This tutoring session was with Turki. He, as previously mentioned, has so much more free time due to his lack of CIES classes and always comes prepared with study materials. We once again worked on skills he thinks are pertinent for doing well on the IELTS exam coming up in May. He wanted to specifically focus on speaking again, for we had done it once before, and he said he got a lot out of it. He pulled up a website that has a lot of good practice examples/questions pertaining to the speaking portion and we did four different examples together. I would read the prompt, give him a minute to plan his thoughts/take notes, then give him two minutes to answer the question. I saw huge improvements this time versus the last time we worked together. I don't know if it is because he is more comfortable with me as his tutor, or if he is genuinely improving planning his thoughts and executing his ideas under the pressure of time. Either way he did a great job and was clear to understand while speaking. He had a few "beautiful mistakes" here and there, but overall I saw a lot of improvement in the clarity of his ideas and speech.
My third conversation partner meeting was with Josue, my conversation partner from Paris, France. He suggested that we go to a restaurant for this meeting, and recommended the Colombian restaurant on Tennessee St. called "Super Perros". I had never been to this restaurant before, so it was interesting to not only converse with someone from outside of my culture but also at a cultural restaurant with an atmosphere and menu different than what I am used to. Most of the menu was in Spanish, so we were able to bond over trying to figure out what the menu was saying, and ended up sharing a lot of laughs over it. During our meeting, we caught up on how he was doing at CIES, what he's involved in in Tallahasee, and discussed deeper topics such as the current political affairs going on in France. This led to a grander discussion about American politics, and it turned out we had similar views. It was interesting to connect our ideas across border lines, realizing we all want the ...
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