Charlotte says,

“Our initial meeting took place in a cafй in the city centre close to Fayegh’s home.

The meeting was extremely relaxed and we talked about our jobs and day-to-day lives. Fayegh is currently studying for a masters in civil engineering and we therefore discussed the difficulties he faces with written language when writing assignments and exam questions.

We discussed how I could help him with his grammar and word order and he asked that I correct him during our conversations. We also decided that he would keep a record of any vocabulary that he was finding difficult to use correctly and then I could help him with this at future meetings.

As well as assisting him with his English, Fayegh felt that he would like to have some support understanding British culture better. He said that he felt quite isolated and that many of the friends he had met at university were not from Britain and therefore he had not had the opportunity to integrate into British society as much as he would have liked.

Our subsequent meetings have continued to be in the city centre and we have now completed our action plan together. We plan to go o­n some cultural visits within the city as well as to visit some places in the surrounding countryside. I have tried to think of places that are significant to British history in the hope that it will give Fayegh a better understanding of the roots of British culture. He would also like to visit London.

Mentoring is proving to be very rewarding for me. Fayegh is an extremely intelligent and charismatic person and I look forward to our meetings and discussions. He has been in Britain for sometime now and feels fairly competent when communicating with housing, education or employment agencies. What he still finds difficult is fully understanding British culture and being able to judge social situations. He would like to meet more British people and ultimately feel more integrated into the society around him.This is something that I will try and help him with.

I am pleased that Fayegh has felt comfortable to ask me for support at the early stages of our mentoring relationship and I hope that he will continue to do so.I think that my role with Fayegh is to try and help him to feel comfortable in social situations here in Brighton and give him a positive introduction into our society, as well as supporting him with his academic studies and language acquisition.”