Jared TS #4

In tutoring session #4 I finally had opportunity to delve into practicing listening skills when watching the popular sitcom "The Middle" with PJ. At first, I experienced a string of technical difficulties, could not connect Apple TV to wifi, and on top of that I could not locate headphones for a desktop computer. However, a kind friend of mine dropped off some headphones. During the intermission of technical difficulty, I discovered a very interesting activity while thinking on my feet. I pulled up google maps and asked PJ to click on an interesting place, I would then go over pertinent vocabulary for this particular locale. I chose to watch an episode of "The Middle" on a foreign exchange student so I could address cultural differences. This proved to be an effective choice and we will finish the episode upon our next meeting.

Jared TS #3

I tutored PJ the week after spring break and met up with him at the CIES building. Over break, I had scoured my attic for some of my cherished Star Wars dictionaries. I had highlighted relevant vocabulary words in the text prior to the lesson. I was late to the session an felt flustered but I decided to go with the books even though I had not had time to compare them to the "Wonders" text I had used last time. The text proved to be above level for PJ, but that did not stop him from pronouncing the very difficult words, even the ones made-up (Anderson) words from the Star Wars universe. I felt bad to give him such challenging material but at the very least I believe he found the corresponding pictures to be interesting. I would not repeat this again- I attempted to do i+1, instead I probably introduced i+3.

Jared TS #2

I tutored PJ at his house a bit after dinner. We went through a science reading that covered the various different forms of water. As a small extrinsic motivator, I promised to show a video on "dry ice" once we had covered the chapter. Because of the nature of science, there was a lot of material that easily sent PJ into a derailed line of questioning. I struck a balance, I would answer a relevant question but once it got too hypothetical or unrelated I would use my "here and now" mantra to bring the conversation back to the task at hand. PJ impressed me with the ease with which he pummeled through the reading, but I had been warned that his reading pace and efficiency would be deceiving. To counter this, I periodically would stop him before a paragraph had ended that way I could stop him from zoning out. I enjoyed this session and look forward to many more.

Jared CO#3

On the day before spring break, I observed Ramin's class for a second time. I wished to observe the reading exercise from CO#2 come to fruition. Ramin emphasized the importance of his students' reading in English over the break and I thought this was an important suggestion. Ramin mentioned he had skipped breakfast to the class. I suggested he might be "hangry". The classroom misunderstood and started to poke fun at Ramin by implying he was "hungover" rather than "hangry". I had a laugh at this, there was much material to cover that day so we did not make it to a lesson on extensive reading, but I am sure I will have a chance to experience this before my time in the TEFL program is done.

Jared CP #1

Jared CP #1

Last weekend I met Dojun Kim over Skype to go help strengthen his English skills. Dojun is pleasant to talk with and polite. I engaged in more than just a conversation with someone who wants to learn English during this conversation. I saw our talk as a cultural exchange. My family was present at our beach condo. My dad saw this as an ample opportunity to peer into our conversation to embarrass me, but this was all in good fun. While talking about sports, I learned Dojun was an avid baseball fan. I casually incorporate English vocabulary into the conversation, I type interesting words into the margins so Dojun can gain extra exposure to words he might be unaware of. Overall, I look forward to our next meeting.

Mitch CP #4

Today I met up with Abdullah again! Erika and I took him to our favorite store: World Market. Abdullah seemed to love it, although we were disappointed that we could not find any of his traditional middle eastern food there. Despite of this, all of us tried some Japanese soda, and taught him idioms like "if you want it done right, do it yourself" in the context of roommates not washing their dishes. After we left World Market, we felt the trip was incomplete without seeing any foods from his homeland, so we went to a Middle-Eastern ethnic foods store to let him show us what types of food you can find in his country. We were surprised at how tasty all the food he showed us looked. He told us about how they make coffee and tea in his country. We ended up buying some tea, unable to resist his vivid explanation. Before we took him home, we went with him to play some pool. He is unbelievably good so Erika and I were utterly destroyed. All in all, it was another great session with Abdullah. It is clear to me that he is such an avid learner and will spend all the time in the world with us to better learn our culture. He has made conversation partner sessions fun and educational for both of us.  

Michaella TS#3 Adult

Monday, March 28, 2016

            Today I met with Isik at the Starbucks near Trader Joe's. The topic of the tutoring session was persuasive writing. I explained the purpose of persuasive writing, and gave Isik an outline of how to structure a persuasive essay. We went through the requirements for the introduction, body paragraph, and conclusion, as well as the importance of counter-arguments. I created a persuasive writing assignment that gave Isik four prompts that she could choose to write about. The prompts were:

1.What is your favorite book or movie, and why should people read or watch it?

2.Do you think technology has been beneficial or harmful to our society?

3.Should men and women be paid the same work wages?

4.Do you think traditional schooling is better than homeschooling? Why? 

              Isik chose the second prompt, and decided to take the stance that technology is beneficial to our society. She spent time brainstorming ideas to support her viewpoint, then took 20-25 minutes to write her persuasive essay. Once completed, Isik and I read the essay aloud so she could hear any grammatical errors or word choice errors. Isik expressed how much she appreciates doing writing activities like these because it will not only improve her writing abilities, but it will also allow her to help students in the future.  

Erika CP #3

I took Abdullah to my favorite store in Tallahassee, World Market. We wandered down the isles talking about the different foods in his country and the foods found in mine. We shared stories of our friends back home and had fun exploring the diversity World Market brings to Tallahassee.

After our trip to World Market he wanted to show me a store that sells middle-eastern food, so we went to the Bazaar and he explained what food means a lot to his culture and what he misses the most about Saudi Arabia. It was here that he explained to me that there are 90 names for Allah in Islam and I explained what Easter is and why I was wearing my cross today.

By this time about 2 hours had passed and we decided to go play pool. It was great to spend an afternoon getting to know such a pleasant and open person who is looking forward to expand his worldly knowledge.

Erika TS #4 Child

I tried a different approach for teaching Astin yesterday. I prepared a speaking and writing lesson for him and Darth Vader helped me give it. I had him watch a short video clip of Star Wars and answer questions about the video after he watched it. The questions consisted of his general understanding of the video as well as more specific questions regarding what certain characters did in the video.

To practice pronunciation and articulation of longer words, I had him read the intro of the Star Wars video. I read it first and had him repeat after me. After watching the video and answering questions, he practiced writing. I picked the phrase "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." and had him write it on a dry erase board. I created spaces for the amount of letters each word was supposed to have and had him fill it out.

During this lesson I corrected him when he said that Luke Skywalker's son "growed up" and let him know that he actually 'grew up'. We also went over what Darth Vader meant when he said that Luke will "share the fate of" the emperor that was killed. I taught him that that meant that the same thing that happened to the emperor will happen to Luke (Darth Vader will kill him). All in all, it was a very successful tutoring session and he stayed focused the entire time.

Michaella CP#2

Saturday, March 26, 2016

           Yesterday Madeleine and I went to the mall with a few of my friends. Since we got along so well the first time we met, I thought it would be a great opportunity to introduce her to more people. My friends were so intrigued to learn more about Maddie and her culture, which really allowed her to open up and have a great time with everyone. They were also very impressed with how well Maddie spoke English. If Maddie didn't understand a word we used, we helped her learn it by spelling it out, and giving a definition. This was helpful since she writes a log of new words she learns every week. Following the mall, Maddie joined us for dinner and a movie. We saw My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, and she loved it! She told us how nice it was to spend time with friends, because she often misses her friends from home.
          Overall. the best part about yesterday was seeing Maddie feel so comfortable with a new group of friends. I'm happy that everyone got along so well, and I look forward to spending more time with her!

TS #5 Child Mitch

Yesterday I made a huge breakthrough with Astin. First of all, he was so much better in his home environment than at the Library. At the Library he was very distracted but at home he was much more focused, and I dare say excited, to learn. The thing that surprised me the most was when I walked in, knowing how much he loved the Star Wars series, I had prepared a worksheet for him to practice writing, vocab and reading. The exercise was integrated in that it had a picture of "Darth Vader" with various arrows pointing toward his body with blanks, then there was a word box. The words were simple but possibly ones Astin did not know, i.e: helmet, lightsaber, cape, chest, stomach, etc. So first he had to identify what the arrow was pointing at, find the corresponding word in the text box, and then write it in the blank. To my surprise, he did not want to do this to start off, instead he wanted to read a book that was completely unrelated to Star Wars. I was impressed to say the least at how focused and determined he was to read this book. I had to help him sound out the words, because Astin has a bad habit of guessing words when he gets stuck. All in all, this was the best tutoring session I have had with him thus far, and I am exited to plan next weeks lesson accordingly. 

