Mark B. TP #4

On Friday afternoon, I again met with one of my tutees, Marco. I've noticed the warm, friendly rapport we are beginning to build. It may stem from his strong desire to improve his English or his propensity to laugh at anything I say, but I think it's because of our similar names. Birds of a feather, you know...

Speaking of his language skills, I am consistently amazed by how well Marco speaks English. He speaks with a level of comfortability that I have rarely heard while conversing with the CIES international students. I don't mean to question, but it perplexes me that he's in the Foundations English class. But, of course, learning a language is a multi-facetted process.

In lieu of developing his reading comprehension, I decided to guide him through an active vocabulary lesson. By active, I mean that we walked through campus and he pointed out objects that needed explanation. For example, Marco thought a bench was called a chair. I explained that a bench is a long chair that's outside. "Isn't that a sofa?" he replied. "No, sofas are comfortable," I clarified. By the hour's end, we covered words like "dirt", "light-pole", "statue", and "building". All were diligently written in his notebook, with the corresponding definition, pronunciation, and example sentence.

At the conclusion of our walk, I had the pleasure of meeting Marco's fiancé. She is studying material science at FSU, a major that makes my mind hurt to even think about. I attempted to impress her with a little Spanish, and then left the couple to their blissful pre-marital lives.