Kelsey TS #2

Date/Time: January 24th, 3pm

Location: Hecht House basement

Topic/Skill: Fatimah needs help developing her reading, particularly with understanding vocabulary. She also would like assistance with her writing skills and being able to speak. She wants to be able to understand English in general such as with music and conversation.

Feedback provided to tutee: I found myself restating some of the things she was saying and emphasizing corrections I made to some of her statements. I found that she had a good flow in speaking English but struggled with knowing the correct verb tense to use in some of her sentences. It was good speaking with Fatimah and I got to know her a bit in her progression of learning English. She is from Saudi Arabia and has found that the United States had a lot to get used to such as the up-and-down climates, the food (which she was not particularly fond of), and holidays. I found out that there is a song in English that she likes and suggested she might find it useful to find more music to learn from. I also suggested she interact more with reading samples which might help her develop her reading and writing skills.

Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Some things I learned about Fatimah include that she has two daughters which keep her busy outside of classes. She does a lot of cooking as her favorite food is the traditional Arabic dish, Kabsa. I might be able to implement some things relating to food into our tutoring sessions. She has found that the 1-hour a day of English learning she obtained before coming to the U.S. was not very helpful and she had to basically start from square one when she moved to Tallahassee 1.5 years ago. Fatimah seemed to put special emphasis on presentation, debating, and discussion which are also some things I can include in our sessions to help improve her speaking skills. She has some academic papers coming up and mentioned she could use help with organization and citations as well.