Erika TS #2 Adult

I met with In-Hwa yesterday at Starbucks and she greeted me by saying that our last tutoring session was very "helpful", a word that she learned how to pronounce last week! This time we thought it was a good idea to practice speech. Her reading and writing levels are much higher than her speaking level, so the goal for the day was to help improve her fluidity in English. We came up with several topics and I had her share her views on the subject as well as the norms in South Korea versus the norms in the US. Occasionally, I would give some input on the subject. The first topic was if alcohol should be illegal, the second was if gay marriage should be allowed, the third was if sex education should be taught in school, and the fourth was if both men and women should know how to cook.

From her answers, I saw what her trouble points were. Although she knows how to pronounce sounds like the 'th' sound, she gets nervous when she speaks and feels the need to speak faster without articulating all the sounds in a word. I did not correct her mistakes unless something was totally incomprehensible like "car accident", for example. By the end of the session she said that talking so much helped her loosen up and that she really needed the practice. She explained how her brain works as translator and that's why she takes a little longer to respond to questions.

Erika CP #2

I met with Abdullah for lunch at Gumby's on Wednesday. It was so interesting talking to him and comparing the differences and similarities between our cultures. I had previously met him when I tried to go to the movies with him and Wonmi, but unfortunately, tickets were sold out by the time I arrived.

During lunch we talked about his life back home, and I discovered that he is an engineer that hates math and is trying to find an alternate route while learning English. We also talked about our impression of Tallahassee and other cities in the US. I was embarrased at the fact that I had ordered half of the pizza to be Hawaiian. I forgot that his religion doesn't allow him to eat pork, but he ended up intrigued by the differences between us and asked me what Latins usually eat.

His English is fantastic. He is at a very high level and really just needs to practice speaking to improve his accent and acquire more vocabulary. He asked me a few times during our conversation what certain words meant and to give him synonyms. He also wanted me to teach him colloquial phrases! It was fun. By the end of our conversation he said that he was so thankful to have found a friend like me and was very happy that Wonmi introduced us.

Erika TS#3 Child

I tutored Astin on Tuesday and brought some books of my own to make sure that he could not memorize anything beforehand. I confirmed my suspicions of him having memorized the books he owned in order to convince me that he can read. We read two short books and I helped him with his homework. His homework helped me realize what level the rest of his class was at and it made me readjust my teachings to be more adequate for the level he is at. The homework consisted of tracing words to practice writing and coloring the picture of a group of pictures that did not belong. Astin raced through this assignment but still has trouble writing. I also noticed while speaking to him that he needs help with his speech. He pauses a lot while speaking and does not speak in complete sentences. We will work on that next time.

As for the books I brought, Astin actually got through them! He took a little break between the two books, but it was amazing that they captivated his attention for so long. He seemed frustrated at the words he did not recognize and would ask me what they were. He asked me a few times what a few specific words meant repeatedly for which I responded that I already told him and he had to figure it out. When he realized that I wasn't going to do all the work by repeating definitions I had already told him, he would search for the repeated word in the text he had already read and remember the definition through the context of the story. He learned new vocabulary this way and we were also able to get through some words together by sounding them out. This had not worked perfectly in the past, but now I realize that the words were just too long. During this session he was able to sound out and read one syllable words.

Wonmi TS #2 Adult

22 March 2016

I met with my adult tutee again today. He has a presentation that needed to be worked on.

He printed a script of his presentation, and we started the lesson with him presenting it to me. I forgot to record him, which was a mistake, because he improved a lot during the lesson but he could not really feel the different. This was a beautiful mistake in reminder that I should record him next time.

The presentation was about SWOT analysis, and after he finished, we went over some tips on how to improve his intonation to help me understand him better. We also fixed some grammar points.

We are planning on meeting March 27th to finish preparing his presentation.

Charlene-CP #3 March 10, 2016

Met with Isak at Grassroots Cafe in Thomasville, Georgia, this morning. The drive took about an hour, but was an easy one. I had forgotten how pretty Thomasville is in the Spring. There has been quite a bit of renovating/restoration of old buildings since my last visit, which was a few years ago.

The cafe that Isak chose had a very large array of coffees and teas, with an apparent penchant for dark roast coffee. I remember she told me that she was taught to read coffee ground left once a person had finished his/he cup of coffee. But, these were paper cups, so I don't think that would have worked. I must say, though, that I had the strongest cup of "medium" roast coffee that I had ever drunk. It was good, but definitely full of caffeine.

The cafe was busy so we walked around viewing the nice old buildings while we talked. We spend some time looking in the stores. Most of the items were pricey, but lovely--lots of art, textiles, etc. We spent some time talking to a shopowner, who had relocated from Vermont (I think). She said her clientele were local as well as international. She said that Thomasville is a worldwide destination for hunters, and a lot of those folks come to her shop. She had silk and embroidered clothing items from several countries. They looked like pieces or art to me. We asked about sales. The owner said she does have sales a couple of times a year. That is good, because the least expensive item I found was a shirt for $134. Most shirts and blouses were over $200. But, we did have a nice chat with the shop owner, who was warm and informative, as well as a "cheerleader" for her adoped city.

After a couple of hours, Isak and I felt the need to get on with our day. So, I said good-by, and we decided we would set another time to get together when we saw each other in class again next week.

Charlene-CP #2 March 3, 2016

Met with my conversation partner, Isak, at Black Dog Cafe at Lake Ella. Evidently, I was not good at communicating my intentions, since Isak was looking for me around the lake and shop area. We thought we might like to do some shopping today. But, I meant that we should first meet at the cafe when we set this up. So, I left her hanging. But, she figured it out, and called me, then made her way over to the cafe, where I was already drinking coffee on the veranda.

After retrieving her own refreshment, we sat down. We were both feeling the demands on our time right now, so we only visited for an hour. During that time, we were asked by a patron at the next table who were would be voting for in the upcoming Presidential election, by a gentleman with a strong British accent. He said he did not understand why more women he had spoken with were not planning to vote for Hillary Clinton, since she is a woman. I was wearing may "Bernie" shirt, which is why I am sure he decided to "survey" us. We both told him that we liked Hillary Clinton better than the Republican candidates, but just liked Bernie Sanders better. He was polite but said he is still surprised at these kinds of responses.

Isak was also asked to take a picture of the woman and young man sitting at the table nearest her. They then told us the story of how the woman and the young man's mother met years ago at FSU and the young man's mother asked that she look after her son when he went to FSU. The woman said she would do so and the young man was now a graduate. He was traveling through Tallahassee on the way to New York City, just stop in and visit. They wanted a picture of themselves together as the young man embarked on a location change that he hoped would result in his being able to work as an actor.

By this time, an hour had elapsed and we both had to get going. There was no time for leisurely shopping. We decided to meet over the FSU Spring Break in Thomasville, when there should be more time. Isak will be teaching that week and I will certainly have time to drive 45 minutes north. Isak said she would send a link to her favorite cafe in Thomasville where we can meet.

　

Mitch TS #4 (Adult)

On Tuesday I had my fourth meeting with Isik. It was just as productive as the last three, but as she wishes to improve her writing, I was able to actually help her edit a cover letter that she had written. This was very helpful to her and to me as a teacher, because I was able to correct stylistic errors and grammatical errors, and see what kinds of mistakes she was making to better prepare material for her next time. All in all, her letter was quite good, so the only things I had her correct were organizational and stylistic, and I think that she learned a lot through this activity.

Mitch CP #3

Abullah and I had a great time playing pool last night. We went to the FSU bowling and billiards center and played pool for quite a long time. It turns out he is quite good! while playing we had a lot of fun conversations including what he has been up to, about movies that came out recently, and about things he enjoys doing in his home country. As we were playing, I taught him the word "hustler" and taught him that this is a type of person who says they are bad but are actually good. He explained that he has a word for that in his language too. I then called him a hustler because of how well he was playing. We both agreed that we should come back for a rematch. I had a very good time and I feel like Abdullah did as well. 

