This conversation with Sulaiman was fantastic! I feel like his fluency is greatly increasing. He did not use google to translate a single time. He was able to get his point across with very little effort on my part. We began by talking about law and how he could go about studying law in the US. Then I asked him about how women just gained their right to drive in Saudi Arabia. It is very interesting to talk with him about Saudi Arabia because his stories really challenge the stereotypes we have of Arab people in the US. He was telling me that everyone was so happy that women have finally gained this right. Also, he was telling me that paid maternity leave was expected in Saudi Arabia. I told him that in the US, it is not a law to ensure paid leave for women. He was so shocked to hear this which only reinforced my changing ideas of Arabic culture. We also discussed health care and how it is so much cheaper in Saudi Arabia than here. We both realized Americans should just take vacations to Turkey or Saudi Arabia and get their teeth fixed while on vacation because it will be cheaper.
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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