Will Stone - TP 9

Mohammad and I met up at directly at the Johnston building. I arrived early and checked out a study room. After a few minutes of waiting Mohammad showed up and we started working. We had already agreed to continue working out of his workbook, me explaining the exercises, walking him through an example and then guiding him through the activities. We went over possessive adjectives and proper sentence structure. Mohammad had mentioned that he sometimes had a difficult time forming certain ideas in English that indicated possession, specifically the distinction between ‘my’ and ‘mine.’ It took me a second to figure out how to explain the difference. After a minute, I offered up that the word ‘my’ possession as an adjective, whereas ‘mine’ is typically more of a state of being which is indicative of being possessed. He stared at me for a minute before I elaborated further. I pointed at a pen and said that it is my pen. I told him to pick it up, so he would be holding my pen. Then I took it from him and told him that it was mine. I was not trying to be disrespectful, but illustrate how both words functioned. he seemed to grasp it better and we talked about how he could slowly begin to incorporate it into his vocabulary. I asked him if there were any other workbook pages that he would like to work on. He picked out a few he had been working on but seemed generally disinterested in workbook activities. I suggested that we just try practicing conversation topics. So for about fifteen minutes or so, we discussed how to approach friends and aquaintances with small talk like ‘how was your day?’ or ‘what are you doing later?’ The colloquial nature through him off a little bit, as he was used to more formal conversation but towards the end he seemed to pick it up. I told him that the best way that he could practice these skills would be to hang out somewhere friendly like the CIES lounge and just try to start conversations with strangers or people he knew. he was receptive to this idea. I asked him about our next session and he said that he would be gone for the weekend and that he would contact me when he returned from Tampa.