FSU TEFL 120 Fall 1 2021

 We met via Zoom on September 29 at 1:30. We talked in great length about our weeks as both of us had interesting and funny stories to tell. We talked more about Iceland and she showed me a video about the food in Iceland which including fermented shark, ram testicles, sheep head/eye, and dried fish as well as two types of liquor that is popular in Iceland. We laughed a lot watching the people all these different foods and she taught me about hongeo (fermented stingray). She said that she is okay with hongeo but lots of people don't like it and she would not recommend it to me. So, I told her I would try a couple of the foods if I found them and tell her about it when I got back. 

       For this lesson, I decided I'd teach him the use of the word "would" to indicate the habitual aspect and how its use is similar and different to the phrase "used to." It ended up being a little more difficult than I thought it would be to explain it, as the definitions I fished from the internet didn't explain them adequately enough for Masoud. I eventually realized that he was hung up on the word "would" in the expression "I'd like...": he thought that this verb was exclusively used to express wants or desires. I realized this when I gave an example sentence "When I was a kid, my friend and I would ride out bikes everyday." and he asked if this could be rephrased as "When I was a kid, my friend and I liked to ride our bikes everyday." After some confusion, he was able to understand the meaning of "would" in this context because he already knew the phrase "used to." I was originally going...

Date/Time: September 29, 2021 at 8:00am Location: Zoom Topic/Skill: Weather/Seasons Feedback provided to tutee: Je-ah and I discussed vocabulary for the weather and the seasons as well as activities/holidays that take place during the holidays. I asked her questions about when things take place in Korea as well as what the weather is like in Korea today. I clarified to her that when someone asks "How old will you be?", they are asking about the future and not right now. We also talked about how to accurately say a date (adding in -th or -st). Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Je-ah is very smart and knows more English then she lets on. She is able to understand me more clearly now that I understand her level and she responds easier to my questions once I give her a moment to think. I am learning that I should give her time to think and process before cutting in. I have also developed a thumbs up/thumbs down for understanding and we use that well. She is a...

 I met with Zheping one extra time this past week, because he had a presentation coming up at CIES. His presentation was about sports in American culture, particularly on collegiate athletics, its history, and the way they are viewed in the US. Zheping's script was already well-crafted, but he wanted to work on his pronunciation. This time, like before, I had him read through each paragraph while I followed along highlighting problematic words and phrases. Afterwards, we drilled these specific words and phrases for accurate pronunciation.  Unlike last time, however, I also recorded myself both 1) pronouncing clearly and properly these specific words and phrases and 2) reading Zheping's presentation out loud line-by-line. I sent the recordings to Zheping so he can shadow them for pronunciation practice before his presentation.

Last time I met with Hang-Ah, I discovered that she wanted to work a bit on stress/intonation and sarcasm. So, in the week preceding our meeting, I collected some material we could use to work on this. As for stress and intonation, it seems that I should have asked a few more questions about what, precisely, she may have meant by that since it could mean several different things. Though I suspected she already knows about it, I decided to just give her the sentence, "I didn't say you stole my umbrella" and place emphasis on different words/syllable to see if she understood the differences in meaning. She did, and was easily able to produce the same stress patterns herself. She mentioned that she sometimes places a bit of a rising intonation at the end of her sentences if she's a bit unsure of her English grammar and that CIES teachers recommended that she not do so, as it could be mistaken for a question. As for sarcasm, I collected a number of YouTube videos containi...

 As usual, I met with Zheping in the basement lounge at CIES and we practiced his pronunciation. As I've stated in previous blog posts, although Zheping's general English skill, including his listening, seems to be relatively high, his pronunciation can make it very difficult to understand his output. We continued with the same passage that he had requested we use before, this time going through the second half of the passage.  First, I had him read the passage aloud, to see how well I could understand him. Next, I read the passage aloud, slowly and clearly for him to listen to. Then, again, he reads the passage out loud, but this time, I follow along by reading, all the while highlighting problematic sections in yellow for us to practice once he's finished. After he finishes reading the passage, I send him the document with the highlighted words (so he can also work on them in his own time). We practice, slowly and methodically, on the pronunciation of the highlighted word...

