Sophie TS #11- Fahad

This time I showed up to tutor Fahad without much of a plan in mind. We met up in Strozier like we usually do when he's working on his homework. I planned to answer any questions he had, and spin that into some kind of lesson. We ended up talking about essays again, as that seems to be the topic he's most worried about for when he takes the IELTS exam. I hadn't thought about how having a completely different alphabet would affect writing an essay by hand, only how it would make typing one difficult, but I can see how that would make essay writing a daunting task. While he seems to get along pretty well in normal conversation (several mistakes, but nothing that makes him impossible to understand), Fahad's writing skills are definitely not on the same level. As someone who's always loved writing, I think I did go off on a few tangents sometimes about details that while interesting, aren't the most necessary for someone at his level to know. That being said, I think he did appreciate me speaking from my own experiences instead of just giving him handouts and lecturing about grammar. I compared the writing portion of the IELTS and TOEFL to that of the SAT or an AP exam, and kind of walked him through my process of brainstorming, planning, and ultimately writing an essay under a time limit. I don't have a complete understanding of the grading scales of the IELTS and TOEFL, but I know in my experience writing timed essays, they're graded as drafts instead of as final essays, which was always very reassuring for me. One thing Fahad mentioned was that on top of not really liking essays because of the alphabet/foreign language thing, he also just didn't like writing essays anyways. He's not planning on studying English like I did. But I pointed out how writing is something that will be incredibly useful to him in school regardless, because he might not have very many classes after CIES on how to write essays, but he'll definitely still have to write some, so the more he practices now, the more successful he'll be later. Basically I just geeked out about writing for our whole session, but it seemed to be helpful and motivational, and what better tutor to have when you're nervous about writing than someone who loves it?