TS#14 -- Turki

I met with Turki today to help him sort out his presentation. He seemed very tired and distracted, which could have been due to me tutoring him right after he’d finished his CIES classes or because he was not sleeping well since he had to make new sleeping arrangements since his lease had just recently finished. I could tell that Turki was very stressed out about writing his PowerPoint presentation since he wanted to do a good job, but his distraction reminded me of when I would tutor my brother for school. My brother, when he gets tired, becomes very unfocused, and having him complete a task becomes a long drawn out mission. I could tell that Turki simply wanted me to tell him what to write for the entire thing, and I’m pretty sure it had more to do with his unease when it came to writing than laziness. Nevertheless, I continued to give him suggestions and correct grammar mistakes when he would write bullet points for his presentation. Unfortunately, it was impossible to convince him to write in complete sentences, and he would not budge when I tried to have him practice his writing, instead opting for a shortcut by putting a word or two per bullet point, accompanied by a picture. Near the end he made better progress since I got him to write short phrases for his bullet points rather than just stand alone words. This made me really question whether or not I had asked too much of Turki, or whether he was just unwilling to write more because of his difficulty with writing. As a native English speaker it makes me hesitant to push too much, because I initially approached tutoring sessions like a Lit class and overwhelmed some students. That being said, it’s very hard for me to gauge someone’s actual writing skill level when I must compete and compare that to the student’s own perception of their writing skills.