Last night at the International Coffee Hour, Onur and I collected a bunch of people at our table and I suddenly we were pulling in extra chairs from all directions. I met and had a good conversation with Salma, who is an FSU exchange student from Pakistan, working on her dissertation in media studies. As soon as she discovered I was a writing major studying to be an English teacher, she asked if I could help her with her writing. I agreed to meet with her this morning at her apartment in Alumni Village.
I came today, only aware of the fact that I would focus on writing, but especially with the purpose to obtain a sample of Salma's writing so I could diagnose her level. She was extremely gracious and insisted upon treating me as her guest--she even made me breakfast! I was instantly learning about Pakistani culture without her even speaking about it. We then transitioned into "study time," where I gave her a few minutes to write about any topic--she chose to describe her time at the coffee hour last night. I felt 2 pages would certainly be enough and told her she could stop a the end of the second page.
I then gave her a brief break while I read over her writing--first without marking anything, and then a second time marking only a few consistent errors and responding to content. Compared with the writing samples we "graded" in class, I found Salma's level very high, and would probably place her in Group 3, Level 5.
We then went over the marks together, which took a lot longer than I had anticipated (I was glad I chose to mark only a few things!). Salma then brought out an English learning guide (about as thick as a dictionary), written by a fellow Pakistani. The book was designed specifically to help native Urdu speakers (that is her first language), troubleshooting particular issues Urdu learners struggle with most. She asked what I thought of it, and after thumbing through the Table of Contents, I told her it could be very useful--but only as a reference guide to pinpoint specific issues--memorizing lists would not be helpful, especially at her level.
Based on her writing sample, I found a grammar exercise in her book that I thought would helpful for her (I also wanted to give her practice in how to best utilize this book). This too, took much longer than I expected, and we didn't have time to finish all the examples, but Salma definitely agreed it was good practice, and I encouraged her to finish them on her own.
I wanted to give her an assignment, but was hesitant to burden her with too much work (her dissertation is no doubt time consuming). I told her to compose a second draft of her writing, based on the comments we discussed, and to email it me. I would read it and discuss it with her at the beginning of our next meeting.
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