Alexa TS #11

Today (6/21/17, 6:00-7:00) I met up with Sultan for tutoring. We went through two different reading passages today. I had him read both of them, and then we answered the questions together. I also had him summarize both stories since he mentioned wanting more help with that. He has been doing a pretty good job with the readings, but it is so interesting seeing someone essentially learning a language for the first time. I have to print out passages that are at an early Elementary level, and there are still some words in those that he does not understand. It's really cool to see him grow in his understanding of the language. It's also really cool to see when he grasps certain vocabulary terms. I try to show him a lot of pictures, but sometimes he has to translate it to Arabic so he understands it. We went over some vocabulary terms as well as some airport vocabulary. I am a little confused because he asked me if the vocabulary terms were academic. However, I feel like he needs to understand basic vocabulary before going on to the more difficult, academic vocabulary terms. The vocabulary terms I printed are vocabulary terms students learn in early Elementary, but I printed out multiple grade levels for increased difficulty. Tutoring Sultan makes me realize the importance of comprehension/fluency and not grammar at the earlier stages of learning English.