Grammar concepts

Currently, I find all grammar concepts impossible to explain because my boss has been evaluating my tutoring. This for some reason turns me into the worst tutor ever. I'm better than I have been. I know that I should have explained apostrophe rules this morning, but when I was trying to think of examples I just blanked. It's not recess's it's recesses, but I couldn't think of what recess would be possesive of. Terrible. I feel like I'm failing my tutees. Having my boss there makes me super nervous.

I also could not think of how to explain a run-on sentence and why the sentence in the tutee's paper was run-on. Geez. Maybe it's because I'm super tired, or I have too much on my mind. I know that shouldn't interfere with my tutoring, but it does. It's awful. I feel like an almost total failure. Crap.

On a good day, however, the grammar concept that I have the hardest time explaining is misuses of prepositions. It's very hard to explain to a student why it's of and not for, or why it's on and not about or any other ones. How do you explain that? I still don't know.

The other one is the strange plurals. How do you explain it's syllabi and crises? I think sometimes you just have to tell the tutee. This is just the way it is. There is a reason, but explaining the historical context does not do anyone any favors. The tutee doesn't care that we use syllabi because that's the history of things. They just want to do it right.