Zachary Backes - TP 9

6/23/12

Today was my third meeting with Maud, I'm counting this as a Tutoring session because when I contacted him I asked if there was anything specific he wanted to work on or discuss and he said he wanted to review some after the TOEFL. We decided to meet at the sweet shop, which worked out since I was going to take Talal to Soul Veg later in the day anyway and that was in biking distance (Talal and I both found we like Biking).

When I showed up about 10min late and found Maud sitting at a table I felt really embarrassed, I had gotten used to "Arab Time" which is what Faisal and Talal call the phenomenon of why a majority of people from the Arab world show up about 30min late for everything. I had heard the term from some of my relatives, my aunt (by marriage) who is Lebanese and my cousins, but I had never really experienced it until I started hanging out with these kids. Both Faisal and Talal have shown up over 30min late to our meetings so regularly that I've begun to plan around it. When the movie I want to take them to starts at 3:00 I say we should meet for food at 2:00.

Apparently, Maud does not subscribe to this mentality and my assumption that he did was now making me look like quite the fool. luckily he is a really cool guy and didn't seem to make much of my tardiness (or he just saw that I biked there and took pity on the poor fool riding in the Florida heat). When I settled into the booth across from him I noticed he had brought his backpack and already had a notebook out and ready.

Now fully regretting exchanging my school books and laptop for an extra set of clothes and my biking gear I ordered us some tea and asked where he would like to begin. We didn't waste much time. Starting with writing, which was his self admitted weak point, we reviewed his notes and handouts from his writing class. Spelling was truly the crux of his writing problem, He understood most of the grammar concepts but his spelling is highly phonetic (not a surprise seeing as Arabic almost completely phonetic). When to use a C instead of an S for the "Sss" or using double vowels in plurals like "Historees".

This is when I wonder how any of us learned English in the first place. Our Graphemes (The written symbols of a language) rarely match our Phonemes (Units of meaningful sound in a language). Maud is a pretty advanced English speaker but his spelling is handicapped because he thinks phonetically when trying to transcribe the sounds he hears. we native English speakers have spent years recognizing the pattern of our language and know that the C's in "Concept" create two different sounds based on where they are placed in the word. Maud writes "Concept" as "Konsept". This most likely has to the with the transliterations he has experienced up till now.

In Arabic the symbols of a sound take on many shapes based on where it is located in the word, unlike English. However, apart from the vowels which can represent both a consonant and a vowel sound, all the consonants refer to the same sound (this does change depending on regional dialects). So when an Arabic student is trying to learn English they are told the ك ("Kah") is represented by the "K" symbol. Actually, we all learned in school that you can also accomplish that sound by using "cc", "c", and "ch". Don't believe it? Reread that sentence.

I told him the best thing to do was to try and read more written English, I wrote down some names of books for him like "The Pearl" by Stienbeck, "The Great Gatsby" by Fitzgerald, the translated "Persepolis" by Marjane Satrapi. And to keep a log of the new graphemes he discovers, and to work on recognizing the patterns of where and when the symbols create different sounds.

He seemed pleased by the time we finished up and asked if we could keep meeting after the session was over, I told him absolutely. Totally felt like I passed a test. Looking forward to the next meet.