Tutoring Grammar the Student Who

Tutoring Grammar

The student who I chose for this grammar lesson was an undergraduate student at the University. The student was completely deaf although able to communicate through speaking and lip reading. The student was a proficient writer as far as getting thoughts onto paper; however, her struggle was with verbs. Apparently in sign language verbs do not have any tense. So, the sign for run in sign language can mean run, ran or running. It was this issue that caused her to seek out tutoring help. Apparently she had already submitted one paper which received a very poor grade due to the verb mistakes.

Context of Tutoring

This student was referred to me by the university learning center. She qualified for the learning center program because she was deaf. She was very intelligent and I could tell she desperately wanted to learn the right way to draft her papers. Immediately I observed her paying close attention to my conversational use of verbs and trying to apply the verbs herself. She was in her first year of college, so the concept of writing papers was new to her, as her instructors at her deaf school were not strict when it came to grammar in papers. This was my first meeting with her and it lasted one hour.

Grammar Point: Verbs

The first half hour, she described her problem and showed me the first paper from her professor. During the conversation, I could tell that she was struggling with verbs not only in her papers but also in spoken conversation, although in conversation it did not seem as awkward. I pulled up a basic grammar lesson on verb tenses on my laptop and we read it together. She had many questions and I answered each one using examples as this seemed to make the most sense to her.

The second half of the session was spent working on her most recent paper that was to be submitted in a few days. I always have the policy when tutoring that I guide the editing, but do not make changes on my own. Instead, as I read the paper I stop the pen at problem areas and wait for the student to figure it out. So, we started working through the paper and within the first paragraph there were already four verb tense related mistakes. She had trouble with figuring out these first four and had to look back at the grammar lesson and check the tense of each. To further help facilitate her learning, I encouraged her to cross out the mistake and write the correct verb above the line.

By the second paragraph she was understanding the most common forms of verbs and able to correct the mistakes without looking at the lesson. By the end of the paper, she was picking out the mistakes without me pausing. I knew by the end of her paper that she understood the concept and would be alright from this point forward.

Examples of Errors:

Three examples of errors she made in her paper were as follows:

Original: The study show that women are more likely than men to see color.

Correction: The study showed that women are more likely than men to see color.

Original: Men blind to finer differences in color.

Correction: Men are blind to finer differences in color.

Original: During the lab my partner see only basic colors.

Correction: During the lab my partner saw only basic colors.

Helping the Student

Although it was difficult, I stayed with my conventional way of tutoring for these mistakes. We slowly worked through her paper line by line pausing at each mistake and I would let her try and figure out the proper form of the verb to use. An example of the conversation we had back and forth was as follows:

Me (reading out loud): The study find evidence that cones was effected...Lets stop there and go back. The study find is not correct.

Student: I see, would it be finded?

Me: Not exactly, lets look up the verb on the computer lesson and see what it should be.

Student: She types in the verb find and then says, "it should be found."

Me: That's correct, go ahead and change your paper.

Personal Evaluation

I think that my instruction was very useful for the student. Within an hour she had a much firmer grasp of grammar and was able to catch changes before I pointed them out. The greatest evidence was that by the end of the lesson she no longer needed to look up verbs in the lesson, instead she remembered the way that the rule worked and was applying it correctly.

I don't think I was simply reminding her of a previous lesson. The reason I say that is that she made it very clear at the beginning of the session that she did not understand the concept of tenses at all and was surprised when she received such low marks on her paper.