Will Stone - TP 5

 

When I met up with Mohammad again at Strozier, I asked how his classes were going. He told me that he was not currently enrolled in English classes, but he was planning on attending classes when the next session started. He explained to me that he wanted to start building his English skills, so that he can better converse with people and read better. Mostly he wanted to work on his speaking skills. We started our session by looking over his workbook pages from the last time we met. I asked if there was anything that he was having trouble with and he explained how he was having a difficult time integrating correct articles into his conversational speech. I had noticed at our previous lesson that he had made a few errors regarding his use of ‘an’ and ‘a.’ He explained that he was having trouble identifying which word to use where, often stumbling in his pronunciation mid-sentence. I flipped through his book to find some activities and found one that dealt with appropriately distinguishing between ‘a’ and ‘an.’ I explained the distinction in terms of how the word sounds in regard to the word it modifies; if the following word began with a vowel sound, you use ‘an’ to break up the double-vowel sound. He seemed to grasp it after we went through a few examples using surrounding items as examples. After we worked through a few of the problems in his workbook and agreed that he would complete them before our next meeting, I asked Mohammad about what he liked to read. He told me that he had read several novels but that he was bogged down by the length and often times he didn’t fully grasp the language use, though he could discern crucial plot points. We talked more about different kinds of reading such as newspapers like my sessions with his sister, Shaykhah. I also suggested comic strips, which he seemed receptive about. We made arrangements for our next meeting, with him promising to come back with more questions and his workbook so that he could go through the problems he found difficult, and I agreed to bring in a sample selection of different reading materials. I have been impressed with Mohammad’s enthusiasm towards learning English and his openness with what he still needs to work on.