Rosalie TP #10: Outlining a 5 Paragraph Essay and the Passive Voice, Revisited

September 19, 2013

            This past Thursday I had my first opportunity to tutor two students at once. Yaneli rejoined us, explaining that there wasn’t space in the TOEFL class. I prepared for the session by printing a well-organized five paragraph essay as well as a worksheet on the passive voice and some example newspaper articles. I got the articles from a site called News in Levels. They have 3 levels of English difficulty on the same breaking news articles, and the third level also has a video. I looked specifically for articles containing sentences in the passive voice (The woman was reported to…The plane was seen…).

            We began by discussing the location of the thesis statement, topic sentences, and different paragraphs. Mehmas and I explained the word indent to Yaneli. On the board, we began outlining the essay. Its language was too complex for them, though. They could tell me the topics of the body paragraphs and read the thesis statement because of its organization, but they were confused about the actual content due to the advanced vocabulary.

            From there, we moved into passive tense. Mehmas immediately wanted to know the formula, and he confused me with a query about how to put the past present continuous into passive voice. He wrote the formula (have/has + been + verb + ing) on the board and asked me to write the formula for the passive tense. I was stymied. I made an example sentence (The students have been studying English) and tried to make it passive (English has been being studied by students). It sounded super weird, and I said I would check. Ms. Kim reminded me that grammar must be in context and that if it sounds so awkward, native speakers wouldn’t say it. I had a lot more activities and examples in the passive voice to share that will probably make everything a lot more clear. We’ll work on it next time! I noticed that Yaneli was more confident when it came to the writing, and Mehmas was more comfortable with grammar. Of course, he is in Group 2 for grammar and Yaneli is only in Group 1. I want to create more opportunities for them to interact this coming week instead of so much explanation coming from me.