Greg - TP Adult - # 4

Today I tutored the brother of one of my regular tutees.  I have talked with him many times at CIES, so I knew his listening and speaking levels to some degree.  I also looked at his notes to see about his writing level.  He has a good habit of self-correction, for which I praised him and encouraged him to continue.  He expressed to me his need for some help with his grammar class.  These things combined served as my pre-tutoring analysis.

Our purpose for today was to deal with his grammar needs.  In the process of meeting those needs, I also tried to train him on ways to self-tutor with the internet and with audio books.  I modeled the use of the internet as I tutored him with his grammar questions.  We went to the computer and found answers and example sentences for his questions that dealt with 1) how to tell the difference between when an infinitive is being used as an object and when it is being used as an adjective or subject modifier, and 2) the use of the past perfect verb tense and how it differs from the simple past tense.  After we went through the first topic, he realized that the confusion was in his notes.  His example sentence was “I wish to write a complete essay.”  This makes the infinitive function in the role of object, looking just like the example he had used above in his notes for infinitives functioning like objects.  When we corrected the sentence from model examples on the internet, he changed his example to “His wish was to write a complete essay.”  Thus, to write the complete essay is describing or modifying the subject of “His wish.”   

The internet had a good diagram of a time line and a good explanation (along with examples) to help me explain the answer to his second question.  He was happy with both answers.  We also came across questions about his grammar in use (speaking), and I shared with him our famous head diagram of the two systems (learned/acquired) and how they work.  This helped me present the rationale for why he needs to practice more, with the goal of communication and not with the goal of just collecting rules of grammar.  I had the benefit of examples from my time in his country to share how I had seen that meaningful communication was not the result of the grammar focused teaching/learning I had seen. 

We spent the last 10 minutes talking about his goals and plans.  Unfortunately, they don’t sound like plans that will give him much English practice once he leaves CIES.