Zachary Backes - TP 3

6/10/12

So today me and Talal met at my house, I had told him to bring any work or study material he wanted to work on. We started by making some lunch, a couple good old American hotdogs (I'm poor alright!), which he actually seemed to enjoy, seeing as he ate 4 himself. I think it was the introduction of hot-sauce and jalapenos that did the trick.

When we sat down to see what he had brought he opened up his binder and showed me some passages he had been given in his reading class and wanted to have me help him get through them. A lot of the words he recognized and could pronounce correctly but couldn't quite remember what they meant. This happens to me all the time in Arabic. Ill see or hear a word and say "Dang it! I should know what that means!"

We focused on trying to pull the meaning from contextual clues. I told him deciphering a word is like trying to find the last piece of a puzzle, you are looking at what surrounds it to try and figure out the shape. Some words just took a little refreshing, like looking at words with affixes and breaking them apart to see what the meant. He is a really quick study, and we made it through both passages with time to spare.

The we started in on some less formal tutoring. He was curios about something he had overheard American women saying. "Why do they say they are 'bitches', bitches are bad I thought." After I calmed my laughing fit down to a point where I was articulate again I told him that I understood how it can be confusing. I grew up with four older female cousins who lived 5 minutes away from my house. Kailin, who is only two years older than me and the youngest of the four was like my second sister. And I vividly remember driving in the car with her on the way to the movies one day and hearing her answer her phone going "Hey bitch, what you been up to?" and ending with "love ya, slut". when i found out she had been talking to her best friend Jessica at the time, my fourteen year old mind was totally thrown for a loop.

I told Talal this story to help him understand that men's utter confusion when it comes to women is universal. But that most of the time you have to listen to the emotions behind the words to understand what is going on. "they are using it Ironically, almost to make fun of the word." I told him. and then I had to go about explaining Irony. Go ahead and try doing that without using the actually word Irony. go ahead, right now. Its not easy. but once he got it we were able to progress. I told him that sometimes, say if a friend plays a very good joke on me, I might act like I am made and call him bad names but if I do it while I'm smiling and laughing with him he knows that I am just joking with him.

I made sure he left with the knowledge that he should never, ever, use that word towards anyone. because even if he or the person he is saying it to are not offended those who over hear him might be. Over all I think it was a fruitful lesson and I am looking forward to the next one.