Matt TP #7

Yesterday I met with Abdulrahman for our second session. We'd planned to meet at Saif's apartment, but when I got there, some unintelligible dude in boxers answered the door.  I asked him if he knew where Saif was, and after five minutes of mutual confusion, he made a call and reported that Saif was in fact in the hospital. Because the pantless guy's English wasn't very good, I couldn't determine whether or not Saif was OK. I hope he's alright.
Anyway Abdulrahman and I met at Starbucks and I taught the writing lesson I had planned for Saif. I had to make some adjustments to bring it to his level, but actually it went very well. I'd brought a couple of different prompts to choose between -- most of them example TOEFL prompts I'd found online -- but we ended up doing the lesson on the conditional that I'd prepared for class. First I gave a brief outline of the conditional, focusing on 'in-use' examples. Abdulrahman understood quickly, so we moved on to the prompt itself: "If you could live anywhere in the U.S., where would you live? Why?" Abdulrahman chose Miami, and wrote maybe 5 sentences in response. Afterwards we went over it together. His writing was riddled with minor grammar and spelling mistakes, but importantly, he was using the conditional correctly and his meaning was clear. After giving corrections I gave Abdulrahman some more in depth instruction on the conditional. We went over each of the four types, and for each I had him write an example sentence. Once we had covered all four, I quizzed him by giving him just an if-clause ("If I were rich," "If I hadn't been sick," etc.) and asking him to write out a corresponding response. Abdulrahman did well with the present and future probable forms, but struggled with the future improbable and past. These last two may have been somewhat above his level.
The lesson had actually gone pretty quickly, so to finish up I gave Abdulrahman one of the TOEFL prompts and asked him to use the conditional in his response. This time I guided him through the process. He used the conditional well but again his writing needed work. Fortunately as a group 2 student he has plenty of time before he takes the TOEFL.