Over the last week I have been able to meet with two women for tutoring and for conversation partners. Tuba, a student from Turkey was assigned to me by CIES as a conversation partner. She is 23 and preparing for her TOEFL exam so that she can go on for her masters in sociology. Right away, we seemed to get along and dove into recording new vocab words into her notebook and talking about her concerns for the exam she will take on the 3rd of December. She has trouble putting together sentences but is able to communicate what she wants to say so that we are able to focus on the missing parts of her phrases. Today, we met for the second time and we talked about her faith, weekend, family and friends. We seemed to be able to pull out a lot of simple lessons from our conversations. Articles and prepositions are difficult for her, she tells me so I will try to bring some work sheets to review with her. She is eager to talk and share her opinions with me and will plan and consider her responses as well as talk with out much second thought.
Radka is from Prague and was assigned to me by the International Center. She is staying in Tallahassee for three months with some friends who are studying at FSU. We met on Friday at All Saints and talked for about an hour and a half about her life in Prague and what she likes to do with her free time. Claude from our class is also tutoring her at the library and she told me he is a wonderful teacher and I believe her. We agreed that our time will be more easy going with vocab and conversation but I will give her homework sometimes and prepare little lessons for any pressing topics. I gave her an assignment for next week to teach me some words in Czech in English. That helps her consider and prepare a topic to talk about in English and gives me to learn some more about her language.
This sounds great Kristen, but remember that you don't have to do assignments and lesson planning with your CP. If you do, you can make them informal and more part of conversation.
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