Skip to main content

Jack TS #3


For my third tutoring session, I met with Renata again. This time we went over an essay she was working on in class, reviewing some grammar, spelling and word use. Renata is definitely still carrying over some of the structures used in Portuguese that do not translate exactly over to English. Her understanding seems pretty good- every once in a while she asks a question, but that is understandable- but her usage could has space for improvement, and that is ok. We reviewed as much as we could and we still had some time left, so we continued our work from last session with grammar. We reviewed pronouns a little more, which she is definitely starting to understand better than last time. We also went over all the different uses for ‘have/has’, such as its use in the perfect tense versus the standard verb. I explained how ‘have/has’ when it is used in the perfect tense can be contracted, but as a standard verb it cannot. We came up with lots of examples, such as why “I’ve never done this before” is correct, but “I’ve a headache” is not. We also reviewed the irregular conjugation of the verb, with ‘has’ in the third person singular and the infinitive ‘have’ with every other person/number.   

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ashley TS #8

My next tutoring session was with Turki. We met at the Starbucks on Tennessee Street, the usual spot, and started the session with a causal conversation about life and his short term English goals. Turki decided he didn't want to continue with the second session of CIES classes, and that he wanted to rather focus solely on passing the IELTS exam. He said he found the CIES classes to be helpful, but also distracting. He said he thinks he's gotten the most out of his classes and that it would be more productive for him to study on his own. Where I don't completely agree with his logic, it is his life and I trust his decision making. For this session he brought his own material that he wanted to focus on. This time it was a reading passage that I even found to be quite difficult, and I was once again impressed by his far reach in practice and ability. The reading passage was accompanied by a set of numerous comprehension questions that we reviewed and answered together. The qu...

Danielle TS#11

On February 20th, I met with Bao Han at the CIES study rooms to work on writing and some grammar questions she had. I had her write about whatever she wanted to, using the past tense. After she wrote a paragraph or two, I graded it by telling her what was incorrect and allowing her to                   figure it out on her own. Her main mistakes were omitting key transition words or missing articles and making certain objects plural when they needed to be singular. She seemed to struggle most with past perfect continuous so I explained that further and we did examples from her book.

Ashley TS #5

My next tutoring session was with Manal. Manal is from Saudi Arabia and is very serious about CIES (a common trait I found amongst my tutees from Saudi Arabia). She has two daughters, a husband, and is working towards getting her PhD. Manal is very smart and does well with reading and speaking, her biggest issues lie in the realms of grammar and listening. I always find tutoring Manal to be a challenge, for she asks intelligent questions that always put my English grammar knowledge to the test. During this tutoring session we went over a couple of homework assignments that she had gotten back for a grade. She did well on the assignments over all; however, when there was a section of the homework she didn't understand, she got the entire section wrong. There were clear gaps in her grammar knowledge, which allowed me to specifically focus on certain topics versus going over grammar more broadly as a whole. One of the topics she struggled with was personal pronouns. She could understa...