Juliette TS#5

I met Saeed for the third time in the study rooms at his apartment complex. His Ielts test is in two weeks and he wants to work on his speaking and writing. Today we worked on speaking. We recorded him speaking into his phone while I asked him prompts from sample Ielts speaking tests. After we recorded two minutes, we stopped and reviewed the recording. We would go through line by line and correct his mistakes. When I heard a mistake, I would repeat the sentence back to him and stress the part of the sentence where the mistake was made. Sometimes this would make him produce the right answer. When he still could not figure out the mistake, I would guide him by saying things like "Is that the right tense for this sentence?" or "What rules do we know for singular pronouns?". After a bit of coaxing, Saeed could often correct his speech. We recorded the answers to five different prompts. I noticed that Saeed does not monitor his speech at all. Also, during a minute of recording he might have thirty seconds of "uhm" or silence. I really question his ability to pass the Ielts, especially because it is so soon. I suggested writing down and memorizing certain phrases so that during test time he at least has some common phrases that will be grammatically correct. I wrote down a few common phrases for his introduction speaking portion. However, he seems to be more focused on making his sentences complex to receive more points even though I do not think he is ready for this level of speech yet.