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We continued to work on English idioms. I presented and explained several idioms to the student and he created sentences in which to use these idioms. We also worked on more reading aloud about American history. To end the lesson, we did skits in which the student would try to be persuasive and sell items to his mother and I. I would periodically correct his intonation and pronunciation.

Reviewed how to put verbs in the past tense; began with regular verbs and taught him that we add "-ed" at the end. Then reviewed the most common verbs with irregular past tense endings; i.e. "I am" turns into "I was", etc. Concluded the lesson by walking through downtown and had him describe as many things as he could to me, or I would point out an object and ask what we call it in English.

Today I gave the student a writing assessment which he worked on for about 20 minutes. After reading an article on "The Simpsons" TV show that outlined its basic themes and its long success, we discussed what story, themes, and characters are. I reviewed the chapter his class is on while he did his writing, so that we can work on biology more in depth for next time. We then worked on all 20 vocabulary words from Unit 10 of his vocabulary book for about 50 minutes. I had him spell each word on paper and use it in a sentence. We paused often to discuss homonyms, antonyms, or synonyms of some of the words. We also discussed their meaning and common usage in English conversation. The remaining 20 minutes he outlined what he has done in Biology class so far, and we talked about his schedule, tests, and what we could work on in the future. His attitude throughout the session was very engaged and motivated. I left the student with reading practice. We will have a brief discussion on the reading in the next session.

This was the last session and it went pretty well. We focused mostly on colloquial phrases in English, things that she had heard and was curious about, or things she had received in text messages from friends that were confusing, etc. A few examples that come to mind: "can't complain", "I'm proud of you", "what's up?", "how've you been?". This brought up the idea of "have" as a helping verb, which I explained to her and compared it to the way they use it in Colombia (which is infrequently). She seemed to understand this concept quickly, and is picking up new vocab words a lot more readily than she used to. She asks why certain things in English are the way they are (like why we say "a lot OF people" instead of "a lot people", like they would in Spanish), but now she is more accepting of these rules being the way they are just because, without needing a firm reason or direct translation to Spanish. We also talked about travel plans, and specifically how she came to be involved in the au pair program. Hopefully these tutoring sessions felt beneficial.

Today the student and I started out by reviewing money vocabulary we learned on Monday. We then moved into discussing personality vocabulary such as sensitive, sensible, aggressive, competitive, moody, manipulative, etc. He was familiar with some of the terms, but required explanation on a few. He needed to understand the nuances which distinguished some of the similar sounding terms such as sensitive, sensible, and selfish. We also discussed some opposites such as generous/stingy, shy/outgoing, etc. I created a card game and a matching game that we played to review the vocabulary after studying the definitions. We then did a speaking activity where we discussed situations and said what action we would take---based on this we would assign each other a personality trait such as patient, charming, honest, etc. I had him describe a picture at the end which was of a job interview and asked him about the emotions of the people in the picture. He did very well with all the vocabulary, and it is my belief that with continued practice, his English speaking skills will continue to improve. I asked him to review the vocabulary page over the weekend as homework and will quiz him on it next week.

The student took an exam to help distinguish a level of Spanish and English for future lesson development. Then we focused on the sound of each letter of the alphabet and different words that emphasize the sounds. The subtle differences between B,P,V, and D were noted as an area to focus on, since these sounds are sometimes used interchangeably in Spanish.