C. Smith - TP # 3

Yesterday I drove over to Mohammad's house to give an English lesson. I'd tried to estimate his level of English ability the previous time we met at Tea Time at CIES. He hadn't said much, and I worried that he wasn't able to understand what I was saying. It turns out that much of the reason for his lack of understanding had to do with the background noise and crowd instead.

I had made a simple lesson teaching articles, prepositions, and counting from 1-100, but when I got there he asked me to help him practice pronouncing words for the upcoming quiz on Monday. We did that and then took a break to have lunch. He made a spicy dish with chicken, cashews, and rice, and we also ate the potato and carrot and raisin salads I brought over. After having some coffee, I then gave him some advice on how to prepare four paragraphs for an essay about himself. We used google.com's translation service to translate between Arabic and English when there was a word I could not explain clearly.

He has had some training with writing English but hasn't had much of a chance to speak it. When we were writing the paragraphsI drew his attention to the mistakes in his sentences and explained why they were mistakes, and then taught him a correct pattern to use instead (e.g., "I live [in] Tallahassee"). He was very appreciative and asked me to continue helping him on the weekends,which I will be very happy to do. Next week he informed me he wants to practice present continuous, so I'll prepare a lesson to teach that grammar point. I still have an old copy of American Streamline, so I might draw upon a lesson from that for inspiration.