I had another tutoring session with Turki this week. Last time we focused on speaking skills in preparation for the IELTS exam. This time he wanted to work on reading comprehension again instead. We did the usual read through, where I read a passage and then he read the next. Afterwards, we went through the questions and answers together. He struggled with this and I believe it was due to the difficult level of the passage. Sometimes Turki aims too high for his own good. I could sense the frustration, that soon became counter productive, so I offered that we take a break and just talk for a second. We ended up chatting about the differences in culture between the US and Saudi Arabia, specifically focusing on music. He told me all about some Arabic music that he likes and why he finds it hard to listen to popular music here in the US. He said he thinks it is frustrating how American songs will have happy beats with sad lyrics, and vice versa. I thought this was humorous and something I had never really thought about before. I wrote down a list of artists for him to listen to and plan on talking about them during our next meeting.
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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