Nikolas - TP1

I met finally today with my tutor partner Edgar Hernandez. After many difficulties, I had my first tutor sitting. Other students were no longer interested, so he was the only one who showed up. Edgar prepares to write his GRE and TOEFL and works at a job, so he is very busy. For this reason, I met him during the CIES lunchbreak, the only time he can meet. After his exams he hopes to apply to FSU to study, so he needs to take his GRE and TOEFL. He did not have his books today, so I will help him with that next time. Mostly I helped Edgar with his grammar problems. Although his English is good, he makes the same mistakes and wants to correct them, but first must understand why they are wrong. He wanted first an explanation about verbs forms like "put up" and "drop off". He did not know when the second part should be used, because he told me, that no one understood him when he said "I want to drop my friend" because he not know how to use "off". I explained how it is used and why that gives very different meaning! Then he wanted to review a test he took in class. First present and past perfect differences, then I helped to explain gerund/ infinitives, because he confuses the two often - he puts infinitves where gerunds should be. We reviewed clauses a little and then spent most time with modal verbs. These were difficult for him, because he was not sure what exact differences between could, would and should were. We thought out example sentences and wrote them done and related meanings to situations and synonyms. This seemed to help him much.