For my third tutoring session with Cyan, I sent him a list
of possible independent writing topics he might find on the TOEFL. Cyan is
aiming to get at least 110 total on the exam so that he’ll be eligible for
grants to complete his MBA, and he thinks that his biggest weakness is probably
the writing section. We discussed the general organization for academic writing
in the US—using a thesis statement, introducing one main idea in each section
of the essay, and elaborating on those ideas with supporting evidence and
arguments. Cyan wrote responses to one of the topics I sent him, and I looked
over those to determine which areas he could most use improvement on. Overall
his writing was still pretty high level, though I noticed he had some trouble
utilizing transition phrases appropriately, so I made some suggestions as to
how he could use them better and sent him a resource that listed different
transition words and phrases by meaning. We also talked about rephrasing
sentences to present them as stronger arguments.
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