Will Stone - TP 4

 

I got in touch with Mohammad through a series of text messages. We agreed to meet up at Strozier library. It took me a minute to get to the library and when I finally made it, I texted him to find out where he was waiting. It turned out he was waiting in the lobby. He came out and we headed over to the Johnston building to take advantage of their study rooms. It turned out that Mohammad had started learning English a few weeks ago, signed up for a class and never attended. He did however, manage to hold on to a few of his workbooks, which he was having some problems with. His speech was less polished than his sister’s or any of my other conversation or tutoring partners, though he had much more enthusiasm than my other students. Once we were situated in our room, he explained that he was having some trouble understanding certain grammatical devices. He listed several, but his most pressing concern was understanding the distinctions between the words ‘has’ and ‘have.’ There wasn’t an activity in his workbook that illustrated the distinction properly, so I took some time to explain the difference. His workbook had several activities, a few of which he had attempted. The activities were different from his initial queries and served to explain how the words ‘that,’ ‘which,’ and ‘who’ were used to combine two similar or related sentences. I walked him through the instructions and explained how ‘that’ and ‘which’ were used to refer to objects, whereas ‘who’ is used to connect two thoughts regarding a person. He was very receptive and seemed to understand well enough. It was the first time in tutoring that I could see (for lack of a better word) a student understanding a concept that I had explained. I also felt as though I could answer his questions regarding grammar in a way that he could understand and that he could actually apply in conversation. After completing the workbook page by working through and explaining how and why the answers were formed, we parted ways, agreeing on our next meeting time.