I met with Yasin today, which is not an uncommon occurrence. Yasin is my sister's boyfriend and he's from Turkey (go figure!). I see him all the time, but this was the first time that I considered actually sitting him down and tutoring him in English. By some crazy coincidence, he is actually good friends with Baha's uncle, who lives in Jacksonville. So Baha has met my sister and successfully drawn a connection between my life in Tallahassee and my life in Jacksonville. Therefore, I thought it would be perfectly fitting to tutor him for this course.
Yasin has been in the States for about 5 years now. He came here and began to find work wherever he could. Now, he has a moving company with his brother and they make decent money. Yasin always tells me how important it is to make money, usually after he talks to me about college. The thing is, he's very smart and if he dedicates some time to learning more proper English (he's very good at spoken English), I think he would do great in a university.
It took some convincing to get him to agree to this proposition. I think he may feel weird about someone younger teaching him. I told him just to think of it as an exchange of knowledge. I suggested that maybe he could teach me and my sister some Turkish at the same time.
We started with a simple reading from Time for Kids. I had him read it out loud then one more time silently. Afterward, I told him to write a summary of 2 or 3 sentences. I am trying to get him to focus on reading and writing in these sessions because those are his weak points.
No comments:
Post a Comment