Salah TS #10

Salah TS #10 (Adult)

Date/Time:5/4/2015   17:30 - 18:30

Location: Starbucks on W. Tennessee St.

For this tutoring session, I reviewed another of Abdulla's writing samples, again a 5 paragraph essay on the topic of  'Friendship'.  

His essay described how he was still in touch with friends from elementary school (as those bonds were very strong), while friendships he had made later in life (from work situations) weren't as strong.  He hypothesized that work friends usually came together, only if there was some perceived mutual benefit.

We covered transition words such as 'although' and 'however' and he referred to a list of such words, given by his teacher.  We also covered words that can be used at the beginning of paragraphs, ex: firstly, secondly, thirdly and 'in conclusion'.

I pointed out to Abdulla that he sometimes didn't differentiate general vs specific ideas.  For example, 'the students' instead of 'students'; working 'at part-time' vs 'part-time' etc.  He also used the word 'the' where it wasn't needed.  On occasion, he might write 'in the class' instead of 'in-class' for example.        

Finally, Abdulla struggled whenever he tried to translate from an Arabic sentence form into English, as the verb, subject arrangement is often different.

I learned that this is a common problem amongst Arab speaking students.