Zachary Backes - TP 6

6/16/12

One thing I really like so far about the tutoring experience is the flexibility the one-on-one format affords you. Because you are not tailoring your ideas of teaching to match a broad group of diverse individuals, but instead developing them around a single learner your options are a lot more open. When I'm working with Talal I try and think of what a guy my age, living in a foreign city learning a foreign language, can reasonably do while also taking on a full course load and a part time job. So I've been focusing on thinking of practical exercises that can be done in multiple settings.

Today I told him we were going to go get some food and see a movie. So we met at the Tallahassee Mall and I took him to the court. We got Sbarro and started off just chatting about the couple days since we last met. I apparently missed a crazy soccer match on Friday. As we were finishing our meal I took a second to canvas the area and picked out a few likely targets. We were positioned at double table in almost the center of the court, we had the circular bar seating behind us, occupied by a family of four. Our left held a table with a couple finishing off a couple of burgers, two tables to our right sat a group of about 6 high school kids. The cour was pretty noisy but there was still enough range between us and the groups to make out bit of conversation. My plan was to have Talal play the eavesdropper and try and pick up as much of the conversations around him as he could.

While I explained this to him I produced one of my old Molseskin Journals, I had taken out the used pages and there was  still about half the book left blank. I gave him a pencil and told him that for the next couple minutes I wanted him to just eat and listen to the conversations around him. Then, start jotting down phrases or words he recognized. He seemed to pick up on what this was about right away and was smiling when I handed over the notebook. He ended up guessing more than I had intended because after a few minutes he was reporting back main topics of conversation and even his assumptions about the people based on what they said and how they said it. I had been keeping a ear out for the conversations as well and besides the group oif highschoolers, whose incoherant  mix of giggles, guffaws, and slangs neither of us could really decipher, wHe picked up on a lot more than i expected.

He noticed that the family was going to a movie because the mom kept asking the father what time it was. That the couple didnt really like the movie they had just seen (I really don't think anyone goes to this mall for anything but movies and loitering) and that she had a girl in her class that she really did not like. He was marking the number of times she said "bitch" in his notes which made me about fall out of my chair laughing. After we were done I told him to keep the notebook and use it to practice his eavesdropping (a term I had to explain a bit before it made sense). I warned him that he needed to be "very very sneaky" and not look like he was trying to listen in on other peoples conversation because that was considered rude in our culture. But tI couldnt think of a better way to help increase listening skills, especially extensive listening, then out in the world where he will actually have to utilize these skills.

We went to see the Avengers afterwards and I think he enjoyed the activity. I told him the book would also be helpful to write down words he might want to look up, and he said he liked that idea. But, first i had to give him some more band names to listen to. Now I just have to think of something for our next meet.