Katie TS #6

Today I tutored Ahmed and Mohammed again. I begun by asking them about their weekends. Mohammed went to the Smokey Mountains with his uncle and cousin. He said they stayed in a cabin and hiked a little bit. Ahmed said that he hung out with friends but it wasn't a special weekend. We watched an episode of Friends with English subtitles. Mohammed said that this is the first time he has ever watched a tv show in English without Arabic subtitles. I told Mohammed that this is good practice because he will focus on listening to the dialogue instead of just reading text. The text is there as visual aid only and it is useful if they don't understand a word, they can pause the episode and try and figure out the word in context or look it up. I told them this to encourage them to practice effectively on their own. Mohammed had a harder time understanding the main idea of the episode. He found it difficult to ignore details that were not important for the main idea. I told Mohammed to focus on the words that he does know and try and follow the plot as best as possible for next time. Ahmed did a good job understanding the main plot and I described a few more specific words for him and he picked up on the quickly. Ahmed did a very good job understanding the vocabulary in context today. I was excited when Ahmed said that he likes the show a lot and that it makes him want to watch the next episode. He has Netflix so I told him that he should watch some episodes in his free time. Mohammed said that he prefers action shows so I am going to look into action shows and see if I can find one that he might like for next week.