Trisha TS #1

I met with Turki at Catalina at Cascades Park for our first tutoring session. I was so glad to finally meet with him because we had trouble contacting each other in the beginning. I was focused on needs assessment for the first meeting. We met at a quiet coffee shop because I felt the ambiance was nice and wanted to use this opportunity to be welcoming as well. I asked Turki how he felt about meeting there and asked him his preference, which he seemed to have none and was very easy going and nice. He immediately started saying he wanted help with the IELT in reading and writing. I wasn't surprised because his conversational skills were very good. I assumed he was high intermediate based on his pronunciation and I didn't have to modify my speech at all in casual conversation with him. I asked him to show me reading material he had and writings he was working on to get a better idea. He wanted to show me IELT first so he showed me a sample test and explained to me what was difficult for him in the test: reading and writing. I told him that I would contact Professor Kim for IELT tutoring specifically. He was very insistent on going through the entire sample test and so I listened to what his concerns were and clarified, telling him I was going to take notes. He showed me an essay he wrote and had to re-submit and asked me to go over it with him. I asked to see the teacher's comments so that I would know the level of which to correct his work on. When I would give examples or try to explain things to him, i.e. what pray and prayer mean/how they are different, I would ask him if I was making sense and added humor that this is my first tutoring session and that I promised I would get better. We both laughed. Overall, he seemed to understand what I would explain to him and corrected most of his paper (based on the teacher's comments) and thanked me over and over for helping him and giving him for information.