Another day of tutoring. I get really frustrated with this particular student. She's in year six, who I have been tutoring for about 3 years now but she doesn't seem to be improving in her studies. Her weakest subject is english. I do comprehension exercises with her extensively and build her vocabulary skills through another exercise book. She seems to do quite alright when going through it with me, but the comprehension she completes for homework is...well, disastrous.
Okay, for example, last week I gave her a page of comprehension for homework. While marking her work today, i came across the most funniest answer. The comprehension questions were based on a simple train timetable. One of the questions asked "What time will you need to catch from Blacktown if you wanted to arrive at Central by 10am?". A pretty straight forward question right?
The answer to that question was '8:56am'. My student's answer was '8:51am'. I didn't understand why she would have written '8:51am' as her answer when the train timetable clearly had '8:56am'. I asked her why her answer was what she had written, and she explained to me that she firstly didn't understand the question. Okay...she didn't understand the question. I didn't think the question was particularly tricky, especially for a year six student. Then she continued to explain that her dad had told her trains never come on time so that you must always go five minutes earlier. This was the reason why she had put '8:51am' as her answer rather than '8:56am'. Pretty cute I guess, but she's is in year six!
This is not the first time she has given rather queer answers.
She is starting to worry me now..I don't know what to do with her.