Charlene-TS #1 Child March 5, 2016

After quite a bit of emailing, leaving phone messages, and with the help of Prof. Kim, I was able to set up a time with my child tutee for the first session. I learned from my assigned child's mother that her son is actually her daughter, Nayun, and she is in kindergarten at Gilchrest Elementary School. Nayun's mother chose Books A-Million for our first tutoring session.

I went to the first session more than 20 minutes early, because I knew we would need some time to identify each other. I had told Nayun's mother what I would be wearing. When I arrived in the children's section of the store, I saw Nayun and her mother immediately. Apparently they had arrived even earlier than I had.

After introducing ourselves to each other, we all sat down at one of the little tables in the children's section of the store. Nayun spoke Korean to her mother and she spoke English to me. I did not notice any accent or mispronunciations in her speaking voice – which was completely consistent with what Prof. Kim told us about the flexibility of a child's learning potential at this age that comes to languages. I had brought with me several items, including a few books, flashcards, story cubes, etc., that I had picked up pretty cheaply. I asked my tutee if she would be willing to do some things for me. She said that she would. I started with a kindergarten-aged maze book. She completed an easy maze correctly. She completed an intermediate maze quickly. So, I gave her one of the hard mazes to complete at the back of the book, and she completed that correctly also. It was clear that she had mastered mazes. At about this point, her mother decided to go look at some books on her own and leave us alone to finish. After that, Nayun just looked at me and stopped talking. It was clear that she was uncomfortable with sitting alone with a new adult. So I suggested that we go look for her mother and she jumped up immediately. After locating her mother in another section store of the store, I asked her mom to sit with us until we finished our initial assessment, explaining that Nayun had stopped speaking. Her mother then rejoined us.

Nayun's mother told me that her daughter has five a Dr. Seuss books at home and she reads them on her. My tutee looked at me and grinned ear-to-ear what her mother told me this. I congratulated Nayun on being so smart. We then reviewed flashcards with colors, numbers, letters, and words, such as zebra, lion, cat, and nest. She got all of these correct.

I next tried to get Nayun interested in the story cubes. She seemed to be confused by them and said she had never seen anything like these before. She did recognize the dinosaurs on the cubes, which I thought was impressive sense there were several different kinds that did not look anything alike. After encouraging her to try to make up a story about the cubes with me, we moved on to something else because it was clear she was either not understanding or had no interest in this. I suspect she felt uneasy encountering this is something new, in addition to having already encountered me as something new.

Next I took out a book called Ferdinand of the Bull. I asked my tutee if she had read this book. She said that she had not. We went through the book together and I asked her questions about what was going on. She seemed interested and answered the questions I asked. She was unable, however, to read most of the words in the book. This particular book, although written on about the first grade level, was unlike her Dr. Seuss books, and it was written in prose with no rhyme.

We were running out of time at this point, and it was clear that Nayun's attention was waning. She was a bit jumpy get her chair, but stayed in it. Her mother and I discussed future sessions and decided that the next session would be at the Leon County Public Library, Northeast Branch. We will email each other about details prior to the session. We discussed briefly having at least some of the sessions outside of the classroom typesetting to encourage Nayun to talk more and to challenge her imagination. Nayun's mother is open to this. However, we will not be meeting next week because it is Spring Break and Nayun's father, who is a grad student, will be spending family time with Nayun and her mother.

Charlene TS #2 – Adult March 16, 2016

My adult tutee, Soon Gyu, had been unable to meet with me as we had tentatively planned on March 4, because she was sick. Therefore, this meeting was only our second, and we met at Starbucks again. This time, we met inside, rather than outside. Although it is very pleasant outside, we both noticed there have been a lot of noise and interference from people doing regular business in the area. We felt that inside would likely be quieter. Since Starbucks offers free WiFi Internet, I brought my laptop with me to help with the session. I plan to help my tutee review her pronunciation, and then, present her with a listening exercise to help her, I hoped, and hence both her listening and her reading skills. I had also prepared some information on metaphors, since the story that I was using, The Red Shoes, like most fairytales, was full of these. I hoped that this would be of interest to my tutee, since she has a social work background and metaphor is often used in counseling/therapy.

I spoke with my tutee about her trip over the Spring Break. She said that she had remained sick for most of the trip, but was feeling better now. She said they had gone camping and she was not certain that the pollen in the air had been very helpful. However, other than that, she had a very good time, she told me.

I spoke with my tutee about how her "La-La-ing" in the shower was coming along. She said that she was doing this every morning, and she thought it was helping. We went over some words that use the letter L a lot and, to me, she seemed to be saying them more clearly.

I presented her with a brief lesson on the concept of metaphor. She was able to relate to some of the figures of speech I use with her for examples, because apparently, there are some equivalents in the Korean language. For instance, she said she was familiar with the Korean saying that seem to parallel "more is up" and "more is less." Thus, the concept of figures of speech was not an issue for her. Metaphor was little bit more difficult but she did seem to understand that these amounted to comparing two different things to show that they have one thing in common.

I had previously downloaded a free version of The Red Shoes on my laptop, and I asked my tutee if she would be willing to listen to it. She was more than happy to do so. After she had finished the exercise, she commented that she was able to better understand the story because the voice that read the story was slow and clear. She did seem to get the just of what was going on in the story, but seemed a bit confused about why the shoes seem to be working on their own in against the young lady in the story. I noted to her that she had only heard the story one time, and it would take some reviewing to get all the details.

I had brought with me a printout of the story, in addition. I provided her with the printout. She identified a few words on the first page that she was unfamiliar with. We talked about those words. I asked her to take the story home with her and review only the first page before we got together again next week. I asked her not to worry about not understanding everything, because it was new material, and there were several new words to learn.

I noted that my tutee seemed to be struggling more with the concept of these out-of-control shoes, rather than the vocabulary. Therefore, I asked her as we would be reviewing the story in the future, just to keep in the back of her mind if she could find any metaphors and the story – but not to worry about that right away.


I showed my tutee where I had found the story to download for free on the Internet, and noted that there were likely several versions of it on YouTube. She said she would look for these.
We agreed to meet again next Wednesday at Strozier Library, providing I am able to get access to the library. We both agreed that the library would be a more appropriate setting for lessons together because of the distractions and noise of the restaurant in general.

Charlene TS #1-Adult March 2, 2016

Met with my adult tutee for the first time today. She had suggested the meeting at the Starbucks on Tennessee Street near the campus. Soon Gyu is from South Korea and said she will be in this country for a year. She is a student at CIES. She already holds a Ph.D. from a university in Korea in Social Welfare. She told me that she was head of a counseling center prior to coming to the U.S. with her husband, an American.
She advised she first met her husband when he was recommended to her as an English tutor to help her prepare an English-language presentation. He is now teaching at CIES and working on an advanced degree in TESOL. We discussed some of the issues she dealt with in deciding to enter a cross-cultural marriage. She stated that after her parents got to know her husband, they accepted him. But, learning their daughter was involved with an American rather than a Korean man took her parents some time to adjust to. On the other hand, she said his parents accepted her right away. She said she and her husband will be visiting her in-laws over the Spring Break. She said that when her husband completes his degree program, they will return to Korea to live.

Soon Gyu had brought with her some grammar homework and classwork she had been working on. Although she asked for my help with this, she proceeded to complete it on her own. She only asked me to verify her thinking process.

She said that she is interested in learning to speak and pronounce words more clearly. Her pronunciation was quite understandable to me, but she stated she had problems with Ls and Rs. We laughed because my name has both and spent some time making sure she could say may name properly. I suggested that she sing in the shower, literally, using "La-La" instead of words for the melody. She said she would try this.

Since I had spoken with her and had seen her writing of sentences from her homework already, I asked Soon Gyu to try to read a prologue out loud from a science fiction book by Sherry Tepper (The Margarets). I did not expect her to be able to read it very well. To my surprise, she read every word and pronounced these correctly. She needed to sound out about four words, but did so fairly quickly without my help. She did not, however, understand all that she had read.

