blowing off steam

got a new student yesterday. the school manager assured me this woman could speak really well but had a poor knowledge of grammar. the latter part is very true. as for speaking very well... it is totally not. at least not in class. maybe she speaks 'good' English in her university (where everything takes place in English, but that's somewhere in Africa so i'm suspecting it could be some kind of pigdin English, cos it makes no sense at all), but in my class she can't even produce one correct sentence. not one. not without huge amounts of help from me or the other students. and as this is an exam class (i'm preparing them for the First Certificate), and the general level is good, this is a huge problem. but the school manager is not around right now, so we can't do anything until Monday. but let's face it, she doesn't even know you need the auxiliary 'do' to make a question (as in, 'Do you work?'), and here i am explaining the finer subtleties of 'could' and 'may' as modals of certainty and possibility. and tomorrow, we're practising the speaking test! i don't even want to think about it... it's going to be a nightmare... blood everywhere. i can feel it now, i'm going to hate tomorrow's lesson.