David-tp6

6/4/2012

I went to the FSU library to meet Majdi for a tutoring session and he had said ahead of time that we needed to go over his homework.  When I got there I grabbed my usual cup of Starbucks and called him to see where he was.  He told me he was on the first floor, I looked around and no Majdi to be seen.  I called him back about five minutes later telling him that I could not find him.  I asked him to meet me at the Starbucks and within a couple minutes he emerged from the stairwell and we walked down to Scholar commons on the bottom floor of the library.  We sat down in a private study room that he had rented.  The first thing that I did after that was spill my coffee all over me, thank God it was iced.  After cleaning up and a little embarrassment we started the tutoring session.

He had homework that was basically answering questions having to do with personal information that he had to answer in complete sentences.  We went over every sentence and I used the CIES rubric provided to correct his work and giving him a general location of the mistake rather than pointing it out directly.  For the most part I wanted him to figure out what was wrong with the sentence.  I wasn't sure how this was going to go over with him because of his relatively low level in English, but ended up being glad that I provided the opportunity.  At first he wasn't really able to spot the mistakes but it gave us a point to talk about why it was wrong.  Soon after that he was understanding more and spotting several of the mistakes himself which was really encouraging to me and satisfying to him because it meant that he didn't have to rely on me every time to point out corrections.

Upon completion of his sentences we went to a fill in the blank sentence sheet that looked like it came for a workbook.  We went through this exercise and I really only tried to intervene when he didn't have a clue.  Overall I am really seeing his English improve, which is really awesome to see.

Lastly, we used a picture dictionary that he had with him, to go over and learn the parts of the body.  After we had spent  time explaining all the different parts the dictionary had listed, I quizzed him on all the parts till he had a firm grasp on the majority of them.  He then asked if we could call it a night because he was tired.  It had been more than an hour so I headed home thinking of the progress that we were starting to make.