Ganem TP-2

On Saturday, May 28th, I met with Bikir Bircan, Caglar’s roommate for some speaking practice. Bikir explained to me he wanted help learning about common idioms used in American English. He told me about the time he tried to watch a movie on TV but couldn’t understand much of the dialogue because the idioms didn’t make sense to him.

I pulled out my laptop and we searched for idioms online. We found idioms that were new to me as well. One was an expression describing something as “long in the tooth.” This means something is old. It came from the time when people raised horses and they would check their age by measuring how long their teeth had grown. Other idioms we looked at included “piece of cake”, “time flies”, and “burning the midnight oil.”

Bikir felt he learned enough about idioms and wanted to move on to another topic. He wanted help for a practical problem. He explained to me that he and his friends stopped at McDonalds the night before to eat there. At midnight they had finished eating and they went outside only to find that the car they came in got towed. Bikir’s friend had his car towed and they all had to walk home. They were going to meet at the office of towing company to deal with this. When Bikir desrcribed this, he needed to expand his vocabulary. When he described the tow truck, he called it “the car with the hook pulling other cars.”

He asked me to help him explain their situation to the towing company. I coached Bikir to tell the towing company what he told me. They had parked in a part of the lot where there were no handicapped parking signs or signs saying “no parking here.” It wasn’t right for the towing company to tow his friend’s car. I helped him with vocabulary and pronunciation when he phrased the sentences. We then ended the tutoring session and I went home.