Regina TS#12

Regina Sosinski - TS#12

Saad Alburaiken

 

Date: August 15, 2017

Time: 4:30 - 5:30 pm

Location: Starbucks

 

Topic/skill: IELTS exam

 

Saad plans to take the IELTS exam in a couple weeks, and wanted to work on answering practice questions in preparation for the speaking part of the exam. He showed me a website with a list IELTS practice questions, and asked me to pick one of them to ask him. Then he set a timer on his phone for two minutes--the amount of time he will have during the exam--to think about the question and write down some thoughts. When the two minutes were up, I repeated the question and he responded with his answers while I took notes on any errors/feedback. He said the exam would focus on correct use of verb forms/tenses, sentence structure, etc. The first question I asked was something like: "What environmental issues are affecting your home country?" (Answers: Traffic and the carbons being released into the air--a black cloud of pollution hangs over the city; water pollution--their water is piped in from the Red Sea and the Gulf Sea on either sides of the country and treated to become drinking water; but the sea is also polluted, and contains huge black oil patches (visible from a plane above) due to the disposal of oil and other harmful wastes--by the government!--into the ocean; and plastic pollution (especially plastic water bottles) that pollute the land and water.) We went over his errors, mainly incorrect verb tense and mispronunciation of words, and I gave him the list of words/phrases to take home. We ran through a few more practice questions/answers. Saad did very well, and I learned a lot about Saudi Arabia!