Tom - Abdul CP # 10, Thursday, October 8

I met with Abdul in the downtown library.  We reviewed the grammar of two questions:  How are you doing in school?  Are your classes going well?  Abdul answered these questions by stating that he had two tests today, grammar and speaking.  On Thursday, he will have a listening test.  He answered, "I am going take  test listening Thursday."  I corrected, "I am going to take the listening test on Thursday."

Abdul had trouble with 'to' in the following, "I am going (to) go (to) school".  I tried to explain the idea of transitive and intransitive verbs, and of the fixed nature of 'to go to' as the manner of indicating the destination of one's travels.  He then asked about 'to go home', which doesn't require 'to' before 'home'.  Between his inadequacies in English language skills (listening comprehension) and my not being familiar with an argument regarding this point, I am not sure that this was a learning moment for Abdul.  This is further complicated by:

Go home.
Go to my home.
Go to the house.
Go to school.

We then reviewed definite and indefinite articles.  He was unsure of when to use definite and indefinite articles.  He then wanted to know when to use 'a' or 'an' in front of a word that begins with 'h', as in 'a house', but 'an hour'.

We then used his picture dictionary to review vocabulary related to Clothing and to Outerwear.  I encouraged him to create descriptive sentences with the vocabulary.

He was having some problem distinguishing between the vowels in the following word pairs, 'Jim' and 'jam', and 'win' and 'won'.

Last, Abdul describes his plans for the day of today using 'will'.  The sentences listed below are after my corrections of grammar issues.

• I will wake up.
• I will take a shower.
• I will wash my face.
• I will brush my teeth.
• I will eat breakfast.
• I will go to school.
• I will start my class at 9 o'clock.
• I will get home (at) around 3:10.
• I will pick up my son.
• I am going to eat lunch (at) around 5 o'clock.