Seventh Session April 11, 2011

Today was my last meeting with Tom. I must say, throughout the course of the semester, I have noticed great improvement in his writing. In the beginning, his written grammar was horrid, filled with prepositional, adverbial and conventional errors. At first, I did not even know where to begin with him. With time, I learned to observe his major problem areas and focused on them. Every week, he displayed knowledge of what I had explained to him by correcting his own mistakes in his writing. In other words, we would sit together and read his written work together. Whenever I noticed a mistake, I asked him to reread the sentence aloud and point out any errors he noticed. In this way, he was able to notice that there was something wrong in the sentence and would point out exactly what needed to be changed, even if he did not know how to make the correction. What mattered more to me was that he was able to notice his errors. During our sessions, we focused on grammar, mostly. I explicitly explained to him the purpose of prepositions and differentiated between them. We focused on articles, and talked about vowels and consonants, which he was clueless about. Last night, as I read a research paper he was working on, I was very proud to see that his lexical and syntactical errors had diminished. The only problem evident in his work was that he was unfamiliar with the format and structure of a research paper. Regardless of this, his sentences were well constructed and made sense. I praised him for his achievements and success. I could tell he felt more confident in his writing and that made me feel happy and fulfilled. Tom expressed sadness because he knew that was our last session. Tom asked me if I would be able to tutor him next semester. He was very grateful for my help and that really meant a lot to me as a future educator. This was an enriching and valuable experience for both of us; Tom was able to improve his grammar and I was able to apply and see in action the concepts and techniques I have learned so much about in my Linguistics courses.

Sixth Session April 4, 2011

During this session, Tom asked me to revise a research paper he was working on. Overall, he did a really good job at writing it. His only weak area is with the prepositions. However, I noticed much improvement in his writing since the first session. He is making less spelling errors and his sentence structure has evolved to be grammatically correct. In other words, his sentences flow, make sense, and are complete sentences. With prepositions, he gets confused with ‘of’ and ‘from, as well as with ‘in’ and ‘on’. Whenever I noticed an error in his writing, I would ask him to reread that sentence and see if he can figure out what was wrong with it. I was very glad to notice that he did pick up on his errors and was able to correct them, most of the time. With some, it was good enough that he noticed something was not right in the sentence, even if he did not know how to correct it. That was when I stepped in and explained to him how to correct it and why that is the proper way to do it. Also, during this session, I made a shocking discovery. I noticed he was using the articles ‘a’ and ‘an’ randomly. For example, he would write, “a emergency medical technician…” or, “an paramedic…” I know he is familiar with the articles, nevertheless, he does not know when to apply each one of these specific articles. My explanation to him was that the difference is that you use ‘a’ when the following word begins with a consonant and ‘an’ when the next word begins with a vowel. He look absolutely puzzled, and then asked me, “What is a vowel?” I was in total awe! I did not even know how to react to that. I tried hard to make him feel inferior, and so, I just proceeded to differentiate between consonants and vowels for him. Tom expressed to me that when speaking he knows which one to use because depending on what you say, it sounds better. Hence, he knows how to apply these articles when communicating verbally. But in writing, he is unable to choose the appropriate article to use. I explained in much detail, and he seemed to be clear on the distinction of these two.

Fifth Session March 28, 2010

Today, we worked on prepositions. From Tom’s text messages and when he speaks, I noticed he uses prepositions incorrectly, specifically, ‘on’ and ‘in’. I began by asking him what the difference between the two is, and he was unable to define them. What he did was provide examples of how he would use them, but his examples were wrong. I asked Tom if he knew the difference between the two, he was baffled. Based on his responses, I decided to explicitly explain the difference between the two. First, I explained to him what prepositions are and the purpose they serve. Following this explanation, I listed all the prepositions I could think of to show him why they fall under the category of prepositions. Next, I differentiated between ‘in’ and ‘on’ by describing how and when each one is used. Furthermore, through the use of examples, I showed him how ‘in’ or ‘on’ are used. Additionally, I pointed out the mistakes he makes when using these in his speech or text messages. Specifically, on a text message, Tom wrote, “I’m in campus, but I will be late for our meeting because I am on a meeting for a class now.” In this example, it is clear that he misused ‘in’ and ‘on’. My impression was he thinks that the two prepositions can be used interchangeably. Hopefully after this session on prepositions, Tom will be able to use these properly.