Thanks to Ramin's help, I was able to get another tutor partner who will actually have time to meet. Last Friday I met with her at CIES, and spent the time learning who my new partner is. I also used the time to see where Merve needed help the most (I have created a speaking lesson as a result of this meeting). Her speech is quite fluid, she just has trouble pronouncing English sounds accurately.
Merve is from Turkey and actually knows three other Turks and classmates at CIES who also decided to come to Tallahassee to learn English (One of these others is my conversation partner, Ohnurhan from Turkey). She plans on taking the TOEFL exam in December.
Because it was our first meeting, I had no lesson planned, but I saw that she needed help with speaking, I helped her with pronunciation with the difficult consonant sounds in English; such as: p, th, sh, b, and z. Then we moved to the different vowel sounds (English vowels are difficult because their are no accent marks). The lesson was finished with a discussion of syllables and my attempt at accurately pronouncing Turkish sounds (I hope Merve feels more confident in her-self after she sees that we all struggle with new sounds).
I'm glad it worked out Daniel. It may be new for a Turkish student to work individually with a male tutor, so keep this in mind. I look forward to reading future posts!
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