Finals Approaching – Only One More Week of Tutoring!

                Hello everyone.  It looks like I will be writing one more blog after this one to talk about my final tutoring adventure after next week’s session.  It’s crazy to think that this was my second to last time (4/26).  I remember thinking before the semester and being worried about how I was going to be able to manage this volunteer requirement, but now I laugh at those thoughts.  I think I told myself you only have to be there an hour a week and you can sneak out and get back to your college schedule.  Interestingly enough, now I find myself staying for the entire 2 hours!  It’s funny how things change haha.

                This past Monday I tutored a female student in Spanish and math!  I was definitely more excited to help with Spanish, but of course, we decided to do math first.  Being an engineering major, I consider myself fairly competent in math, however, when I was helping her I found myself googling the answers.  I have never had to do this before (at least during tutoring)!  She was working on proofs and proving that a certain polygon ABCD is a parallelogram and that certain interior angles are congruent.  When I first saw it, I was baffled and didn’t even know where to start.  The last time I did proofs of polygons was back in high school and I remember not liking them.  That just goes to show you how useful that material is if it’s used once in 7-8 years and how often you use it, but that’s another story… Any ways, using google, I was able to explain the answers and work through a few proofs with her step by step.  I’m hoping by explaining it to her, it will begin to make sense what steps and what things you should look for when developing your proof.  I also reassured her that once you get through this material, you will never have to use it again.  She seemed to like that!

                The second hour or so we focused on Spanish and the present progressive.  Thankfully as hard as Spanish can be when starting off, the present progressive follows a simple formula that is easy to remember to use.  The present progressive is the form you use when you talk about someone doing something or in the midst of something.  She is running.  I’m eating.  They are watching TV.  In English, this commonly done by adding –ing to the verb.  In Spanish, the verb estar is used for is/are along with the verb + ando/iendo depending on if it is ar or er/ir.  So if it’s yo _____________ (hablar) con acento Americano, the completion of the sentence would be yo estoy hablando con acento Americano.  So estar is conjugated and the verb has an ando or iendo ending.  How I explained this to her was that estar is conjugated normally as any other verb.  So you have to look for context and the “who” of the sentence.  Next, you take the verb and chop of the ending.  So hablar becomes habl…  Then since hablar ends in –ar, you need to add ando.  If it ended in er/ir, you would need to add iendo.  So if the subject is me (yo) the sentence would be yo estoy hablando.  I drew a few charts on the side of her paper so she could follow the pattern.  After the first few attempts, she really started getting a hang of it!  That was fun to see.  But like all Spanish things, writing it is one thing and speaking is another.  So of course I made her practice speaking these words.  Now the ending can get tricky with this new addition and become a mouthful, but she also seemed to pick up on it pretty quick.  If it’s mouthful, just say it slower.  You can work on your speed later.

                That’s it for me this week!  Until next week.

--Ross