Near the end of our session, Soon Gyu's husband joined us for a few minutes. He was very nice, and he is clearly supportive of her learning process. Since next week is Spring Break, we made a tentative time to meet on Friday , knowing this may change because of Soon Gyu's planned trip. We discussed meeting at Strozier Library, but since I am not certain if I can access the library as a former FSU student (alumna only), we decided for certain to meet the week after Spring Break at Starbucks.

Charlene CO #3 March 21, 2016

I was able to observe the 4B Level Reading class taught by Ramin Yazdanpanah and his intern today. I introduced myself to both at the beginning of the class and they welcome to me. It was clear that both had an excellent rapport with their students. The students seem to very at ease and talk to freely with the instructors. I was introduced to the class, and to the instructor had each student introduced themselves to me.

The class lesson today had been prepared by the intern. She handed out copies of the lesson to every student and also to me. She had prepared a Pre-Reading Activity, leading a short discussion in mental health problems in general. She asked each student about mental health problems and they have seen that were issues in their country. She also asked about attitudes between religion and mental health treatment.

The class was provided then with an article entitled the new focus on The New Focus on Theistic Psychotherapy. This was a very technical research survey article about the emerging issue of psychotherapy within the context of religion or spirituality. Quite frankly, I had to really concentrate to understand it, which surprised me because I have a mental health background. I felt sorry for the students, at that point. The instructions they were given, of course, were to look for context clues. They didn't need a lot of help with this. Quite a bit of technical language was used in the piece, and in at least one instance the article confusingly used a technical mental health term in an non-technical way. This must have added to the students' confusion; it added to mine. The students were asked to take the article paragraph by paragraph, and write down words that they did not understand from the paragraph, as well as questions about the ideas in the paragraph. The students were good about stating what was unclear to them. This must be a skill in itself--being able to elucidate what one does not know.

The intern have provided a list of questions at the end to test for comprehension, however, we did not get that far. I imagine at this level, and given the depth of the article, this must be quite common. The students did not seem discouraged, however. And, this was the first time they had ever seen the article. The class spent some time talking about how difficult it was to work through with the instructor and the intern. They made it clear that it was difficult on purpose, but they felt quite certain that the students would be able to work through the article with more readings and more analyzing. The class ended on an "up note."

Charlene CO #2 March 21, 2016

I observed Felicia Chiappetta's Foundations Composition Class today. Ms. Chiappetta is apparently a PhD candidate in The Florida State University TESOL Program. I also met Ms. Chiappetta's intern, who was very helpful in explaining things throughout the class. This classroom was set up differently. It has a large square table that takes up most of the space in the room, and the students sat around it. Ms. Chiappetta's class, I thought, was fast paced. However, the students seemed to keep up very well. I assumed they were used to her routine, and certainly no one was complaining.

I noticed that the students had books with pictures in them that I had not seen in my previous observation. The intern told me that these are picture dictionaries that help this level of class with their vocabulary. In addition, Ms. Chiappetta had written "was not = wasn't" and "were not = weren't" on the whiteboard as a visual reminder to students as they were writing. In addition, Ms. Chiappetta had written a schedule for the day to give the students an indication of what they would be doing in class. If I were a student in this class, I think that these things would make me feel supported "right off the bat" upon entering the classroom.

The first exercise for the class today was to describe people in the class using the word be in the past simple tense. Ms. Chiappetta telling gave the class an example of the kind of sentence that was assigned. The students were given seven minutes to write 10 sentences. As they wrote, Ms. Chiappetta answered questions they were having an provided hints as needed. The intern and Ms. Chiappetta then marked errors on the students' papers so they could correct them.

After that exercise. The class was given the assignment of answering the question "what did you do yesterday?" She asked that they write one sentence for the 22 words that were written on the whiteboard. She also gave examples for this assignment. Once again, errors remarked at the end of the exercise for correction by the students.

For the next exercise, Ms. Chiappetta asked the students to open their dictionaries to particular page. She then spent some time talking about verbs that take ed as an ending-- regular verbs. Then she talked about your regular verbs and their conjugations. The students apparently have been exposed to this previously, and Ms. Chiappetta was reminding them. The students were given the assignment to use irregular verbs in the past tense to talk about what they did yesterday.

The next lesson consisted of the students writing three sentences about "what Dr. Kennell is doing right now."

By this time, we had run out of time, and the students packed up to leave the class. I thanked Ms. Chiappetta and her intern for having me in the classroom. It was a pleasant experience for me, and the students appeared to be quite engaged and satisfied.

　
　

Charlene TS #3-Adult

Met with my adult tutee today at Strozier Library. This was our third meeting. Professor Kim had been kind enough to arrange my access to Strozier Library, an issue for me since I am a student only at CIES right now, not main FSU. However, since it was a nice day, my tutee chose a nice table outside. We discussed The Red Shoes story that she listened to last session. She said, since we last met, she had spent some time on YouTube, and reviewed the story in Korean and English. I complimented her on her initiative. She remembered that this story had been turned into a science fiction movie in Korea, and told me about that story—which, as art does, made a few diversions from the original story.

We discussed the words in the story that she was unfamiliar with last time, and I gave her a vocabulary sheet with word definitions. But, she appeared to have familiarized herself with the words already.

I noticed that she had a problem with pronouncing the word shoes. She said shoz-es, making it a two-syllable word. We practiced stopping the word quickly, trying to keep her from gliding into a second syllable. (I likely would not have been prepared for this, except for my conversation in class with Wonmi last night. So, thanks, Wonmi!)

We also discussed her “La-La-ing” in the shower to improve her pronunciation of Ls. She said she was asked to change her morning song, since, evidently, she has been quite consistent with this. I decided to pull up The-Rain-in-Spain-Falls-Mainly-in-the-Plain scene from “My Fair Lady” on YouTube on my laptop, so she hear and copy this as a possible change. I noticed that when she repeated the sentence, she was doing well with pronouncing Ls in words singly (La-La-ing apparently paid off), but the double-L in the word falls sounded more like an R. She had to slow down considerably to make the sound work, but we will need to work on this a bit more.

I had come prepared to talk about minimal pairs (great timing, considering Prof. Kim’s lesson las night) and work on some more sounds today with my tutee, but her husband called. We had gone a little overtime.

We decided to meet again next Wednesday and, had discussed earlier perhaps meeting at the Tallahassee Museum next week. I promised I would send her driving directions this week. She works hard and deserves to have a little fun. The museum would be fun, as well as educational and would give us a lot to talk about—in English.

Michaella TS#2 Adult

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

              Today I had my second adult tutoring session with Isik. I planned for us to review over some of the midterm exam material, as well as have Isik complete an advanced error correction worksheet. I also prepared a writing exercise for Isik, but we quickly ran out of time. I learned it can be tricky when trying to gauge the amount of time that will be needed for each exercise.

            While Isik completed the error correction worksheet, I did my best to help her through the process. I found myself wanting to give Isik the correct answer whenever she got stuck. However, I knew this would only falter her learning process. I made sure to give Isik the amount of time she needed, unless she asked for my help. Isik also taught me the importance of explaining idioms to ESL students. Many of the sentences included on the error correction worksheet contained idioms that Isik was unaware of. I am thankful that Isik can share her own insight from her second language learning experience.

Wonmi TS #1 Adult

17 March 2016

I met with my adult tutor for the first time today. We were not able to meet before the Spring Break, so I was eager to meet him. Interestingly enough, it was a familiar face! My adult tutor was a member of my church, and actually in my family's bible study. I do not participate in the bible study, so I did not know him well. However, the fact that he knew my face helped him feel comfortable, and hopefully lowered his filter.

We discussed what his degree is, why he is here, how long he will be here, what he wanted to focus on, and other aspects of English that he wanted me to help him with. We then looked over some class material to help him understand some aspects.

We scheduled two meetings next week to help prepare his presentations for his class. I will prepare some tips on effective presenting of a powerpoint and pronunciation.

Michaella TS#1 Adult

Monday, March 20, 2016

           Isik and I met at the Starbucks on Tennessee Street. We spent the first couple of minutes getting to know each other. I immediately noticed how easy she is to talk to. Isik has a naturally calming presence, even though she lives a very busy life. We shared stories, and talked about our studies in school. I also learned about her love of folk dancing!

