Allyce-TP4

                My second tutoring experience with Ahmad was very different from the first. I originally did not have a session scheduled with him on Thursday and had only planned on tutoring Hassam however Ahmad found me in the CIES lounge and seemed incredibly worried. He explained that he got a perfect score on his last quiz that I helped him study for (which he had never managed to do before) and really needed my help studying for his next one on Friday. After trying to figure out where I could squeeze him in during my already packed day (work, tutoring, class) we decided to meet immediately after my TEFL class at 7:15 in front of the library.

                His test the following day was on capitalization, punctuation and simple present tense.  He was given a worksheet with a bunch of pictures illustrating a man going through his morning routine of drinking coffee, cleaning the dishes, etc and Ahmad had to write a sentence describing what was going on.  As he worked on his punctuation/capitalization homework which he had already mastered, I went through and did the homework for myself so that I would have the correct answers with me, I quickly realized that there were multiple correct answers based upon the vagueness of some of the pictures and also simply because one could state an action in a variety of ways.  The activity turned out to be a bit of a struggle and was only a precursor for the rest of the night. Between Ahmad's limited English and my inability to explain why (or simply why there is no pattern) to some conjugations, it was a bit of a struggle. At one point I must have looked very frustrated and he apologized, I quickly explained that I was not mad at him but simply at a loss to explain some of the rules, I told him that memorization was the key for irregular conjugations and eventually he resigned himself to this fact. However, I refused to give up and labored with him over the various rules until finally he began to get all my practice questions right...as far as I know he did very well on his test!

                Overall, this was my first difficult tutoring session and I think I learned a lot from it:

                1. Patience is key

                2. Make sure to read your students notes and textbook instructions to make sure that you are teaching it the way he learned in class

                3. Stay positive! It will rub off on you and your student.