It’s like kindergarten for mature adults.

Sourik Avedissian met his tutor Monday afternoon in a sweltering classroom in south Glendale.

In an hour and a half with her, he breezed through his ABCs, learned how to say, “My name is Sourik” and made her understand that he has two granddaughters, ages 4 and 9.

He also managed to communicate more difficult ideas with hand signals, props and a few English words: He came from Iran on Dec. 17, 1988, by air. Back home, he worked in a shop, cutting wood on a machine. He drew a picture that looked like a band saw and demonstrated, adding a sawing noise with his tongue, how he would make seven precise cuts in whatever it was he manufactured.

For now, that’s all there is to know about Avedissian, except that he sits formally in a chair, dresses in an Old World way--he wore an open brown shirt with a kind of key design--has a letter tattooed on each finger of his left hand and seems pleased that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini is dead. He showed his feeling by drawing the side of his flattened hand across his throat.

Surely, by the end of the semester, Avedissian will be able to tell wonderful tales to his tutor, Karen King. But first the two of them will spend many hours working over the plastic alphabet she bought at Pic ‘N’ Save.

It’s one of the primary tools of the English-as-a-second-language volunteer. King is one of about 60 volunteers who meet privately with recent immigrants enrolled in the non-credit program at Glendale Community College. It has 2,500 students learning English at six sites around Glendale. About 100 are matched up with tutors.

Like her students, she is middle-aged. She has a career, as fund-raiser and publicist for the St. Barnabas Senior Citizens Center near MacArthur Park. She tutors after work, on her way home to Eagle Rock.

She became a volunteer on a whim. She saw a notice in the Glendale College bulletin and signed up for a 10-hour tutoring class.

“I thought it could be interesting,” she said. “I went to the class and I was hooked.”

There is an offbeat appeal to what she does. It’s like kindergarten for mature adults.

Her class, which had two students Monday and may grow to as many as four, is for those who are at the bottom of Level 1. She calls it the minus Level 1 group.

“I get from that group the ones who need even more, more help,” she said. “My goal is to get them into Level 2.”

King meets with the students Monday and Wednesday afternoons for 90 minutes at the college’s Adult Learning Center, which opened this semester on Garfield Avenue near Chevy Chase Drive. The students also go to class three hours a day, four days each week. Some double up, taking six hours a day.

King’s goal is to teach speaking, reading and writing.

“I put a little more emphasis on speaking because it is a survival skill,” she said. “They want to know how to speak right now.”

She began the session Monday with the family tree, illustrated with stick figures drawn in red marker on a sheet of paper.

King’s other student, Vartoosh Alexanian, had done hers last semester and easily pointed out her four children and seven grandchildren.

King drew a male figure, representing Avedissian. Then she drew a female.

“Do you have a wife?”

“Ah, madame,” he said, nodding.

When Avedissian got tied up in the third generation, unable to explain whether his two sons each had a daughter or one of them had both grandchildren, Alexanian tried to interject a hint in Armenian.

“Vartoosh!” King exclaimed in mock reproach. She gave her the sign to zip her lip.

King then took the fluorescent-colored alphabet from a zip-lock bag. She spread the letters on a tiny table around which she and the two students sat. She asked them to organize the letters, which they did almost without help.

Reading them was more difficult. Neither Avedissian nor Alexanian could differentiate entirely between the names and the sounds.

“What is the name?” King asked, pointing to an M.

“Ma,” Avedissian answered.

“That’s the sound,” she said. “Em.”

“Em,” he would repeat.

King finally stopped the exercise short of perfection when fatigue and confusion seemed to interfere.

The triumph of the day was with the personal possessive pronoun, though they didn’t call it that.

“What is my name?” King asked Avedissian. She beckoned with her upturned palm to indicate she wanted him to answer.

“My name is Kara?” he said gravely.

King turned to Alexanian, who smoothly handled “my,” “your” and “his,” though she sometimes dropped the verb.

Avedissian tried again and got it almost right.

“Good, you did it,” King said.

She urged them both to practice at home. Alexanian laughed bashfully and made an excuse.

“Busy,” she said. “Home much busy. Children, vacuum, wash, cook. . . .” She struggled for another word.

King pantomimed and had her repeat a new word, ironing .