Sophie TS #16- Fahad

The final tutoring session! At this point Fahad and I were both pretty busy with the end of the semester, but we did manage to find a time when we weren't cramming to meet one last time. He was a little worried about his reading skills for the end of the semester, so I decided to do another reading activity, but I tried to find a more interesting one than last time. After looking around for something that was both interesting and level appropriate, as well as a good length, I ended up deciding to use the reading lesson plan I came up with for class. However because I created that for a slightly lower level than Fahad's, I gave him the whole article and added several more questions. I think this exercise was more engaging than the other reading exercise we did the session before because it was about something relevant to my life. In addition to that, it was a news article instead of an academic one, so the language was a little more casual and the structure a little more informal. And even if Fahad had never heard of or listened to the Beatles, at least it was interesting because I got to talk to him about their influence in my life. I grew up listening to them, and I named the cat I adopted this summer Ringo, which is something Fahad and I talked about every once in a while.

Sophie TS #15- Fahad

For our next meeting I actually used a reading handout we were given in class, about the Impressionists. I had planned to do another tutoring session like #11, where I just created my lesson plan based on the questions Fahad had for me, but he didn't have any specific questions, so I decided to go through my handouts from class and use something from there. I was kind of partial to choosing this exercise because it reminded me of the kinds of questions I had to answer after readings in elementary and middle school. But also I was one of those weirdos who actually liked school and classwork. I think it was a little boring for Fahad, compared to the more real-life based things we had done in previous sessions, and because he had been doing classwork most of the day before we met in Strozier. But regardless, I think the level was fairly appropriate- he struggled with a few questions, but he didn't just breeze through them either. So I'm glad I had this worksheet as a kind of backup, but I'm definitely going to go back to the more realistic based for our next session.

Sophie TS #14- Fahad

For my next tutoring session with Fahad I decided to focus on verb tenses, because I noticed in our text messages that that was one thing he could really improve on. I began by just going through the list of all 12 tenses in English, and briefly explained each one and gave an example. For the ones used most often in casual conversations or texting I tried to give a little more explanation and examples for. Then we went through our text conversations, and I had Fahad look for mistakes with verbs and prompted him to fix them. For the mistakes he missed the first time around, I went back and pointed them out and had him do the same thing with the others. Even though it wasn't the most structured exercise, I think we both really liked it because it was realistic and based off of actual conversation. After that I came up with a few sentences off the top of my head and asked Fahad to identify which verb tense I was using. Again, it was informal, but I think it worked for a quick review!

Sophie CP #6- Prius

For my last conversation partner meeting I ended up talking with someone not from FSU or CIES, but an ESL student nonetheless. While in Minnesota I got to meet a man living with my grandmother's neighbor, a man from Cameroon named Prius. He's had quite the journey to get to this little rural area in Minnesota, and it was really interesting to hear him tell it. He was studying to be a preacher, but was suddenly forced to leave the country because of the government. So he escaped, with very little, and ended up in South America. Soon after he left, police came to his house looking for him, and arrested his brother thinking it was him. As far as he knows, his brother is still in prison. He did a lot of traveling on foot to make it to the United States, but finally made it here to seek asylum. Now he's in Minnesota and continuing his studies, living with my grandma's neighbor and two other refugees. All of them are pretty advanced English speakers, as they've been here for several years now. It was really cool to be able to talk to him, and to hear a story firsthand that I've previously only seen in movies and books.

Sophie CP #5- Rayan

My fifth meeting with Rayan was at a Starbucks again, this time after he spent the weekend in Panama City. This ended up in an interesting conversation about regional stereotypes in America, because I had just begun preparing for a vacation in Minnesota, which is a very very different place than Panama City. I told Rayan about how I was born in Minnesota and raised mostly in Maryland and Florida, that the culture was notably different in each of those places, and while I don't think any one is empirically better than the other, I definitely have my favorite (it's Minnesota). I think for the most part Rayan said he had really only travelled around the south of the US, so I did my best to imitate Maryland and Minnesota accents- an extremely entertaining thing to witness. I also talked about the stereotypes of each place- which ones I've experienced to be true and which ones I don't understand. I've never been to Panama City so Rayan described it to me, it kind of sounds like a southern version of Ocean City, MD. We talked about some things that are very common here in Tallahassee, and Panama City as well, that are sort of token southern things, but also how Tallahassee feels less stereotypically southern than other parts of Florida because of the diverse population that FSU and the capital bring to the area. I think we both have similar views on stereotypes, that they obviously come from some little bit of truth, but also that they're never really hard rules either.

Sophie CP #4- Rayan

My fourth conversation partner meeting with Rayan occurred after a weekend where he travelled to Alabama with his friends who took the IELTS exam that weekend. We talked about the differences between the IELTS and the TEFL, and I shared what I had learned about them both in class so far- the differences/similarities, and which one people tended to prefer based on their native languages. He told me his friends think they did well, but Rayan jokingly told me he's not so sure about them. Like Fahad, I think he's also more nervous about the writing portion than anyone else, which makes sense because he also comes from an Arabic-speaking country. Also like Fahad, he's at a much higher speaking level than writing- compared to some other students I've interacted with at CIES who spoke something other than Arabic as their first language, who are generally not as good (or confident) at speaking, but seem a little better at grammar and writing. And of course all of this falls in line with what we've learned in class! Or it's just a good ol' case of confirmation bias. Anyways, if I'm remembering correctly, Rayan says he's planning on taking the IELTS exam over the TOEFL!

Sophie TS #13- Elia

For our final meeting, Elia and I read more of Alice in Wonderland for almost the entire time. He must have really enjoyed it because every time I asked if he wanted to do something else or keep reading he always stuck with Alice. So we did the same thing as the last two times with the book, but I tried to go a little more in depth with some of my explanations. I also touched on some grammar concepts, so that even if he doesn't remember exactly what they are they'll at least hopefully be familiar to him if they come up again. I explained punctuation, especially the idea that quotation marks mean the words inside of them are being spoken by someone directly, instead of just part of the narration. Towards the end of our session, even if Elia wasn't tired of reading yet, I was, so I switched to explaining parts of speech. I still used Alice in Wonderland, by using words from the book as examples, and by choosing words and asking him to identify which part of speech they were.