Catherine_TP_#15

Yesterday I met with Dalal at CIES after her classes. We started by talking about all her classes from last session and all her new classes this session. She said she moved up a group in Listening and stayed in the same group for her other classes. She has all new teachers for each subject though, so she is happy to have new teachers and different teachers for different subjects. I asked her how she did on all her finals and she told me. I asked her what she wanted to work on today (I had planned on doing reading/writing activities because those are her worst subjects), but she said she would rather work on her conversational speaking skills and just wanted to talk. We talked about her favorite teachers at CIES, and after she said who she explained that she liked them because they didn't waste a lot of time. Dalal told me about how she hates when teachers waste time, and just want to get through the lesson. She also really dislikes students who speak their native language while at CIES. She explained how she knew before coming to America that she didn't want to make a lot of Saudi friends, because she was in America to learn English and speaking in Arabic with friends does not help at all. She said it is mostly boys who speak Arabic that do this during class at CIES, and it frustrates the teachers, wastes time, and distracts her and others during class when this happens. We ended our session by talking about the IELETS exam that she took two weeks ago, and how she did not score as well as she hoped. Her biggest problem was the reading section, because she explained it does not only test your English, but your comprehension also. Dalal explained it is a long reading passage with a lot of big confusing words, followed by many difficult questions with a very short amount of time. I gave her advice and a few reading exercises to help her with reading, and she said next time she will bring a practice exam with her.