When I met with Ozan this time I came with a few sites and print outs focused on TOEFL speaking skills and planned on working through a practice section I found online. However, when I came to the student lounge with my plans, Ozan asked if I could help him with a reading assignment from his class that he didn’t understand, so I altered the plan. The article assigned was about the Salem Witch Trials, a brief origin/summary, followed by comprehension questions including TOEFL style exam questions that are definitely a challenge at Ozan’s level. I read the article out loud while he followed with me to model the pronunciation of unfamiliar terms, stopping every few sentences to ask Ozan what had just been said. Sometimes he understood, but given the topic, some terms were especially strange and I had to explain the ideology behind the Puritans and why witchcraft, sorcery, and “dark magic” were in direct opposition to their beliefs. Going over the notion of a witch hunt, insufficient proof and unfair trials based on rumors and the fact that many of these women were nonconformists in society—admittedly a bit of a challenge to explain themes of this nature with a language barrier! Once we had read it and I had Ozan summarize it in his own words, we move onto the multiple-choice questions. This actually took the rest of our time together since the wording of the question (i.e which is NOT true, logical order of events, author’s main purpose, etc.) can be an explanation in itself, so with consistent reference to the text, I could see Ozan appearing discouraged, perhaps worrying about the notion of this in a real exam. I tried to reassure him that exam questions are always mean to be more challenging, even on the SAT that I took, and that it would just take practice with this format to get it down. I did tell him a good test trick in these sections is to look over the questions prior to reading so he’ll know what to look for in the text. Though my TOEFL speaking plan didn’t happen this time, I’m glad we could work on some reading practice.
No comments:
Post a Comment