Richard -- Tutoring #12

This is the last session. It was somewhat emotional.

Anyway, for this last session, I dedicated my lesson to the differences between gerunds and infinitives.

Like articles, teaching gerunds and infinitives is very hard to teach. But I felt more prepared for this compared to the former.

I started the lesson by writing "Gerunds vs. Infinitives" on the white board. Of the two terms, Kyung had no idea what a gerund was, so I told him in this way:

"Gerunds function as a noun. Gerunds are formed from modifying the verb infinite. For example, "to go" is an infinitive, but its gerund is "going."

I explained to Kyung that the word "going" could function as a verb in some cases, but I did let him know that such cases make the word "going" no gerund at all. I told him, as an example, the word "going" was a verb in the sentence "I am going to the store today." I let him know in this case, the modified verb refers to the "present continuous" rather than it being a "gerund."

I know this my way of describing this seems confusing, but I assure you that Kyung knew exactly what I meant.

Anyway, I gave him some examples of the gerunds and infinitives.

"Eating an apple a day is healthy."

In this example, I told Kyung that "eating" functions as a noun because "eating" is an activity (one of the things we use to identify nouns... is it a person, place, thing, idea, activity, etc...).

Here is my infinitive example:

"I want to eat an apple."

I asked Kyung what the principle verb was in the sentence. He said "want," and he was correct. I explained why it was correct. The verb "want" is expressing the action. The infinitive "to eat" only specifies that action.

Kyung got this, of course. He is literally a language sponge.

After I taught him the differences, we worked together on a worksheet. This was the first question (the words in the parentheses had to be modified to either infinitives or gerunds):

You should think about (save) until you have enough money (get) a decent video camera rather than (rush) (buy).

I'm so happy to share with you that Kyung got this correct! In fact, he got nearly all of them correct! But here is one where he slipped a bit:

I have trouble (understand) modern art as some artists only seem out (shock); I cannot understand them not (want) to make the kind of beautiful things we all like (look) at.

This was Kyung's answer:

I have trouble to understand modern art as some artists only seem out to shock; I cannot understand them not wanting to make the kind of beautiful things we all like to look at.

In this case, I would remind Kyung that (understand) describes an activity, so the answer would be "understanding" since it functions as a noun.

Like I said, Kyung only had few slips here and there, but he definitely did get most of them correct. I was so proud!

I had to end the lesson there to make room for Karen to give Kyung an improvement test. With my tutoring and his independent studying, it turns out Kyung moved up by one whole level.

This made me feel accomplished.

Kyung let me know that I was an excellent tutor, and so did Karen. But Kyung made me feel very special when he said that he felt that he improved a lot. It made me feel good about that. I feel like I can take this experience and apply it to my first class.

I sure am going to miss Kyung.

Richard. Out.