 Hang-Ah is a former CIES student who moved to Tallahassee from South Korea for her husband's job. She and I met via Zoom, and spent the first session getting to know one another. As well, I conducted a needs-assessment for her, and found that she wanted to work on intonation/stress and sarcasm. We spent the remainder of the session talking about different ways that we might work on these skills, and just conversing in general, for English conversation practice. Hang-ah's English ability is very good, and in fact, I learned that she used to teach english to kids in South Korea. Before I meet with Hang-Ah next, I will find some material that we can use to work on sarcasm and stress/intonation.

  Date/Time: September 22, 2021 at 8:00am Location: Zoom Topic/Skill: Rooms in a Home/Sentence creation/Vocab Building Feedback provided to tutee: We worked on makes sentences as pertains to items in houses as well as rooms in houses. I taught her words such as bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, refridgerator, etc. With every item that we labeled, we made a sentence about that item. For instance, her refridgetor was white so we made a sentence about her refridgerator and then we also made a sentence about mine. After we covered all the rooms and all the items, we drew maps of our homes and shared where everything was.   Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: I learned that if I give clear instructions and show her that I have a clear plan for the lesson, then she is more eager to participate. The more casual I seem, the less engaged she is. I also learned that she knows a great deal and can make simple sentences quite easily.

Date/Time: September 20, 2021 at 6:00pm Location: Zoom Topic/Skill: Writing Letters and Speed Writing Feedback provided to tutee: I had the tutee to write at least 3 times a week for 5 minutes. He only did it once and then I had him do it again during our session. His thought process and ideas were clearer but I noticed that he needs considerable help with his spelling. I emailed him a website to look at that has spelling help and walked him through his errors in his writing practice. He is aware that he needs help in spelling and is eager to improve. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Sulaiman and I are getting more comfortable speaking to one another and therefore I feel as though I am getting better at teaching him. I am also learning more effective ways to describe things as well as walk a student through a thought process. The spelling part is hard for me though so I will need to do some research on how to improve student spelling while over Zoom. 

 We met via Zoom on Wednesday, September 22 at 1:30 pm. We discussed the differences in Korean and American weddings because she was recently married in Korea. Her husband and her have only been married a couple of years and have lived in Florida for the majority of their marriage. She told me that Korean weddings are very short. She wore a very simple white dress and after the ceremony they had lunch and then departed. I told her that weddings in America are very different. I walked her through a normal wedding and descriped how sometimes it can take up to 5 or 6 hours and most of the time the bride and groom spend their whole time catering to their guests' needs. We also talked about what it is like to live in South Korea as pertains to the situation in North Korea. She said that everyone knows what is going on and they hear a lot of stories but there is not much they can do other than support the people that escape. 

 When I met with Zheping this most recent time, we had already agreed that he would select a passage and read it out loud for me to give feedback on his pronunciation. He chose the following passage and asked me not to read it ahead of time, to see whether I'd be able to make out what he was saying: I did have a bit of a hard time understanding him the first time, so I asked him to read again, more slowly. Together, we isolated the words that he was having the most trouble with (highlighted) in yellow, and spent the remainder of the session drilling those words specifically. By the end, he was able to pronounce them all intelligibly. We will do more of this next time, until he can recite the passages he chooses with no listening difficulty on my part.

      For this session, we went over the remaining past tenses, past continuous and past perfect continuous, and also reviewed the other two. We began by reviewing the simple past and past perfect. Masoud had forgotten a little bit about the past perfect so the review was helpful for bringing him up to speed. Once we had gone over it, he picked it up again quite quickly. After this, we started with the past continuous, which he already knew and understood well. I did manage to teach him something new, however, which was that you use "when" to join the past continuous with the simple past and "while" to join the past continuous with another past continuous verb. He had thought that these conjunctions were completely synonymous. He had a little more trouble with the past perfect continuous and I had some difficulty explaining it well but I had the idea to draw a diagram in the form of a timeline for each tense, to visually explain the differences, and this helped him ...

