Mary_TP1

My first tutoring session was with a beginning student named Ahmed. I tried to begin with more of a casual and conversational atmosphere to try to get to know him, but he was more interested in jumping right into tutoring. I think this is partially cultural and partially a discomfort with speaking. He expressed a desire to improve his reading and had a passage from his textbook about color. I had him read a paragraph from the passage and I could immediately sense a frustration. I think he was intimidated by the obscure vocabulary terms, so I tried to assist him in finding meaning through context. He wanted to follow the step-by-step instructions to reading suggested in his textbook, but didn’t fully understand them. I went through each step and demonstrated how each is applied to the paragraph he had read. I had him read the rest of the passage and I could discern an improvement. One of the assignments he had from class was to list out terms related to specific genres of music. I was surprised that Ahmed was totally unfamiliar with the concept of classical music. I gave him artists and songs to look up to help him form a better idea of the concept. I found this was a good end to the session because it was more conversational, which helps him with his speaking and feeling more comfortable around me.