Fourth Session March 21, 2011

This session was different than the others. Instead of helping Tom write a paper, he had a paper that his ESL professor had corrected for him. The professor indicated whether his errors were with prepositions, verb formations, pronoun agreements, articles, or spelling. I noted that most of mistakes were with wrong preposition usage, pronoun agreement, missing articles, verb tense, and verb formation. He had to figure out what changes to make to his paper based on the notes the professor made. I felt this to be a great exercise for him. He expected me to just tell him what word to use (yet again!), but I did not. My response was to read it out loud and try to think of what word to use that would make it correct. Tom was having a very hard time with the prepositions. At first, I thought he was not sure which one to pick. Furthermore, upon asking him to name all the prepositions he knew and insert them in to see which one fits, he was stumped. This is when I realized he was unable to categorize prepositions, articles, and pronouns. I went on to explain the difference and list them for him. Not only did I explicitly outline each one, but I explained in much detail why that is the word to use and provided examples using the word, whether it was a preposition or pronouns. Along with the pronoun agreement, his main problem was with plurality. One of his sentences read, “people do not understand me and then he ask me to repeat what I said.” He used the noun ‘people’ and then used the singular pronoun ‘he’ to refer back to the plural noun. Verb formations also were among most of his mistakes. He kept on writing things like “my roommates are get annoying from this”. He meant to say “my roommates are getting annoyed by this.” Before beginning to make the corrections, I looked over his paper, noted his major trouble areas, and explained what each one of those meant and why they were marked wrong, without revealing the correction. He proceeded to correct the paper on his own, while I provided feedback and scaffolding.

Third Session March 10, 2011

This session was shorter than usual. He did not have any written homework. I told him that whatever he needed help with, that was the time for it. He continued to say he had nothing to do. I insisted, and asked him questions instead. Such questions referred to comments his professors make about his writing or suggestions. His response was that most of his professors are aware of the fact that he is an ESL student and English is not easy for him, so they go easy on the grading. In my mind, I thought that was wrong because by not pointing out his grammatical mistakes and just focusing on the overall idea of the assignment is not beneficial for him. He will never be able to learn the grammatically correct way to use prepositions, the right verb forms to use and when to use them. They are causing him damage. As a result, he feels like he can relax, and just put his ideas on paper, regardless of whether he used the right words or if his sentences are properly constructed.

Second Session February 28, 2011

For the second session, I helped Tom to write a proposal for his Justice Studies class. I noticed that he depended on me to tell him what to do because he kept asking me how to write certain things. Of course, my job is to help him get it on his own, not tell him the answers. I told him to say it out loud before writing it to see if it made sense to him. He did just that, and was able to point out some errors (not all). However, he did not know how to correct the errors. His errors consisted of spelling, missing articles, and wrong preposition usage. He copied a lot from either his textbook or online sources. I asked him to explain to me what he copied meant, and he was unable to tell me. It seemed to me like he was just taking the easy way out. I had him synthesize his outline for me and explained to him that when he presents it in class, he will have to do it in his own words instead of just reading from the paper. He gets frustrated when he does not know how to correct his errors. Conversely, he takes in my advice and suggestions very well and attempts to follow them. I encouraged him to ask questions when he was not sure of what word or word form for verbs to use.

First Session February 21, 2011

Today I met with Tom Sulimany for the first time to begin our tutoring sessions. I first gather some pertinent information about the student, Tom, to understand him better and be able to help him more effectively. Tom is from Israel and has resided in the USA for three years now. This is his first semester at Montclair State University as a full-time student and also works full-time at Newark Airport. His native language is Hebrew. Nevertheless, he stated that he had English language instruction in high school in Israel, so he had basic knowledge of the language upon arrival to the USA. I inquired about what he considered his trouble areas to be and what he needs help with to see if he was able to point out these weak areas. He explicitly stated that he needs a lot of help with his written assignments. I asked for more details, and he went to explain that he does not know how to construct “sentences that make sense”. I interpreted this as that he does not know how to put his thoughts on paper in grammatically correct sentence form. On this first session, I proceeded to help him with his homework assignment, which was to read a New York Times article and summarize it in his own words. I noticed that he was not comprehending at all what he was reading. I suggested that he takes one paragraph at a time, as he reads, and analyze it. Also, to make notes as he reads regarding important information, vocabulary words he does not know, or statements that are unclear. To demonstrate this strategy, we read the article together, and after each paragraph I asked him to synthesize what he just read. He was not able to do so. One of the reasons, he did not understand the vocabulary, so I had to define the terms for him. Also, the sentence structure and wording was a bit complex, which made it difficult for him to get the meaning of the sentence. He would not tell me that he did not know certain words, and so, I pointed out tier three words and asked him if he knew what they meant. This is how I found out that the vocabulary was causing a barrier for his comprehension. One specific example was with the word ‘unanimous’. I asked him if he knew what he meant, and he said yes, so I asked him to tell me. He hesitated for a while, trying to get the words together to tell me. Eventually, he said it means when you change your name and people do not know you. I was baffled with his definition, but then realized that he was defining the word ‘anonymous’. Because of the pronunciation, he got the words mixed up. This shows that his mispronunciation of certain words contributes to his poor vocabulary and spelling.