          To begin the tutoring session, I had Isik read a short paragraph that contained several errors. Isik was eager to take on the challenge, and did a great job of distinguishing the mistakes. If she did not understand why a grammar error needed to be made, she never hesitated to ask. We spent time going over the placement of prepositional phrases, and why they should generally follow what they are describing. Once we finished reviewing, I had Isik write a one-page essay on her favorite place. Since Isik is interested in perfecting her formal writing skills, it was a good starting point for our tutoring sessions together. I read her finished essay aloud, so Isik could hear if she made any "beautiful mistakes." Completing the essay assignment also allowed me to evaluate her abilities as a writer.

        Since Isik envisions creating a website one day that will incorporate both Turkish and English text, I will focus the majority of our tutoring sessions on the different aspects of formal writing. I hope to use the skills I've acquired as a Creative Writing major to help expand and improve Isik's writing abilities. Isik was such a pleasure to work with, and I look forward to our weekly meetings. I also learned how important it is to be able to explain why grammar rules are a certain way. I often found myself at a loss of words when describing something so simplistic.

Michaella CO#3

Monday, March 21, 2016

   Today I had my third classroom observation. It was a 3B Speaking class. Kyle Kaminski was the instructor, and it was truly a humorous experience. The agenda of the day included covering either/neither and sequence adverbs. Kyle presented the topic, gave examples, then had the students work in groups to discuss either/neither situations. The students were very interactive with each other and the instructor as well. He was constantly making jokes with the students, but focused their attention when he was explaining important material. Kyle gave each of the students a note card that had either a sentence or a response to a sentence. For five minutes, the students walked around the room looking for the correct response to their respective cards. Kyle also included a pantomime activity, which required students to act out an action in front of the class. The students then had to use the sequence adverbs to describe what was occurring. This was my favorite activity because the class was learning, but having an enjoyable time as well. Teaching English can be a tedious process, so it is important to include activities that are more laid back and lighthearted. I saw how Kyle was extremely honest when he did not know the correct answer to a students question, which reaffirms that teachers must be humble when working with their students. He apologized if he did not explain things clearly, and gave praise to the students who asked those difficult questions. I hope to use the same humility when teaching students in the future!

Erika TS #1 Adult

I met with In-hwa-kim yesterday to practice speaking. We focused on phonics and incorporated things I have learned from my experience in linguistics. I found it to be significantly easier to tutor an adult than tutoring a child. In-hwa-kim knew the international phonetic alphabet (IPA) so explaining sounds in English was made simple! When we first met, we introduced ourselves and gave a little background about ourselves. As we did this, I paid attention to her level of understanding and what difficulties she had while speaking. She had trouble pronouncing the phonemes: L, Z, R, TH, and P.

After introducing ourselves, we focused on a paper she had written in CIES. The exercise I had her do was to read the paper out loud and stop after each paragraph. During the pauses between paragraphs, I underlined the words she had mispronounced and went over them. This way she wold not be discouraged since I underlined after she spoke and not during. After going through the complete essay, we went over the words that needed the most phonetic help.

I took a linguistics class and learned, not only how to write IPA, but also where to place the tongue and how to shape the mouth when pronouncing specific sounds. For example, I taught In-hwa-kim that 'th' is an inter-dental fricative and that 'z' is like a voiced 's' (when the throat vibrates). With my explanations and having her repeat the sounds several times, she finally learned!

Our final exercise was to record her speech. I came up with a list of words that used the difficult sounds and had her read them until she pronounced them correctly. I also reminded her how to position her tongue in order to make the sounds and had it recorded so that she can re-listen to the recordings.

Michaella TS#3 Child

Thursday, March 17, 2016

             Last week I had my third tutoring session with PJ at the Hecht House. I really enjoyed this session because PJ had more energy, and he was very focused on the material. We covered a variety of topics. I began the lesson by having PJ read a story followed by simple comprehension questions at the end. The story was about a girl who plays soccer, and PJ was intrigued by the plot since he plays soccer as well. He did a great job of comprehending the main idea and supporting details of the story. I've learned that the content of the story plays a huge role in keeping the tutee's attention throughout the tutoring session. Afterwards, we practiced vocabulary and proofreading exercises. I was overall impressed with how well PJ completed his work. The more time I spend with PJ, the more I get to know his personality, which makes our time together more fun! I look forward to continuing our practice in his school workbook this upcoming week.

Wonmi CP #3

19 March 2016

I met with Abdullah today to watch Zootopia the movie at AMC theater. Before the movie started, we had some time to talk more about his culture and his hometown in Saudi Arabia. He mentioned that he lives quite far from his hometown, since his job is in the north-eastern area, while his home is in the south-western area.

One amazing fact that I learned about Saudi Arabian culture was that if someone is invited to your house, you must prepare a WHOLE SHEEP. You must go to a animal/live stock shop and buy a sheep, then take that sheep to a restaurant that will butcher it and cook the food in the traditional dish form. This is much different than my Korean culture, where I was taught that if I am invited to a house for food, I must bring some kind of present, usually dessert or fruits or wine.

Mitch TS #3 Child

Yesterday I had my first child tutoring session. It was interesting to say the least. I severely underestimated how difficult it would be to keep Astin's attention. Astin is very distracted and I constantly had to try to spur his attention span. Since Erika and I both tutor him, Erika had told me that he likes Star Wars, so I made my activities Star Wars themed. The star wars themed activities did help him focus a little, but at some hard words he would give up entirely and I would lose his attention. For next time I definitely need to make a more interesting activity to hold his attention, but it will definitely be difficult to think of something that is both fun and useful to him. 

Erika TS #2 Child

I went to Astin's house for his second tutoring session with a different mind set and a new game plan! Last time, he got distracted easily and had trouble reading flashcards and writing uppercase and lowercase letters. This time, my plan was to read a short book together and write out names. To my surprise, Astin was not only able to read one book, but two. This makes me think that maybe he was having trouble reading the flashcards because it was unfamiliar vocabulary. He had difficulty reading a few words in the books, which he reluctantly let me help him read (he is very motivated and wants to read on his own). However, I noticed once or twice that while reading a word, he would say a synonym word instead of the word written. He said he had never read these books before, but just in case, next time I will be sure to bring books of my own instead of using materials his mother provided.

Since Astin's attention was so hard to grasp last time, I made sure to include his favorite subject in our next activity. Astin loves Star Wars and he needs practice writing. My activity for him was to write out the characters' names from Star Wars. I provided him with a worksheet that had spaces for every letter of a character's name. He then had to sound out the name and spell it. This activity also helped him practice upper case and lower case letters. This was a very effective task, but it was difficult to explain the silent E. He then started asking if all other letters were silent too (like the silent L in Skywalker).

Michaella CP#1

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

          Today I met with Madeleine Clement at the Sweet Shop on campus. She was very genuine and easy to talk to. Originally from Panama, Madeleine graduated from high school in December and moved to Tallahassee to complete the CIES program at Florida State. She plans on moving back home in fall to attend college at the FSU campus in Panama City, Panama to study Marketing. I am so happy she is my conversation partner because we have many things in common. We shared stories about growing up, dancing, and the difficulty of choosing a major. She even went to Spain over spring break and was able to show me pictures and videos from her trip. She wrote down a list of places I should visit once I move there. I look forward to meeting with her again next week!

Mitchell CP #2

Today I met with my second conversation partner, Abdullah. Abdullah was a great guy to work with, he is not only very eager to talk, but he also has a lot of interesting things to say! He could understand me at normal speed the entire time we were talking, and I was very impressed at his ability to share all of his thoughts and how he was able to move around any speech problem he might have been having. We went, during the CIES lunch hour, to eat at Little Athens, a Greek restaurant, and we had a great conversation where he told me about his home city, about Americans in Saudi Arabia, about Mecca and Medina, and about things he likes to do in Tallahassee. I gave him a few suggestions on things to try in Tallahassee.  He was very happy with my suggestions and wants to go try to play pool with me and go fishing. I could see myself being friends with Abdullah and hopefully we will meet again. 

