Date/Time: June 4, 3:30PM
Location: Black Dog Cafe
Topics: Initial Meeting & Assessment
Sheila is from Mexico. She has a Bachelor's in Nursing and wants to pursue her Masters here in the US. Her ultimate goal is to pass the TOEFL so that she can get into school for her Masters. I went through some of the assessment questions with her to gauge her English understanding. She is currently in level one classes at CIES. She stated that she does alright with grammar and reading, but that listening/understanding is difficult and she has a hard time speaking. Speaking makes her self conscious and she feels like she can't express herself very well. I told her that she will get better with practice and patience.
She lives here with her brother and her nephew. Her sister also moved here six months ago so she spends a lot of time with her family. I suggested that she speak to them in English to practice as much as possible. Of course it is always easier to use one's native language and it is a hard habit to break. The other difficulty is that she works evenings and weekends at a Mexican restaurant so she spends all of her time speaking Spanish there as well.
As we spoke I corrected errors as we went along. Some of them were the third person verb issues (+s), some pronunciation related to "s" words or verbs, and some were gender pronoun related.
I told her that I would find some videos and practice activities for TOEFL speaking and listening. I texted the links to her mid week. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INYFYq_D_Xc and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YofpGCq81sQ.
Sheila is from Mexico. She has a Bachelor's in Nursing and wants to pursue her Masters here in the US. Her ultimate goal is to pass the TOEFL so that she can get into school for her Masters. I went through some of the assessment questions with her to gauge her English understanding. She is currently in level one classes at CIES. She stated that she does alright with grammar and reading, but that listening/understanding is difficult and she has a hard time speaking. Speaking makes her self conscious and she feels like she can't express herself very well. I told her that she will get better with practice and patience.
She lives here with her brother and her nephew. Her sister also moved here six months ago so she spends a lot of time with her family. I suggested that she speak to them in English to practice as much as possible. Of course it is always easier to use one's native language and it is a hard habit to break. The other difficulty is that she works evenings and weekends at a Mexican restaurant so she spends all of her time speaking Spanish there as well.
As we spoke I corrected errors as we went along. Some of them were the third person verb issues (+s), some pronunciation related to "s" words or verbs, and some were gender pronoun related.
I told her that I would find some videos and practice activities for TOEFL speaking and listening. I texted the links to her mid week. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INYFYq_D_Xc and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YofpGCq81sQ.
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