I tutor English for a friend, and so far I don’t see much improvement. One major problem she faces is that she just can’t understand questions and organize her ideas. Whenever she writes or speaks, it just comes out as really jumbled up, and in some cases even off-topic. And when she reads and listens, she just fails to understand several details of the text and ends up guessing everything. She really wants to overcome this and asks me how she can improve.

The problem is, through my interaction with her, I came to realize that her problem is much deeper than just her English proficiency. Her command of English is pretty good, and she is able to understand English well. But there is something about her brain that is standing in her way, something I just can’t put my finger on. She can understand everything just fine, if you ask her to translate a text she can do it very well. But if you ask her what she just read/listened, she won’t be able to tell you. This doesn’t just happen during our learning sessions, it happens in other situations too.

One example is when I showed her a funny essay of my student that basically said he wanted to go to America because he could play out his cowboy fantasy and shoot people. My point was that he had a very stereotypical view of America that just came off comical, which everyone I showed it to could immediately get without asking anything. I showed the essay to her. And as she finished reading the last line “some people use guns to kill each other but it’s OK in Texas. I want to go to Texas because it’s a wild and free place for everyone”, she asked me: “What’s so special about this essay?” I asked her to read the last sentences again, which she did several times and even translated to me, and she still failed to get the message. I had to explain my point to her, and only then she got the joke and laughed.

I really want to help her learn English, but this is one big problem that I don’t know how to help her with. It has gone beyond English comprehension and reached a territory that I don’t know. I can’t answer her question of how to improve because I don’t know what she is having problem with in the first place. My guess is this could be some kind of learning disability that I haven’t heard about before. But I don’t know how to word it, so I can’t look it up on Google. Does anyone here know what is wrong with her?

Topics: learning, help, logic, understanding, learning disability