Allyce_TP11

                Before I met with Nimah again I made sure to find a legitimate list of TOEFL writing topics. Nimah had reiterated to me several times how important it was to her that she improve her writing skills. I felt that writing on TOEFL prompts could kill two birds with one stone...her writing and vocabulary would improve and she would learn the tricks of the English trade!

                We looked over all the prompts and decided to choose the first one "If you could change one important thing about your country, what would you change? Use reasons and specific examples to support your answer." Not only was this a broad subject but I was genuinely interested to hear Nimah's opinions. For this first timed writing we brainstormed together and made an outline. The whole process was really successful  and Nimah got a lot out of it. I first made her come up with a thesis statement on which she would base her entire essay upon. "In Saudi Arabia students need more degree options in University. More options will allow students to follow their career dreams and have more flexibility through their life." Okay that was a good start! We went through each paragraph step by step and in the process I learned a lot about Saudi Arabia's education system. According to Nimah, once you are in high school you must choose a major such as English, Science, Math etc., and once you have chosen this you cannot change it at the University level so a very limited amount of degrees are offered to you even if you change your interests later on.  

                After the brainstorming session I gave Nimah 30 minutes to write the essay. After her time was up, I looked through it a couple times and circled problem areas and handed it back. We went over the essay together but I let her lead the way and see if she could spot the errors before I corrected it. She identified several of them right away such as spelling or agreements. "I was stressed by the time!" she kept saying every time she found a small mistake but I assured her that was normal and that even native English speakers made these sort of errors during a timed session!  We made a list of corrected vocabulary  (Conclusen vs. Conclusion) and discussed grammatical structures. It is interesting that several of her sentences were not exactly wrong, but sounded awkward in the English language. In the essay she said "Students who study the English language in University..." or "students who study the Biology..." I told her that when describing a student's major we often shortened it to simple "an English student" or "a Biology student."  Knowing these sorts of things help make the paper flow better and improve her conversation skills as well.

                Overall a very good session and she said several times that she liked our tutoring plans so we decided to stick with it next time!