On Thursday I had my first conversation partner session. My partner is Mohammed from Saudi Arabia. We went to the Sweet Shop and talked for about an hour. Mohammed's English is very basic, he is the the foundations level class. So, it was kind of hard to communicate with him, but overall it went pretty well. I just spoke really slowly and sometimes I wrote words or sentences down on paper so that he could understand better. There were sometimes when he had to translate words from Arabic on his phone just because we really couldn’t understand each other. I think that next time I might bring my friend who speaks Arabic, that way he could translate just the very necessary words when we don’t understand each other.
I asked Mohammed about a number of things, including his education in Saudi Arabia, his family, his traveling experience and where he wanted to travel in the United States. This is his first time in the US so I’m sure that he will have a lot of questions about FSU and things to do in Tallahassee. He did a good job of also asking me some questions, like what I study. I told him I was going out of town this weekend and he asked me some questions about my friends in Gainesville. It seems that Mohammed benefited from our first session and he is very serious about learning English.
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