On August 4 I observed Marco tutoring David Hong. David did not complete the homework as instructed and got about half of the sentences wrong besides. Continuing with the Edgar Allen Poe theme they moved on to "The Tell-Tale Heart". Similarly to last session, Marco made sure to keep recapping as they went along and they were getting along into the story much more than with "The Raven". Some phrases of old have become archaic, so thing like "to wrong someone" or "give insult" are less commonly heard nowadays. However, phrases like "take the life of someone" I would have expected David to have heard. David made a point about how taking the life from someone might not mean death because of things like zombies, and Marco told him not to sass. This session really brought to light a lot of little phrases like "ray of light" and "foresight" that I would expect anyone to have heard and be able to explain or make a good guess at the meaning of. Even going into fifth grade David is not even able to give a reasonable attempt at a guess. Furthermore David did a very poor job of remembering the relatively few events of the story thus far despite the amount of time spent going over them in plain English and making sure that he understood at the time. Marco made a point that he has to read with his mind and not just with his eyes. With a lot of hints and prodding David managed to give a story recap up to where the narrator first shines the ray of light onto the old man.
I could see the frustration in Marco today more so than last session. It's hard to say what the proper course of action is when a student seems to be putting almost no effort into learning at all.
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