Alexandra TP 11

TUTORING PARTNER 11 – Ahmed, Meeting 3

Our second consultation on Ahmed’s writing preparation for the TOEFL was a two-hour lesson to intended to expand upon some of the concepts we have talked about before as well as introducing him to a few other key ideas. Fortunately, Ahmed already has a fairly good understanding of varied English sentence structure, which he definitely exhibits in his speaking, and to a lesser extent, demonstrates in his writing. Even when he makes mistakes, it is good to see that he is actively taking risks, though today we tried to play it close to the vest for the TOEFL. The most pronounced weaknesses in his writing appear to be lack of control over transitional devices as well as a lack of control over the use of the definite article. The former was easy to fix by providing him with lists and examples of appropriate and inappropriate transitions, but given the huge disparity between the English and Arabic uses of the definite, this will take much more time to fix, a reality which frustrates Ahmed, a quick learner, greatly. He tended to put “the” before generalized concepts and in places where it was not needed, and by pointing out these instances, I think he has at least a slightly better grasp of at least when to not use “the”.
Ahmed also tended to use the word “you” in his essays, which given the formality of what will be demanded from him on the test, is not entirely appropriate. We worked together to the concept of “one”. I had a slightly awkward time explaining to him how “one” works in conjugation, particularly since I had never heard a formal explanation of how to use it myself, but we soon discovered that it conjugates much like “he”, and within a few minutes he was capably writing sentences substituting the word “you” for “one”. Though Ahmed is always eager to learn and accept changes, I believe that this is one of the most serious errors I found in his writing since it detracted from his otherwise good ideas.
Ahmed needs to be as specific as possible in his writing, and should try to use “he or she” structures to avoid potentially offending any female graders, (which, though I realize might seem somewhat silly at times, he fully understood). We also began finding alternatives to avoiding using the word “stuff” and the importance of avoiding vagueness. Ahmed grasped this right away and began replacing them in real-time as we reread his essays together. Given his work ethic, I’m confident that with reinforcement and with continued work on the definite vs. the indefinite, Ahmed’s writing, which shows good promise, will become stronger rather quickly.