This was my first meeting with Giancarlo, a student from Venezuela and my first tutee since returning to the TEFL class. For our initial meeting, Giancarlo and I met at Dunkin’ Doughnuts and just had an initial assessment to introduce ourselves to each other and talk about things he was hoping to do with tutoring. We spent a long time just chatting. I learned that he was planning on applying for a graduate engineering program at Florida State, so part of what he was hoping to do in tutoring was get some help reviewing for his essays and reading practices for the GRE Test. We continued talking, just getting to know each other. Giancarlo is excited to be in Tallahassee and start working toward his masters in engineering. He had had schooling in Venezuela, but he was hoping to work with Florida State’s professors. I just talked about how excited I am to graduate and the few plans I already had.
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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