Tom - Fawaz, CP # 3, Sunday, September 8

I met with Fawaz the same day as I met individually Jason and Abdul.  We began by my answering certain of his questions and doubts, starting with his statement, cleaned up by me, of his activities earlier in the day:  he cleaned (washed) his clothes, went to (the) gym, took a shower (he did not know any of this phrase), and ate dinner before coming to the library.

We covered the difference between 'came' and 'went'.  I introduced the idea of infinitive, knowing that he will come across the idea soon enough, but I believe it was a bit beyond his comprehension at this point of his English language development.  We also reviewed certain irregularities in the past tense:  ate, took, and went.  He also wanted to know the difference between 'went' and 'want'.

Reading is Fawaz's favorite class.  He has the same teacher for reading and listening (receptive skills), Marilyn.

We then took a complete departure from what we had been doing.  We took a walk around downtown Tallahassee for a vocabulary-building exercise.  The reader can stop reading this blog entry at this point, because I am going to list many of the words we covered, since that is an indication of the level of his vocabulary.

The words and phrases are:  bush, park, grass, church, steeple, light post, oak, palm tree, parking garage, bench, glass, mailbox, fire hydrant, soft versus hard, manhole cover, building, container, elevator, letter, fountain, red, brown, purple, dolphin, movie theater, lowest versus highest, stop light, parking lot, Supreme Court, and museum.

Interestingly, when Fawaz saw the word 'recycling', he substituted the word 'reusing'.  Also interesting is the reluctance to let go of words in one's native language as being 'the' name of something.  He was attached to the Arabic word for church, and believed it to be the 'right' word, repeating it several times to see if I understood it.