Hunter TS#4

Wednesday, September 9, at 12:00 during the lunch hour, I tutored Luis.  We had discussed previously that he wished to work on his reading.  So last night I put together a couple reading exercises.  I found a couple articles taken from an ESL site online (One about Learning English as a Second Language and another on Globalization.)  For the first article, which was rather brief, I had Luis read through once, then turn it over and answer four questions based on the passage to test his comprehension.  He answered all but one correctly.  When we went back to look at the one that he answered incorrectly, he had chosen the wrong answer because he remembered a fact incorrectly.  I also noted that he hesitated on question three for a minute, so I decided to ask why.  He said that he started to overthink the answers.  After going back over the question, I explained why he could automatically eliminate the first two answer choices: they were simply unfounded opinions and not facts based on the passage, for example:   A.  One shouldn't study English in Britain because they are bad teachers. 

For the second article I, again, had him read it through once for comprehension.  The article was a bit denser and longer.  As he read through, I had him underline all words that were unfamiliar to him.  When he finished reading, I had him summarize the article for me.  He demonstrated excellent comprehension, detailing the pros and cons, the effects, and the factors which enable globalization.  When he finished summarizing, we reflected on the passage with our own discourse.  Afterwards, I returned to review the words he had underlined and noted that many were compound words beginning with some- such as someone, somewhere, something, somehow, etc.  He had a general idea of the meaning based on context, and I explained that if he could determine when to use which one by looking at the second part of the word.  Someone is for people, somewhere for places, something for things, and somehow for ways.  A light bulb seemed to go off in his head at this point as he made the last connection.  Finally, the last underlined word was "despite."  He again had a general understanding of its meaning:  it is nearly the same in meaning as "even though."   But he was confused on when to use "despite" and when to use "even though."  I wrote a series of sentences using each of them to see if he could pick up the rule on his own.  Afterwards, I provided him with a sheet (courtesy of Andrew Wilson) on when to use "despite" (and its related term: in spite of) and when to use "even though" (and its related terms: although, though, etc.)