Mitch TS #2

On Tuesday I had my second tutoring session with Isik. This tutoring session was great! Much more effective than the first one. To plan for this assignment, I had anticipated that Isik would bring a writing sample, but even though she did not I still was able to work the entire hour with the materials I had recovered. I first covered some of the basic rules of English formal writing, and then we completed a series of writing exercises together in order to practice how well she can recognize mistakes, which will eventually help her write even better. We did three paragraph correcting worksheets that took the whole hour, and we went through each question and I explained why the answer was write or wrong. I learned that it was important to try to anticipate how well someone understands something, because sometimes I caught that even though Isik knew the right answer, she still did not fully understand why, so I knew to further explain it. It is amazing how much I am learning about English through all these activities, in this session I even learned a new word, "missives" which are formal letters. This tutoring session was a success in my opinion and I am excited to prepare for the next one. 

Wonmi CP #2

I met again with Abdullah on 15 March 2016. We met at Strozier in the Starbucks area. We discussed our spring break, where his was much more exciting than mine. While I just stayed in town and worked, he went to Orlando. He explored Universal Studios, took a helicopter ride, and went shopping at the outlet mall. I was a bit tired today, and didn't have the energy to talk. I felt like I didn't offer Abdullah the best opportunity to practice his English, and I feel quite bad.

We plan on meeting again this weekend to watch the movie, Zootopia.

Wonmi TS #4 Child

I met with my child tutee again on 15 March 2016. Like last time, I focused on food webs and terminology (mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds, carnivore, omnivore, herbivore). I made a quiz for him where it showed a picture of an animal and a short description of what its skin is like and what it eats, in hopes that he could guess what kind of animal it was and what kind of eater it was.

As expected, he had difficulty with the concepts. At first, I was sure that it was the terminology that was difficult. However, now, it comes to my mind that perhaps it is the concepts that are difficult for him.

We learned about primary producers and consumers. We also learned about population capacity and equilibrium, though these terms were not used in our lessons. Only the concepts were explored. I did not want to confuse him more with terminology that was too difficult.

For next time, I will quiz him again on mammals/reptiles/amphibians/birds and carnivore/omnivore/herbivore until he understands it 100%.

Erika CO #3

I sat in on an elementary level reading class yesterday where the teacher started the lesson by priming students to recall vocabulary from the previous class (example: what is a baby dog? -puppy). Everything touched upon during  lesson was written on the board so that the students could know the spelling. They then practiced saying what day and month and year it was in a full sentence in order to write the date as a full sentence on the board.

Following this class introduction, students were taught how to mark sounds in words when learning how to read. They were then taught different sounds vowels make by showing examples of words on the board. The students learned that if a word with one vowel is followed by a consonant, it is a short word (phonics rule #1). Students then had to read a paragraph and go to the board and underline the words that follow phonics rule 1.

The next activity was to read a story that had lots of nominal information. They were then presented with a chart where they had to fill in the names, jobs, ages, and color of hair of the characters in the story. The teacher helped them get started by filling out the first column on the board, but then they had to complete the rest on their own. The teacher walked around the room to make sure that the students were understanding and then they revised some of the answers on the board.

As the final activity, the teacher passed around Nole News article about St. Patrick's day and had students follow along as she read them the history of the holiday. The class was over shortly after and she wrote down what they had covered in class that day so that students could have a reference of what has already been covered in class.

Erika TS #1 Child

I visited my child tutee, Astin, on Friday and did not know what to expect. Luckily, his mother had prepared a book and flashcard games she wanted me to go over with him. As a bilingual child, it is normal for him to be slightly more advanced in one language than another. In his case, his Korean is better than his English so I was asked to help him read in English and practice his writing.

Using the workbook that Astin had been using, we went over writing uppercase and lower case letters. The end goal was to be able to write his full name in English, following the capitalization rules. I used an inductive method by having him write his name before the exercise and then again after we had done the exercise.

After the writing session, we practiced reading by using flashcards and presenting him with a letter and a word that starts with said letter. These flashcards had a picture of the word on the back but since he had already been familiarized with the pictures, I did not show them until he got the word right. For each flashcard, I made him spell out the word, pronounce each letter, and string the sounds together. It was a productive tutoring session, but he definitely still needs help reading and writing (he is left handed).

Wonmi TS #2 Child

5 March 2016
I had my second tutoring session with my child tutee.

After some discussion, we decided to focus on the science field for PJ, who is a bilingual student and has some difficulty with terminology. I created a lesson plan that explored food webs and what a carnivore, omnivore, and herbivore is. As expected, though he understood the concepts very well, he had difficulty remembering the terminology. For example, he knew the different groups of animals (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and insects) and knew that they all had different types of skin that indicated what groups they belonged to (fur, feathers, scales and rough, smooth and moist, and bugs respectively). However, he had difficulty remembering the names or difficulty connecting them together.

We will continue to focus on the Science field with PJ, and hope that he will improve over the 6 more sessions that I have with him.

Wonmi CP #1

On March 3rd, I met Abdullah Alswaid, who is from Saudi Arabia. He is here to study English at CIES and came here to improve his English. I am very glad that I met Abdullah, who is very motivated in trying to improve his English. He was kind, thoughtful, and well-spoken. We talked about ourselves and got to know each other. He is a mechanical engineer and has 8 siblings. He likes to travel and wants to explore the world.

We are going to meet again after spring break, and I am looking forward to making a new friend!

Michaella TS#2 Child

Thursday, March 3, 2016

          I had my first one-on-one tutoring session with PJ, my child tutee. Since reading comprehension has been a struggle for him in school, I prepared an agenda that would cover a few stories followed by a series of comprehension questions. I immediately noticed how fast PJ read. I made sure to stop him after every paragraph and have PJ explain the main idea. If PJ was unable to remember, I helped him break down the content of the paragraph, and I also explained the importance of context clues. Although this took time, it was rewarding to see him pick up the material as we progressed throughout the story. Towards the end of the tutoring session, we worked on vocabulary terms from a school workbook. PJ seemed more interested in learning and reviewing the meaning of these terms, as well as applying them to real life scenarios. I plan to incorporate some interactive vocabulary games into our future tutoring sessions, while continuing working on his reading comprehension. I also learned the importance of keeping a high energy throughout the session since it is likely that the tutee will get tired or bored of the material.

Tyler Lee CO#3

My third class observation was Jasmine Carnell's 1A Speaking class.  This class was the most illuminating to me because of the low English speaking and comprehension levels of the students in the class and the teaching techniques that were required to communicate the lesson and activities to the students.  The class focused heavily on introducing vocabulary related to the theme of making and accepting offers and asking or giving permission to and from another person.  Jasmine spoke very clearly and was very good at giving examples and synonyms to convey the meaning of words and phrases, asking a lot of questions to confirm comprehension before moving on. This method of teaching provided many opportunities for formative evaluation and seems to be necessary in low level speaking classes.

After the introduction of vocabulary and contexts for using it, students worked in pairs on a fill in the blank activity to complete a dialogue with the correct vocabulary words, and then each assumed a role and acted out the dialogue. While this was in process, Jasmine walked around and instead of correcting any errors in word choice that the students made, she tried to ask questions in order to help the student to realize their own errors, then providing in-context examples to show how certain words and phrases are used. I observed that positive feedback and recasts are essential and need to be frequent when teaching at this level.

One extra strategy that I observed was that when assigning homework to a class, especially one at a low comprehension level, it should be done in the middle of class so that it can be confirmed that the students understand what is expected for them to complete before the next class.

Erika CO #2

For my second class observation, I sat in on a lower intermediate speaking class (3/3/16). The first thing the professor did was split the small class into two groups so that they could play a vocabulary version of charades. For each team, one student had to sit facing away from the board which revealed the vocabulary word in question. For every word a team answered correctly, they had to use it in a sentence. This seemed like a fun, kinesthetic way to learn/test new vocabulary.

After this activity, the class reviewed homework exercises which consisted of naming the agent, object and subject in a dialogue. Another lesson the professor touched upon was the difference between "could you...?" and "do you mind if...?". She first gave an explanation of the difference and then paired up the students and walked around the room to hear if the students were using the two correctly. I noticed that the professor did not correct every little mistake the students made, but only the "beautiful mistakes". After doing this, the professor went over new vocabulary and then had students use it by describing where they live (in an apartment, house, dorm, etc.).

