For my last session with Majdi, we met at the global cafe for international coffee hour before going to his house. Majdi told me that he had TOEFL exercises that he was working on at home so we decided to walk there. Majdi had the reading portion of the TOEFL coming up so I wanted to help him review the material. He said that he felt confident with his answers but he still wanted me to take a look. The passage that he was working on was about an American novelist. The passage was a few paragraphs with 8 multiple choice questions following. I asked Majdi if he could read the passage and he did. I could tell that he had been working hard on the passage to get ready for his exam. One line that seemed to confuse Majdi was “...this novel features a tenacious female protagonist...” He did not know the definition of “protagonist so we went over a few synonyms of the word. We came up with “main character” and “lead character” which seemed to clear everything up. I noticed that Majdi also had everything in his house labeled with sticky notes. I thought this was interesting and a very good way to learn through immersion. We finished his lesson and then I told Majdi that I will be leaving town the next day. He was not too thrilled but I told him that we could keep in touch and we both wished each other the best of luck in the future. Majdi was not one of my original TPs but I am glad that I got to start meeting with him. He taught me a lot about his culture and I feel as if I helped him a lot with his English.
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