Stephanie_TS#2

On Wednesday, I tutored Saleh at the Starbucks across from campus. It was my first time meeting with him, so I wanted to assess his English. We spoke a lot and got to know each other, and I got a jist of his English skills. Saleh speaks well and has great interpersonal skills, the only thing he really needs to work on his his grammar. He is having some trouble with pronouns, so I tried to ask him a lot of personal questions to practice "me", "I", "myself", "mine", and "my". I learned that Saleh is from Kuwait and really likes soccer, so I am planning on getting some soccer books at the library for him in the future. Saleh brought his homework with him to Starbucks and we worked on the questions that his teacher had marked wrong. Most of them were understanding the difference between "their" and "there". I explained to him that "their" is an adjective pronoun, and "there" is a place. We did multiple examples, I gave him a few and then I asked him to give me a few sentences with both "their" and "there". I used positive reinforcement whenever he got something right by telling him he's doing great or clapping, and tried to make the examples personal and interesting to promote meaningful learning. I told him to keep practicing "their" and "there", and the next time we meet, we can practice it again. Saleh also asked me what "elaborate" means because he sees it written on his teacher's corrections, so I told him what it means to provide details and personal examples. I would ask him questions like "what did you do today?" and he would answer "I played soccer". I would give him a look or hand gesture like, "go on" and he would give details such as "I went home after my classes were over, and my roommate was home and asked me if I wanted to play soccer. So we met up with our other friends and played a game of soccer. It was very hot outside, so we had to drink a lot of water". By the end of the session, he said he felt a lot better about using pronouns and elaborating. Saleh is taking the IELTS this weekend in Tampa, and is nervous about it so I told him if he needs anything, to call or text me and we can go over some more examples/definitions over the phone.