TS#1

My first tutoring session was with a student from Saudi Arabia named MJ.  MJ is a masters student currently studying at Florida State.  He his highly motivated to learn English in order to take full advantage of the opportunities both available at FSU and in the job market.  MJ was very welcoming, treating me to baked sweets and coffee as I walked in the door.  One of MJ’s goals was to improve his writing, so we began by reviewing an essay he had written for one of his classes.  The topic of the essay was the experiences we have at restaurants.  Though his thesis was very clear, a number of grammatical and lexical mistakes sometimes obscured the meanings of his body paragraphs.  One of the “beautiful mistakes” we discussed was a sentence where MJ tried to discuss the complexity of restaurant  menus today.  It was clear he was searching for an idiom but couldn’t find the right one.  In order to fix this mistake, we discussed different ways the sentence could be worded.  MJ Is very interested in learning English idioms that will improve his communication skills, so I promised to think up a list of them for our next session.

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TS #10

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TS #11

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