone who doesn't have a vast English vocabulary. A lot of the questions were formed using synonyms for sentences in the passage, and unless the reader knew such multiple words representing the same meaning, they wouldn't be able to successfully complete the exercise. Turki asked how he could prepare for such questions, and I told him multiple times to read and gain as much new vocabulary as he can. He learned the words creature and submersible; trying to explain the word creature was quite humorous I must admit. Overall it was a successful session and I think he is going to make more of an effort to read more and learn new vocabulary words thanks to it.
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