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.

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.