Tyler Lee CO#2

My second class observation was Sana McHarek's 3C Reading class. Before class started, Sana made sure to engage individual students and show interest in how they were doing in their other classes and what they were doing in their free time.  It's obvious that she has a very good report with her students.

Sana was very organized and methodical and at the very beginning of class she gave an overview of what activities and material the class was to cover in the following 50 minutes (a timed reading, a paraphrasing activity, and an extensive reading activity from a novel), and she explained what the activity was intended for (in this case, improving fluency). I learned a lot about her teaching style just from this observation, as it showed me that when the class understands what to expect, it seems that they are more able to focus and are less surprised when the class moves to a new activity.

When the class was opened up for discussing the comprehensive questions that were paired with the timed reading activity, I also noticed that she had each student make their own answer card (a folded piece of paper with A, B, C, and D written on each face) that allowed everyone to show her what their answer to a given question. I observed that this is a very useful method of assessing the entire class at once. When an answer was unanimous, Sana still made sure to ask a student to explain why the answer was correct, citing content from the passage, and when a multiple choice answer seemed ambiguous, she would guide the class through each possibility until they arrived at the correct answer. Because many of the answers to these questions proved to be ambiguous, the activity took longer than anticipated and only allowed for the paraphrasing activity afterwards. This allowed me to recognize that as a teacher, you have to be able to improvise and accept that plans may have to change depending on the students' needs.

Tyler Lee CO#1

My first class observation experience was a Grammar 3A class with Kyle Kaminski.  The focus of the lesson was to deepen students' understanding of the usage and differences between gerunds and infinitives, and to work on their ability to recognize each in use.
At the beginning of class, Kyle announced that there would be a quiz on what they had learn the previous day in class and facilitated an interactive review engaging individual members of the class and allowing them to answer questions referring to gerunds and infinitives. One thing I noticed immediately was his constant use of jokes to engage the class and to lighten the mood of the activity while still giving positive feedback to students for correct answers. Kyle has a very sarcastic sense of humor, and while I think it may have been lost in translation if the class was a lower level, it was an interesting subjective lesson in recognizing humor in English that the class was still able to discern.

 Kyle handed out the quiz, making sure to remind students that quizzes are not meant to be viewed as a form of punishment but as a reward to help them gauge their improvements. Afterwards he reviewed some of the answers to questions on the quiz and encouraged the class for showing competency, letting them know that while there is definitely a lot more to work on, they are showing improvement and they should not be discouraged if they do not master the concepts immediately.

  For most of the remaining class period, the students participated in group activities, explaining to their partners in conversation their responses to such questions as "what would you like to do or experience while you are in America?" while using infinitives.

  During the last 5 minutes of class, Kyle acknowledged the desire of the class to learn new vocab and assigned a personal project to create a gloss with weekly words that they would define and use in a sentence.  Each student would be responsible for 10 new words every week, 5 of which had to follow a weekly theme like “complex prepositions.”

Mitchell CP #1

For my first conversation partner session, I met up with Abdulmohsen at the Starbucks behind CIES. My first impression was that it was awkward starting a conversation with a stranger with broken English, but even him and I had a pretty decent amount of common ground. We talked about things we enjoy doing here, things we are doing for spring break, and I told him about some of the things I like to do that were middle eastern in origin (some music I like to listen to and hookah). We agreed that next time we would like to do something, either play pool or go to his house to smoke hookah with his friends. It was a very enlightening experience and it is very cool to be able to build a bridge like that between two seemingly opposite cultures. 

Mitchell TS #1

On Friday I had my first Tutoring session with Isik, and I found that tutoring and teaching in practice is a lot different than I expected. It is very hard to think of assignments on the spot or even at home. I thought of an activity where I ask Isik a series of questions with the purpose of recording and transcribing her answers to analyse her English and explain her mistakes, but in light of some technology issues I had to come up with something new to do on the fly. Isik mentioned that she wanted to improve her formal writing, so I asked her to write a few things for me so I can see how her grammar is written. She wrote directions on how to make Turkish coffee, and she wrote a mock recommendation letter. I was able to correct some of her errors, but I realized how important a good knowledge of English grammar is when I did not know how to explain some of the wrong answers. Next time I will come more prepared!!  

Isik CP#2

Second Meeting with my conversation partner:

Black Dog Cafe at Lake Ella; March 3 at 10:30am-12:15pm

The cafe house is so cute and also serves a breakfast in mornings.

Charlene and I met in a gorgeous and sunshine morning. Outside, sitting area of the cafe house, there was a very friendly aggregate.

Charlene had a conversation with a man questioning about why female voters don’t support Hilary Clinton as a Democrat Party’s Presidential Candidate. He said that he is from the old generation; but he would like to see an elected “female” president in American Political History.

There was a couple sitting next to us which had had an obvious generational gap. Apparently, they had known each other since the young man’s childhood who went to school in Tallahassee and recently found a job in New York City. He was on his way from California to the new job in New York City and had been stopping by to see his “like my mom’ lady who asked us to take their picture which should reflected her thinner. This request was easy job with Iphone camera.

In this cafe house, everybody seemed so nice and friendly like my conversation partner, Charlene. We talked so many topics as usual; politics, Tallahassee legislation, schools in Tallahassee…

Charlene corrected my saying of  ““the” Florida” which should be only “Florida” in the sentence.

Wonmi CO #3

Teacher: Leslie Wagner
Topic: Grammar
Level: 4A

I previously observed Ms. Wagner's class for the listening, and I wanted to see how they taught the subjects differently. The professor started the class with a new phrase ("give away"- meaning betray or reveal; or separated) and asked the students to write their own sentence with the phrase. Then, the students were asked to correct their own errors from the previous day's discussion about collectivistic and individualistic countries. The professor then went around and answered their questions. After all questions were answered, a video from "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" was showed to show an example of a collectivistic country. Using appropriate past verbs, the students in small groups were asked to describe what happened in the video while also using the cultural terms that were previously learned. The teacher went around and listened to the students talking. Then the whole class discussed their answers. A quiz was up next, with two parts. First was an error correction, and the next was writing with focus on adjective clauses and reduced adjective clauses.

I noticed that the error correction on the quiz was VERY DIFFICULT. I couldn't positively answer 4 of the 6 answers, and had to guess what was wrong. This surprised me a lot and I realized that I did not know grammar well.

Mitchell CO#3

This afternoon, I observed a speaking class conducted by Professor Wallace. This was by far my favorite class I observed. I was actually lucky enough to be able to participate in his class activity. His speaking activity was very creative and definitely induced his students to speak. He called it “speed dating” style conversation sessions, in which the class was set up in two rows, and everyone had to take a turn talking to the person sitting across from them. There was a prep time of 30 seconds, and then 2 minutes to discuss the topic. The topics professor Wallace picked were topics that were definitely something everyone had an opinion about, therefore promoted talking. The first question was “what is the most impressive thing in your country.” I learned about the food in Kuwait, and some grand museums in Angola. For me it was like going around the world in 50 minutes. The next conversation was about food in their countries and then about religion in their countries. I was impressed by the level of focus and drive of the students in the class. Some things I liked about his class was that it really did make everyone talk, and it was impossible to avoid talking because of the small class size. I also think it pushes the students out of their comfort zone a little, thus simulating what it might be like to talk in a situation that might be nerve racking. He also wrote mistakes that the students made up on the board, and made other students in the class correct them, thus involving the class a lot. Professor Wallace really did not talk much during the class, but rather pushed the students to talk and explain things to each other. It was more of a monitored discussion rather than a class. This class definitely gave me quite a few ideas of how I would conduct a speaking class, and was useful to me because I am most likely going to have a conversation class when I go to teach in Spain.

