Olumayowa TP-1

Last Thursday, I went to my conversation partner Baraaa's house because we were going to smoke at Alladins Shisha Cafe but he was busy with his homework so our hangout turned into a tutoring session. The assignment was for his reading class and was mostly assigned days ago but Baraaa ended up only getting to it right before the due date and was sorta freaking out because he did not understand much of what he had to do. As he avoids me and skips class some of the time, I've already come to understand that Baraaa does not enjoying learning English very much even though he needs to in order to go to University. I think this is made worse by the fact that his cousins speak English on a much higher level and were at his house basically doing his homework for him because it is so basic to them. When I got there, Roy and Roger let me help him out in a way that made him do most of the thinking himself, though Baraaa still tricked me into handing him the answer a few times. The first assignment was really cool idea that I'd like to use in a reading class someday, it was a Reading log that requires students to listen to a song in the English language and analyze the lyrics to determine the main idea of the song and to classify the lyrics as Verbs, Adverbs, Nouns, etc. Though it stressed him out, it was very calming for Baraaa to listen to one of his favorite songs by Nora Jones and probe it for the main idea, so now he knows what he means when he is singing along to it. Yes, he was singing along to it! Words and all! Helping with this exercise helps me understand how music might slowly (and discreetly) build pronunciation and receptive vocabulary, I know a tiny bit of Spanish from the music I listen to. Hopefully I can incorporate music when my Listening lesson plan comes along. Going through that exercise was a real eye opener, I really need to learn my grammar! When classifying the words by grammar, Baraaa expected me to be a genius when I knew much less than he, Roy or Roger. We also did another Reading log that asked Baraaa to choose any article so I found one called "Alligators Drift into Canals Near Homes" on Voice of America that he could understand, I actually picked the same story for my Reading lesson plan because Baraaa found it really interesting. He went way past the minimum when filling out the Reading log. I wonder if there is a way to keep him excited about learning English, or if there was a point where he really was enthusiastic about it. I guess only time and perseverance can tell.