David-tp5

5/25/2012

Before International Coffee I met with Majdi to go over his presentation with him that was for the next day.  From many of the blogs that I have read on this site it seems to be an often occurrence when tutees are not telling their tutors that they need help with something till it is almost to late to do anything about it.  I am not sure if this is because they are embarrassed to ask for help (which I doubt is the case with Majdi because he almost tries to demand my time.  On this note I feel as though he might believe that I payed by the University to tutor him...???) or because they like our culture like to leave things for the last minute.  Whatever the reason this is the situation that we were in.

His presentation was for his speaking class (fundamentals) and had to do with wh question words among various topics such as hobbies, personal information, and beginning directional questions.  Hobbies was one of the things that we were concentrating on the most because the concept of what a hobby is was still elusive to him at this point.  Now that he understands the concept of what a hobby is I have had many conversations with him to see what his hobbies actually are.  In his free time he mostly visits family because he has 20 siblings and a large extended family to boot!

Majdi doesn't seem as interested in writing down corrections that I make to his sentences as well which confuses me.  I understand fully that this was a speaking presentation but seeing something visually can help so that he remembers to say many of the right words.  It's almost frustrating because he will make the same mistakes again and again, and despite my persistent correction he does not write them down. I seem to think that writing these corrections down could go a long way to helping him remember something.   Has anyone else experienced this kind of thing with their partner(s)??

Session concluded with us walking to international coffee continuing to go over the phrases that he needed to say for his presentation.

Comments welcome.