Mitchell CO#2

This morning, I observed a reading class with Professor Stringer There are many things I liked about this class. Firstly, at the onset of the class, her “hook” was passing out an article from the CIES Nole News, which I think is great because it offers intrinsic motivation (as it was an article about things to do on spring break) so it is inherently interesting for the students to read. Secondly, she did a timed reading exercise, which was focused around an article about the history of bikes. In order to boost interest, she showed a quick 2 second video of old style bicycles and people riding them, to introduce the topic of the reading. The students definitely seemed more interested in participating after the video. Lastly, the thing I thought was very useful was the students reading “tracker” table, which allows students to log in how much time each reading takes, and logs their accuracy, and they will be doing several of these readings over the course of the class, so at the end they will see their own progress. This is a great example of intrinsic motivation, and students will likely be more motivated seeing their own reading times go down. Finally, I liked how the teacher took out words from the readings (today she took out words that incorporated the “gh” and how it is pronounced in different situations, such as “ghost,” “rough” and “night.” In all these examples the students had already seen these words in the text. I was actually paired with one of the students in class and helped him go through the phonics activity. I ran into a bump, when the student, Juan, asked me why the word “ghetto” is pronounced gh-eh-tto I did not have an answer for him, to which he remembered, oh yes, the e is pronounced –eh before double “t.” This made me realize how much I have to learn in order to explain things. All in all, this class observation was a great experience and I learned a great deal from Professor Stringer.

Michaella CO#2

Wednesday, March 2, 2016, at 11am


         Today I observed a Reading Foundations class taught by Marilyn Sohan. I initially noticed that the class was much smaller, and there was little interaction between the students. Marilyn began the class by asking a series of questions that required the students to name the day of the week, the month, and today's date. Although some of the students struggled to give the correct answer, Marilyn worked with each student until he/she was able to figure it out. I found this one-on-one focus to be helpful when working with students at a beginners level.

        Marilyn wrote the class agenda on the board, which consisted of taking attendance, completing the students' library card applications, and reviewing over the vowel sounds. The library card application took up most of the class period. The students were each given an application and were expected to fill out their name, date of birth, address, email, etc. As a class, Marilyn helped the students fill out their application by writing their date of birth and address information on the board. She explained how street names are often abbreviated. For example, lane would be "LN." Marilyn spoke very direct and clearly when talking to the students, especially when demonstrating the difference between the P and B sounds. The students' participation level seemed to increase as they became more comfortable with what information is expected from an application.

       The last ten minutes of class were focused on the i vowel sound. (in the previous class the students learned the a and e vowel sounds) Marilyn compared the i sound to the word "itch." She then proceeded to have the students come up with similar words that displayed the same sound. I really enjoyed how Marilyn gave her students a high five when they answered or remembered something correctly. She had great energy towards the students and towards teaching in general. I learned that having the students look at your mouth when sounding out a word is beneficial in helping them grasp the correct pronunciation.

TS#1 Jared

I sat in on a tutoring session with Wonmi and Michaella to observe the interactions between PJ and his current tutor.

I was immediately struck by the high level of mastery PJ had in reading the English language. I would say he struggled staying engaged for the entire session, so in my future session I plan to implement incentives and breather to keep him from losing his motivation. I also remember thinking that PJ should take more breaks between paragraphs so as to reinforce his comprehension of the material.

On a personal note I was intrigued by his Star Wars shoes, being a huge Star Wars nerd myself. I hope that in future sessions I can establish more common interests with my tutee. I believe accomplishing this task is a fruitful goal to keep up engagement in our later sessions.

CO#2 Jared

CO#2

3/2/16

Today I sat in on Ramin's higher level reading course, I enjoyed the higher level of communication to be had among students from different backgrounds all conversing in English as a common language. Jokes were to be had as class began, and afterwards we headed down to the computer lab to take a quiz. I took the quiz along with the students, and to my surprise, I missed a few questions! I was not consciously going through the comprehension questions and therefore I ended up glazing over details. I graded another students paper who had struggled with the quiz overall, but in the margins I noted where he had correctly answered a question that I had gotten wrong. I enjoyed the experience and plan on returning to that particular class in the near future.

CO#1 Jared

CO#1

I observed Felicia's foundation level grammar course on monday morning. I was entertained by the fact that she played Bob Marley music before the early morning course began. The students went through usages of singular and plural verbs in their practice sentences. For example, they went over when it is appropriate to use "is" and "are" respectively. When I was posed with the question, "Where are you from?" I answered with my customary answer of "Disneyworld" that I often use to bridge a gap when I am traveling abroad. Some students did not understand what was meant, but after bringing up pictures on the projector we all had a good laugh. I enjoyed the experience and would like to better understand how to communicate well with students who are still wrestling with English at a basic level.

Wonmi Lee CO #2

Teacher: Leslie Wagner
Topic: Listening
Level: 3B

The professor started the class with announcements, and then went through the agenda of the day's class. The students received a print out for the questions of the listening activity. The class went through a vocabulary review that the listening activity focused on, and students answered with synonyms, definitions, or examples of the word or phrase.

For the listening activity, the students were told to listen for the "topic" in the first sentence, and reminded that they can take notes in their notebooks. The lecture was over 9 minutes long, which surprised me by the long length. The listening activity was a lecture about stress, going over what stress is, how it impacts our lives, and how we can deal with it. After the listening lecture was done, the professor showed the class the notes that she took, and how they compared with the students and also compared the notes with each other. Then there were comprehension questions that were answered individually, which the class then came together to discuss. There were some simple fact questions, but also some questions that required students to state their opinion. The professor made sure to ask each student, so that the whole class was involved and had a chance to answer. I was impressed with her easy going nature, and she seemed very attentive to each student.

One thing that was different about this class was that there were two distinct students who seemed to disrupt the chemistry of the class. She effectively took charge of this, by asking them very nonchalantly to focus on the lecture. Also, I got a few good points from the listening activity lecture, which stated "Make plans and act about stress when appropriate. Do not waste energy on worrying, and plan actions to fix or avoid stress. However, know when it is appropriate, and learn to accept situations that you cannot control. For example, in traffic, you cannot control it, so learn to accept it and try to avoid the stress."

Tips that the professor gave: she has noticed a lack of student-centeredness with the TEFL graduates, and highly emphasized to keep the class student-centered and make sure to have a lot of interaction with the students.

Wonmi Lee CO #1

Teacher: Angel Rios
Topic: Speaking
Level: 4A

The professor started with what the students will be doing in class today, and what the objectives were for the activity. He then reviewed materials that was going to be needed for the activity, writing the format on the board for the class to see. The class, on this day, had a speaking activity where they had prompts and their responses were recorded. The format of their speaking should have their name, the topic, their opinions, 2 reasons and 2 examples, and a conclusion. The first two prompts ("Sports has a good effect on society." and "Do you believe in love at first sight?") as practice, where the students had 15-30 seconds to think and plan their response. The students recorded themselves speaking for one minute, and then listened to themselves while also giving feedback. The third try was for a grade, and the prompt was "Do you prefer to travel alone or with a friend?". After the recording was done, students transcribed their own speaking recordings WITH MISTAKES and pauses, and turned into the professor.

The professor was very clear with precise instructions, and a loud clear voice so that all students could hear. He asked the class for feedback, and made sure the whole class understood the instructions before moving on. The class was easy going, joking with the professor at times and making small talk. However, the class was very focused, getting the activity done efficiently and attentive to the instructions given by the professor.

Some tips that he gave and especially highlighted was that confidence was key. He stated that students will be hesitant to learn from someone who doesn't seem confident in what he or she was teaching. Also, he said make sure you find the class that fits your personality, whether that be children, teenagers, or adults.

Mitchell CO#1

Classroom Observation Blog

Today I sat in on level 2, English Grammar with teacher Jasmine. Some initial impressions, as it was my first sit in, is that the class size was smaller than expected, about 12 kids were there at the beginning of the class and by the end a few more trickled in. I liked the activity Jasmine started the class with, and think I will incorporate it into my class planning. Jasmine started the class with an exercise where students had to write a small passage about things they do every day (to practice the simple present, which is used with habitual actions). The students wrote their short paragraphs, then shared it with one another, then shared with the class. This exercise was good for getting students to participate, it was also good because then Jasmine took out mistakes she heard and used them in her lesson, she also took out correct things that were said and incorporated those into her explanation. I especially liked how she taught the lesson, where she explained it briefly, but quickly had the students do another exercise where they had to survey each other, some of the brave ones even surveyed me, and asked me about how often I did certain actions, to learn frequency adverbs. After the students did this, Jasmine gave the class feedback about things she liked, to give the students positive motivation, something I have never actually seen a teacher do and I liked it because it seemed to end the class on a positive note.