Today, Somaia and I met to talk a little about grammar, but we also just talked. Somaia’s fluency is really good, even if her grammar from a prescriptive perspective is not the best. Sometimes she would use the simple present tense while talking about the past, and I try to correct her a little to nudge her in the right direction while letting her practice her flow and just having some fun chatting. We talked about cultural and dialectal differences between Arabic speaking countries and even within Saudi Arabia. Somaia was from the West coast of the country whereas my conversation partner, Sulaiman, was from Riyadh, the capital. Riyadh is a very cool, modern city, but it is in the middle of the desert with absolutely no water around, and Somaia’s hometown is really close to the sea. We also talked about similarities and differences between Islam and Christianity, which was really interesting and a cool cultural opportunity for both of us.
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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