TS # 16

This was my very last tutoring session with PJ! I was definitely sad for it to be so, for I truly loved meeting with PJ and being able to understand his needs and limits in reading and reading comprehension. Fortunately, this last meeting with PJ was absolutely by far our best tutoring session together. Ms. Kim gave me the reading material to go over, which was a short story about the Wright Brothers, the American brothers who essentially created what became the modern airplane. I showed PJ a short video of old footage of the Wright brothers trying to launch their first place. He definitely seemed interested, and even started discussing plane engines. For this session, we read the short story about the Wright brothers and again I stopped PJ every few lines to recall and recap together what was learned. After doing so, we started working on a crossword puzzle that relates to the names or words used in the story. PJ was so excited to complete the puzzle-- particularly so because he was recalling the answers by himself very quickly. He focused more on this task than on any other reading comprehension task that we had gone over together. This result truly affirmed my general understanding of PJ's strengths and weaknesses in reading comprehension. PJ is such an intelligent child, but he only fully applies all of his intelligence when he is fully engaged in a topic or when he fully understands it. This is why I have been going over stories with him much more slowly and encouraging him to concentrate on each small portion of the story. Usually during our sessions, we go over various readings and worksheets, but for this successful last session, we only went over the one story. And it was phenomenal. PJ was focused and was recalling information very quickly. I definitely will miss PJ and tutoring him, and I hope the best for his reading future!

TS # 15

This session was my last session with Ahmed! I've gotten very close to Ahmed over the past few months, for I met with him as both a tutor and as a conversation partner. I got to learn a lot about his life, family, goals, and of course about his English language skills. Ahmed really wants to learn English and is extremely intrinsically motivated. This has been obvious in all of our interactions with each other. During this session, Ahmed wanted to go over verb tenses and he brought in some worksheets and his journal from his class. We decided on one specific and simple sentence and then modified it for each different verb tense. I went over various examples for each verb tense, and made sure to ask him multiple times if he was grasping the differences between the verb tenses. I later asked him to create sentences, each of which using a different verb tense. We went over these together, and I answered any further questions he had. The rest of our session was just us chatting with each other. It was a very nice meeting and I was glad to have met him.

TS # 14

This tutoring session was my last one with Sore! It was a bittersweet ending. We met again at the Sweet Shop where we had met previously. About half of the time was actually us chatting with each other (in English, of course!). Whenever we chat, I be sure to correct her pronunciation, for she asks me to do so constantly. Even during conversations, if she finds that she is pronouncing a word incorrectly, she writes down the word and the phonetic spelling and looks over and practices it later. The rest of the time I had Sore read a short story out loud to me and then we discussed certain aspects of the story that she seemed troubled with every few paragraphs. We then chatted some more before saying bye! We planned to meet each other sometime soon. :)

TS #13

I met Ahmed at Dunkin' Donuts on Tennessee Street for this tutoring session. I suggested where to meet. I actually really hate Dunkin' Donuts, but I wanted to introduce it to Ahmed, for he had never been before. I explained to him why I didn't like it, which is because it is one of the overwhelmingly prominent corporate food chains throughout the United States. I explained to him a little about the perspective against these unhealthy and unoriginal chains that exists among the U.S. population. Corporate companies are certainly, unfortunately, a big part of American culture. This was able to lead into a pretty interesting tutoring session. Ahmed is interested in working in business when he goes back to Saudi Arabia. He actually wants to learn English so that he could be a better candidate for better business jobs. Again, Ahmed wanted to focus on vocabulary, so we discussed vocabulary relating to the business realm. And, again, after we wrote some new words that he didn't know and I explained them to him, we wrote samples sentences containing those words. I later asked Ahmed to write his own sentences with some of the words, and corrected any incorrect grammar. A pretty fun lesson!

TS # 12

For this tutoring session with PJ, Ms. Kim suggested that I find some reading material for PJ online on my own. I found this to be actually a very helpful task for me as a tutor, for I will certainly have to utilize online resources in the future when in search of reading materials for tutors. I decided on a short story about the history of chocolate in the United States. The story revolved around Milton Hershey, the founder of Hershey Chocolate company. I showed PJ a video of chocolate being made in a chocolate factory, and this certainly seemed to intrigue him. Now that I understood how PJ best learns, I again made sure to read the story with him slowly and made sure to stop every couple of lines in order to recap and recall together what we had just read. We spent almost all of the whole session reading this story and completing comprehension questions prior. I would ask PJ fundamental questions about the story multiple times-- not because I didn't think he would grasp it, but because he never seemed to want to make the effort to grasp it. This seemed to awaken him and force him to pay attention to the fundamental ideas of the story.

TS #11

For this tutoring session with PJ, Ms. Kim of course provided me with reading materials and worksheets to go over with him. For this session, we read together a book about police officers. First, I showed PJ a video about what a police officer keeps on his belt. I remember PJ mentioning that he knew all of this already-- haha-- and so we moved on to another video about police officers' daily lives. We then began reading the story, which discussed all of the things police officers encounter every day, their duties, their critical responsibilities, their closeness with death at times, etc. At times when PJ is really engaged in something, he begins to talk nonstop! I love it when he does that, for I feel that he is really alert and engaged with the material. I usually have to stop him at some point, but I bring up some of the things he talks about in relation to the story and the comprehension questions. This usually seems to keep him interested in the reading material!

TS # 10

For this tutoring session, I met with Ahmed at Strozier library. We began the session by chit chatting about our weeks, and then Ahmed pulled out his vocabulary journal. Again, Ahmed is very interested and motivated to learn more vocabulary. He seems to have a good grasp on fundamental English grammar and sentence structure, and his pronunciation is not bad at all. Of course, we try to practice all of these while together, but Ahmed seems to feel that I can help him best with explaining new vocabulary words and offering example sentences and contextual uses for them. We always use Google Translate to translate a word in English that he does not know into Arabic. This of course is extremely helpful. At the end of vocabulary sessions with Ahmed, I usually ask him to write down a few new sentences with some of the words we just used. This way, he can attempt to use the new vocabulary words and as well he is forced to construct a grammatically correct sentence. If there is a problem with the grammar or structure, we correct it together.