Matt TP #12

Hamad and I met for the first time last Thursday. Since my tutees headed back to Kuwait last week, I needed a new student to round out my TPs. Hamad will be here over the break and is willing to meet up to 3 times a week, which is perfect for me.
As usual, I wanted to take the first meeting to just get to know each other, which in turn would serve as a diagnostic of Hamad's English. Hamad has been at CIES for three sessions and says he loves living in the U.S. His English is very strong, stronger I think than even his group 3 placement warrants. He puts this fluency down to having watched English movies and television his whole life, claiming he is an avid fan of Western movies. So obviously his listening and speaking skills were well practiced, but as it turned out, his reading skills were comparatively lacking. I was glad to hear this - over the course of my tutoring I've found that reading is sort of my strong suit, the skill I have had the most success and practice in teaching. He said that he especially has trouble with scientific/academic passages, so we tried to find an apropos reading in his textbook to go over together. We read something boring about nut allergies and afterwards I assessed his comprehension, which was surprisingly poor. He missed every question I asked him, even  though he seemed to understand the whole passage while reading. I think it may have just been a fluke in memory on his part, but regardless it was clear his reading needed some work.
To address this, we essentially agreed to focus intensively on reading in our upcoming suggestions. I think part of the problem is that dry, academic-type reading bores Hamad, so I suggested that we work on some short stories or maybe even a novella together. Being at the library, we decided to go try to check out something together but finding something suitable was more difficult than I'd expected, so I told I would bring something with me to our next meeting. I plan to bring this and an IELTS prep book with me next time so we can begin developing a balanced set of reading skills in preparation for his IELTS exam.