Catherine_TP_#2

On Saturday I met with m CIES tutee, Dalal, at Dunkin Donuts. She is a 23 year old from Saudi Arabia. I learned that she has a husband, who she came to America with last May and is also in the CIES program. They both like it here a lot because it is not too busy of a city and is cheap to live in. We talked for a while to get to know each other. Dalal studied Psychology in Saudi Arabia and hopes to get her Masters here at FSU soon. One day she hopes to return to her home and get her PHD and maybe become a Psychology professor. She has an accent, but it is not too heavy. She does however speak slowly and carefully, she thinks about her words and what she is going to say before she says it. She told me to correct her when she said something wrong, and I think us talking casually before starting was a good way to help her speaking skills. Dalal told me she mainly wants to work on reading and writing. I brought with me a short story from the Harry Potter series, The Tales of Beatle the Bard. I had a hard time explaining to her what the book was, because it is a story book within the 7th Harry Potter book, which I know can be pretty confusing. I do think letting her use that book was a good idea though because it was filled with magical vocabulary that she has never seen before. She is a very slow reader and mispronounced a few of the words, but many were words like "wizard", which she has never seen before. She also struggles a lot with the letters "p" and "b", she explained in Arabic there is no "p" so she didn't really know any "p" words like "pot". She told me that she preferred more of a comedy or romance novel than science fiction, so I think I will bring her a Nicholas Sparks book when we meet next.