My second meeting with Hamad last week went smoothly, though he seemed a little bored. Regardless we were able to cover a lot of ground, and I think both of us benefited from the lesson.
To prepare I'd printed off a couple of academic reading samples from the IELTS website, emphasizing articles with scientific topics and a lot of jargon. Because Hamad wants to study chemical engineering, and because this is currently the area he is weakest in, I figured I could be most helpful by focusing in on this problem area in preparation for his upcoming exam.
We read a challenging article about human skin and its biological functions. In addition to the questions provided by the IELTS prep site, I'd prepared a few questions to ask as we read as comprehension checks. Hamad was dragging his feet a little so I bought him a coffee and reminded him of the importance of these types of passages, however dull, to both the IELTS and his academic future. We read through the article together, with me gauging his comprehension along the way. Hamad was clearly having difficulty with some of the advanced terminology and phrasing, which was admittedly very complex. I asked him to forget about the terminology for the moment and focus on understanding the broader meaning - to just think of the unknown vocab (subcutaneous, collagen, neuroscientist, etc) as placeholders and try to decipher the meaning through structure and context. This was slow going work, but after some time he got a hold of the passage with minimal guidance from me. I then asked him to read through the passage by himself and presented him with the IELTS questions. I read these aloud to him and provided support as we worked through them.
Hamad was doing very well, so I decided to move on and use the rest of our lesson to discuss the homework assignment I was giving him. Hamad had expressed interest in reading some easy-moderate fiction, so I brought a collection of Hemingway short stories from home (The Nick Adams stories). I remember these being a pretty easy and interesting read, so I figured I'd assign a story to read on his own, which we could discuss in our next meeting.
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