teaching Algebra

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I have a new student. I'm very excited to work with her. We've met once. She's a college student. In talking with her, she said that in the past, she's always been able to do very well in math classes. She said she's always earned A's and B's in every class. (Of course there's always the possibility of gaps in the past learning being a contributing factor to current learning, and that's something I'll keep an eye out for, right now I'm operating on the premise that everything til now was okay.) But now she's taking college algebra. She has taken it twice and failed it both times. She's told me her biggest stumbling block has always been word problems (surprise!) When we worked together, it was obvious she has a general conception of how to set up the problem (she could easily set up the needed variables and constants to show that her mom had 3 more sweaters than she did). But when asked to show that her mom had 3 more sweaters than she did and between them they had 5, she had no idea what to do. The way I want to approach this is by using concrete objects. I was just introduced to the "Hands-On Equations" system by Borenson. It seems to be just what I'm looking for. Anyone know anything about this system? How would you help her?