Verbs, verbs, and...French?

This week Gerardo and I continued our journey with verbs. He came with a few paragraphs prepared for me to edit that he'd written during his lunch break. As I read over and corrected his writing, he studied another lesson in his verb workbook. When we went over the corrections I'd made on his paper, he understood his mistakes and I told him he was doing well and improving. He has trouble with spelling in his writing, as he tends to write words like they sound, which does not always work in English. Afterward, we worked through two lessons in his workbook, completing the have and had and have got and had got sections. He struggles with questions, such as Did you have fun?, and gets confused when the present form can also be past. I explained that it is I have, I had but it is Did she have fun? Yes, she had fun. We worked through some similar sentences and he started to understand better when I explained further. I hated the have got lesson as I kept hearing a certain English professor that I have this semester saying in the back of my head that there is always a better verb than got. When I asked if he wanted to start another lesson, he said he was tired of working with grammar in the workbook, and wanted to practice his writing. He told me to dictate to him and he would write what he heard, which is a great learning technique that I have used in all of my language classes. Since I did not have a reading book, which he asked me to read from, I took out my French textbook, which has stories about people and different things that they have done or like doing; it's mostly culture based, but I thought it would suffice. He chuckled and playfully asked if I was going to read it in French. I said that I would read it in English, translating as I went along. And so I read a few paragraphs about this one guy and what he likes to do on the weekends and then about how he was going to go camping for vacation. It was from chapter one in my book, so it had simple words and ideas for our first dictation. As a correction tool, I marked his paper, and rewrote the paragraphs with the corrections below his writing, so he could have the two to look at later. We discussed next week, and I asked if he had practiced typing yet with the website I'd given him. He said he hadn't since the internet was not working at his house, but that we could work on it during our session next week. I told him I'd bring a newspaper to read to him for another listening/writing exercise for next time, so as not to have to resort to my French textbook again, and we left it until next week. I enjoyed this week because I felt that I was helping him improve his writing, as I have seen the improvements he has made. For instance, the things he struggled with last week still give him some trouble but I could tell he'd studied his notes. I know he really wants to improve and I see this every time I meet with him. I know that it is the end of the day for both of us, and 4:30 on a Wednesday is a hard time to meet, as it is in the middle of the week and the weekend seems far off but still close enough to wish it were Friday. Anyway, I am beginning to get a better sense of where he is in his studies and how to help him better. I liked reading while he wrote what I read, and I think this is a good activity we can continue in the weeks to come.