I met with Abdul in the downtown library this Sunday afternoon. We started by speaking about sports, using his picture book images. We didn't get beyond mountain climbing before we switched to bodies of water, a more fundamental topic. (As a side note, very little snow ever appears in the mountains of Saudi Arabia, a desert nation of nearly perpetual summer-like heat.) It was more difficult than I expected to give Abdul a sense of the differences among different types of bodies of water (ocean, gulf, bay, lake, river, etc.).
We somehow constructed a (i+10) sentence based on Abdul's experience living in Columbus, Ohio: 'A river goes through Columbus, Ohio, at the confluence of two other rivers.' This lead to breaking the word 'confluently' into prefix-root-suffix, and distinguishing that adverb from the noun 'confluence', and the adjective 'confluent'. I want to work on common prefixes, roots, and suffixes with both my tutees and conversation partner. I believe that it is a very useful shortcut to learning certain groups of words by breaking them down to their common and familiar components.
We spoke of the meaning of 'opposite', and named some opposites, the concept of which Abdul quickly understood. We also contrasted the words 'feel' and 'emotion'.
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