Ganem TP-4

I met Tugba Batuhhan for Tutoring at the CIES building on June 8^th. She is from Ankara Turkey and is an art history major. I just found out Tugba was assigned as my tutee. I was assigned to be her tutor a week or so earlier and she tried e-mailing me. I was late to respond because she was given the wrong e-mail address and had just gotten the correct one.

I asked Tugba what she wanted to practice for her TOEFL exam. She told me she wanted to practice for the writing portion of the exam. She wanted to practice persuasive writing. She had brought her TOEFL exam book with her. We looked through some writing prompts in her book and she found one she liked. It was a prompt asking the writer whether or not physical education should be a mandatory requirement for students to take in school.

She believed that physical education should be mandatory. I asked her why it should be mandatory. The reasons she gave me were that it teaches skills and values, it gives kids a chance to release energy and have fun, and they also get the chance to celebrate. These responses interested me and I asked her to give examples for each point. For the point about how physical education gives kids a chance to celebrate she used examples from her culture. In Turkey they celebrate Victory Day, Kids/Youth Day. Victory Day celebrates the day Turkey became a free country after its war for independence from 1918 to 1923. To celebrate, the students practice dances in gym class for parades and pageants for the various holidays.

After brainstorming, I showed her how to make an outline for her essay. I asked her if she did this before. She told me she’s never planned an outline for an essay before. I explained that her argument, physical education should be mandatory, was her thesis statement and the three reasons she gave me were her supporting points for each body paragraph. Then she had to give three details for each body. At first she was confused so I had to clarify it for her. I explained that the main supporting argument for each body paragraph was like a smaller thesis statement for that paragraph and the details were support for that paragraph. The conclusion paragraph was a restatement of the thesis statement with summaries for the support from the body.

She told me this made sense and made writing essays seem easier. It had been an hour and we both had to go home. She said she would go home,write the essay and bring it back so I could go over it the next time we meet. We then said goodbye and I left campus.