Gabe - TS #15

       Something that I've noticed, especially during the last few sessions, is Masoud's tendency to say things like "before 3 weeks", "before 2 years", etc. instead of the correct "3 weeks ago", "2 years ago," so I decided that for this lesson, I would elaborate on the differences between before and ago. For this session, we had to meet on zoom, and there were some connectivity issues, so I'm not entirely sure how well I got through to him. "Before" can function as an adverb, a preposition, and a conjunction whereas "ago" can only function as an adverb, so I focused on before's use as an adverb. The main difference between them, when used as an adverb, is that "before" talks about a period of time between two distinct events but "ago" signifies the time between now and a past event. "Ago" can only be used to talk about the past, whereas "before" can be used in the past, present, and future. Word order also differs for these words: "before" goes in front of the second of two events while "ago" goes after the period of time. I prepared a powerpoint illustrating this information and after going over it, I had Masoud write sentences using before and ago, showing me that he understood the differences. From the sentences he wrote, it seemed like he understood the differences but when I asked him to explain the differences, he wasn't so sure. At least it seemed like he was starting to internalize the structure, even if he can't fully understand the conceptual differences.

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