Stephanie_TS#5

Last Saturday, I tutored Anwer at the Starbucks across from CIES. It was my first time meeting him, so I wanted to assess his English skills. Anwer is at a level 4, he speaks very well and even though he makes a few mistakes, he is able to go back and correct his own errors. Anwer is from Baghdad, Iraq. He is very passionate about his country and everything it has achieved, and wants to start a video campaign to educate FSU students about Iraq. Anwer says the only things we know about Iraq are the things we see and hear in the media. He showed me this really interesting video called the Iraq Project – and everything was in English. It was a video of a man surveying random people all over Canada to see how much they knew about Iraq (turns out people really do not know much about Iraq unless they are from there). Anwer also showed me a few articles about Iraq that he has been using to practice his reading and grammar skills. He says that he really does not enjoy the reading activities that his CIES teacher gives him, but enjoys leisure reading because he gets to choose the subject. We annotated the articles together and he said he thinks that is really going to help him in the future because reading comprehension is what he finds the most difficult. I told him to summarize one of the articles about Iraq and send me what he wrote over email. He did, and I sent him back my proofread version of it. He was very grateful and I think we might keep this system going for a while. I help him with his grammar and he teaches me about Iraqi culture!