Celina_TP #6

For my tutoring session with one of the CIES students, Saleh, we got to work on some grammar usage and reading skills. Saleh has very good conversational skills, but says that his grammar skills are struggling and that when he takes the TOEFL exam he is always worried most about that section. We started out by talking about some things he had recently learned in his grammar class, he commented that they had started exploring Adjectives vs. Adverbs in class that day. I immediately came up with an activity that would make learning these two grammar usages much easier and enjoyable. I found a list of adjectives and adverbs and he and I both wrote some down on slips of paper and threw them all into a pile. When we had a sizable amount of words, I asked Saleh to draw a slip of paper, state the word, then define the word, then use it in a sentence, and then say whether it was an adverb or adjective. The activity seemed like a hit! We had a large enough pile that it took about half an hour to get through them all, and it was a great chance for Saleh to utilize new vocab and grammar rules. When he would get stuck on a word, I would have him break it down and then give him an antonym for the word. One of the slips had the word Fancy on it, and he even started to sing the popular song, which was funny yet actually really helpful because he knew how to use the word in context!
After we got through our adjective and adverb pile I had Saleh read a short passage I had found about the World Cup. His reading skills are pretty good, minus some pronunciation errors here and there. After he read I asked him about some of the tougher vocabulary words in the section and then we went on to some comprehension questions.
Overall I think this session went pretty well, I definitely need to prepare more for our next meeting though because if Saleh doesn't bring his homework again I will need to have a backup plan!