2/8/2017, 3:30-5:30 PM
I helped Saad to memorize the
tenses using flashcards. I wrote sentences on one side and its tense on
the other. I had him read the card and identify the tense (present
simple, perfect & continuous; past simple & continuous; future
simple). When he had a problem, we stopped and went over more examples
and I tried my best to explain differences in meaning. We spent a bit of
time going over the present perfect.
Next, because Saad
mentioned that he had difficulty summarizing and finding the main idea
of a text, we went over an article that he received in class. We
identified the main idea and supporting details. Then I read aloud
(slowly and with pauses between sentences) the article about lying that I
gave him during our first session. I had him take notes while I read.
Then I asked him to tell me what he got out of it and write it down.
2/13/2017, 3:30-5:00 PM
At Strozier, Saad and I worked on listening through a dictation
exercise. I read sentences aloud at a normal pace and had him identify
the tense. The second time I read the sentences, Saad wrote down exactly
what I said to work on his accuracy.
2/18/2017, 6:30-8:30 PM
During our last session, Saad asked me how he could improve his
writing. I noticed that he has problems with determiners (often he just
leaves them out), so I figured we'd start with that. I started the
session by telling Saad that he misses a lot of determiners and showed
him two of his recent text messages: "I think library is closed"and "if
you don't have car" as examples, and pointed out what was missing and
why it's important to use determiners.
I printed song lyrics
and left blanks where words like "my, a/an, the, etc." were supposed to
be. After we filled in the blanks, I showed him the same song lyrics,
still missing determiners, but without the blanks. He had to identify
where there was something missing and write what should have been
there.
Toward the end of the session, we talked about his
difficulty understanding the reduced forms "gonna" and "wanna" while
listening to native speakers. I asked him he he understood what I meant
when I said "I'm gonna wanna get a phone" really fast. The look on his
face was pretty funny but he understood -- kind of. We wrote out the
grammatically correct version of the sentence and identified its tense
just for fun.
2/20/2017, 3:30-5:00 PM
On Monday we met at Strozier for a little just to review the tenses,
articles, pronouns, and work on listening comprehension in preparation
for Saad's exams. We spent a while doing some practice quizzes online in
which we identified whether we should use "a/an" or "the" depending on
context and whether the noun was count/uncount. I didn't realize how
difficult it would be to explain the reason behind some of the correct
answers, like how "truth" is usually an uncountable noun but not always,
which is why we can make it plural when saying something like "the
acceptance of certain truths." Or why some food is countable but others
aren't, like apples and eggs vs. ginger and pizza.
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