Jodie CP # 4

I met with Carlos for conversation.  Carlos told me that he is usually shy, but he is not in this situation.  His motivation is that he wants to learn English and to pass the TOEFL in order to study electrical engineering at FSU.

Carlos shared with me that he went to two parties this week.  He went with some friends to one because he said that he wanted to observe Americans’ way of life.  I responded to him that what he observed was the way of life of some Americans.  We both agreed.  We talked about how America and many other countries are different than they used to be.  In the past, honesty, integrity, family values… were more highly valued than now.  He was able to share with me many things about Brazil. I wrote some words out on paper because our topic was a little difficult for his level.  He had no problem in understand the words on paper.  He told me that Portuguese has similar spellings with many of the words I wrote.

Carlos had trouble with “for” and “to”.  He interchanged them often.  For example, “My teacher said for me to practice speaking out loud.”  We worked on some sentences that contain “for” and “to”.  We also worked on sentences that use “in”, “on”, and “at”.  He had trouble with the letter “r”.  He told me that in Portuguese, the “r” is often silent.  When it is not silent, his language uses the “h” sound in pronouncing the word.  We worked on the proper English pronunciation.

Carlos is extremely motivated.  It is fun to encourage him and to help him to succeed.