By Marissa Pecora, Junior, English Education Major
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My name is Marissa Pecora and I am currently a junior English Education major at Saint Vincent College. I have recently had a very rewarding tutoring opportunity that consisted of me tutoring a thirty-year-old woman from Indian whose name was Deepti. The experiences that I had with Deepti over the course of the three weeks we spent together will always live forever in my mind as my first rewarding teaching experience.
 
I tutored Deepti for four hours over the course of three weeks and it was such a unique experience being on the other side of the fence teaching a non-native speaker English. Deepti is a computer engineer in India and she came here on vacation to stay with her brother who works at Kennametal in Latrobe. Deepti's tutoring sessions each week consisted of reinforcing and increasing her English speaking and writing skills in preparation for the TOEFL test, which is a test given to non-native speakers from different countries to assess their specific English writing, reading, speaking and listening skills. Throughout our tutoring sessions together, English concepts such as good writing models, audio English speaking and writing modules, group and independent speaking activities, and targeted writing practices that corresponded with the TOEFL test were reinforced and emphasized.
 
Overall, this tutoring experience really broadened my horizons to what all exactly ESL (English as a Second Language) teachers are responsible for teaching their non-native speaking students and how difficult it may be at times to communicate a word to a student that has no idea what you mean. It was very different tutoring Deepti English and breaking down the language for her piece by piece into specific conventions such as paraphrasing, punctuation, verb tenses, transitions, and pronouns. These simple English conventions and skills may seem so trivial to the native English speaker but for a non-native speaker such as Deepti, these simple conventions were the most challenging aspects to remember every time she began a sentence or an essay. I truly believe that this tutoring experience with Deepti has taught me to respect the English language to a much higher degree because more often than not we take words such as "I," "My," and "The" for granted and simply skim over them without even the slightest thought. However, seeing a student struggle with structuring these words into a simple English sentence really is difficult when you step back and realize how powerful words and language really is all over the world.
 
Each and every one of us as college students are so accustomed to sitting in a French, German, Spanish, or English class and learning the basic rules, verb tenses, and sentence structures that we really do not recognize the power that words hold until your foreign language teacher is suddenly talking to you in a different language other than your own native language. I think it is very safe to say that all of us have experienced this famous "deer-in-headlights" moment whenever we find ourselves drowning in a foreign language other than our own. Tutoring Deepti and preparing her for her TOEFL test showed me just how valuable the English language is and how writing and speaking can open so many doors for non-native speakers seeking a higher education in the United States.
 
This was exactly the case for Deepti. Since my tutoring sessions with Deepti have come to an end and she has returned to India, I have heard from her by email and she has given me an update on how her TOEFL test went. Deepti passed her TOEFL test with a score of 101 out of 120 points, which is above the score she needs if she wants to seek higher education at the colleges and universities here in the United States. Reading these words of success and appreciation from Deepti have truly warmed my heart and my love for teaching the English language because, without her, I would never have experienced the amazing success story of my very first student or the significant impact she has left upon me as a future English teacher.