Alexander Miguel TS#13

Yesterday I met with Maryna for two hours. We spent the entire time in conversational practice. Most of our conversation focused on our experiences living in Tallahassee and travels to other parts of the country and abroad. Maryna told me that she was coming to the tutoring session with only two hours of sleep from the previous night, but even so she performed very well. She lost her train of thought several times, but could always recollect her thoughts within ten seconds except for one or two times. It seems based on our conversation, that her listening skills are very good, although she told me that she has difficulty listening to podcasts in the car or during chores. She expressed an inability to concentrate on listening skills while multitasking, although she told me that this difficulty is present both with English listening comprehension and her native Ukrainian as well. One difficulty she expressed to me was the semantic difference between the phrases "in school" and "at school". I gave my explanation of the difference, which Maryna understood, but also expressed frustration of why the English language does not have one preposition which covers both meanings. Like the rest of our tutoring sessions, Maryna continues to have difficulty expressing conditionals and hypothetical clauses. Before attempting such a construction she asks for my help, but even assisted Maryna still often misses the correct construction by using the wrong verb form (though usually not enough to impede communication). From time to time, she will use incorrectly apply the wrong verb forms for certain irregular simple past forms, especially for the verb "to buy". Overall, her receptive skills are very high and well-developed, while the productive skills (especially grammar while speaking) need further attention.