Second Semester, Second Meeting

Elodia and I met earlier this week, and instead of the library we met in the language lab in the basement of Reed. I had to cover an extra work shift there, and my boss said I could tutor there, since that is one of reasons for the lab. I met Elodia at the Horned Frog statue and we went to the lab. She had done most of the homework I had given her. We went over the fragment sentence exercise first, and she had some questions over sentences like "When Dave came home early from work." I explained that it wasn't a complete thought, and was an introductary clause. It needed to say what he did after he came home from work. She understood and I checked the rest of her homework, which was mostly correct. The next thing we went over was complete and compound sentences using conjuctions. She read the questions aloud from the exercises and I explained when her answers were wrong. There were 3 sections of exercises, so I think she understood it well when we finished, as she continued to answer correctly with each activity. Afterward, we went over subordinate clauses and conjuctions, which is the fancy name for the sentence type that she'd struggled with in her homework. Sentences like, "After the strike ended, the teachers went back to work." Some, however, did not need commas, like "The teachers striked while the students stayed home." We did the activities  that followed and she started to understand why some had commas and some did not. I explained that after a long first part of a sentence you would take a natural pause instead of reading it all together. That helped her understand, and we moved on to the reading part that she was to do for homework. This was more challenging for her because while she can understand what the paragraphs of a story are saying, she has trouble answering the questions about moving sentences around to make the story sound better. The first one we went over was one we'd started last week and her answers varied between right and wrong, but she could not answer why she thought that was the answer. We went over it in detail and did the next two as well. She started understing the concept of essay organization, as I explained one question that was asking what sentence of the five provided would start a new paragrah. I said that since it started a new thought, it did not belong in the paragraph and needed to start the next one. The rest of the questions varied in difficulty and I explained the ones she struggled with. Time passed quickly as we worked through activities and questions, and it was soon time to wrap it up. I gave her the last reading one as homework and told her to bring a writing sample next week. We agreed to meet in the library next week at our usual time and parted.