Olumayowa CP-6

This was the most stressful CP meet that I've ever had, because it was more of a TP meeting and I was the student being tutored. At Tea Time yesterday, I was again ditched by my partner Baraaa so I got out the Arabic children's book that I studied for my reading log "Mami Wata and the Monster" and asked my friend Roger from Saudi Arabia to help me with a small portion. I expected him to help me translate a few sentences and leave but Roger helped me read the book step-by-step like a real teacher would, I guess from his own personal experience learning to read at CIES.

I went through the emotional process of an Intensive reading and he handled me just fine, allowing me time to try pronouncing the words and then stopping me at the end of the harder sections to ask if I understood the meaning/main idea; a lot of the time, I was so stressed that I wanted to give up but Roger was actually interested in the activity and continued to encourage me to read on. The book was actually helpful for Roger because in explaining some vocabulary words to me in Arabic he had to learn them first in English, so we had a lot of hand miming and crude descriptions during this session. Together we learned the meanings of : tears, cry, gently, growl, hide, invite, invent, and decide.

Sometimes when helping my TP with his reading, my attention might drift off a little or I might forget to give him a high-five for understanding something significant, but after a great tutoring session with Roger I feel like patience and reinforcement are incredibly important for morale. I kept getting a "Great Job!", and even when he had to disappear for a few minutes he called his twin brother Roy to help me out and he did just as good a job. Though I still need to go through the book again and write down the Vocabulary words I recently learned, conjugate them, pronounce them, and then write sentences, I walked out of that session feeling like a million dollars and still feel as competent. I will be a fluent speaker someday!