      I observed Olivia James' listening class for group 4. The first part of the class was spent reviewing important vocabulary from a video that they were about to watch. This part took about 15 minutes or so and included minimal class participation; occasionally, someone would ask for clarification if they still didn't understand the word after it was defined. The next part of the class was the video: a 10 minute Ted Talk about the upcoming "augmented age" of technology. I thought it was a fascinating video. The last part of class was the class discussion. The teacher had prepared discussion questions and had also chosen a student to lead the discussion so this student had to act as a sort of facilitator for the discussion, similar to the role of the teacher. It was a small class of 4 students and there didn't seem to be a shy one among them; they all participated in the discussion and were quite articulate about their points. 

     For this session, we were going to continue working on the past tenses, but at the last minute Masoud wanted help studying for an upcoming reading test. Due to a miscommunication, I thought he would be bringing a study guide that we could go over together while he thought that I would be preparing a reading lesson. So when we met there was a little bit of confusion at first. He told me that it would be a reading test about whales and he suggested that I teach him some whale-related vocabulary. What we ended up doing was that I would write a paragraph off the top of my head about any whale facts I could come up with and then we would go over the paragraph and review any words that he didn't know. This seemed like it was helpful, and ended up actually taking up the entire hour. Some of the new words he learned from this were: mammals, gills, to breathe, beached, lonely, mate, scientist, bay, crustaceans, build up/accumulate, and krill. 

     For this session, Masoud wanted to work on past tenses, so I prepared some explanations for each of the four past tenses in English, as well as examples. We ended up only covering the simple past and the past perfect but I believe the session still proved helpful because he was very confused about when and how to use the past perfect at first, but by the end of the session he seemed more confident. He was able to explain to me when you should use it versus when you should use the simple past, and I had him come up with some sentences of his own, which showed that he understood. Something I did struggle to explain to him, however, was the difference between regular and irregular verbs. I kept trying to say that since irregular verbs are irregular, there isn't a rule or reason to explain why you conjugate it that way e.g. why you say "He broke the lamp" but also "The lamp was broken. " It seemed to me that he wasn't sure of the meaning of the word "i...

 We met via Zoom on September 15. She has a very good grasp of English and works at the Korean BBQ restaurant on Appalachee. I think she speaks fluently, but she says she does not understand sarcasm and that is what she wants to work on. She said that because she works at a Korean restaurant and mainly watches Korean dramas and lives with her husband she feels as though she is living in Korea. She does not come into contact with English enough and that is why she wants a Conversation Partner. We talked about how she met her husband and why they moved to Tallahassee (he is a travelling scholar). We also discovered that we both like Game of Thrones. I told her I was travelling to Iceland next month which is where much of the series was filmed. We get along really well and seem to have a lot in common. 

Date/Time: September 15, 2021 at 8:00am Location: Zoom Topic/Skill: Fill-in-the-Blank/Sentence Structure Feedback provided to tutee: I worked with her on fill-in-the-blank sentences and taught her via modeling how to figure out when to conjugate regular verbs like 'to run' and 'to talk'.  Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: I am struggling to learn what she knows and what she doesn't. However, I believe that much of what I am teaching her, she already knows and when I do something that she is unfamiliar with she freezes and does not know how to respond. Also, it is 9pm her time when we meet and she yawns often so I'm not sure how much she is actually able to learn. I am going to try and make the lessons more fun and active so that I am able to keep her attention better.

 I met with Masoud in person, outside of Strozier Library. It was a bit tough to get the initial meeting set up but we finally made it work. Masoud and I talked about a variety of topics, including the "elephant" parable. Masoud said he thought it was interesting, while I said I thought it was a bit silly, since all of the blind men are wrong , not right. The wise man (because he isn't blind) is the one who actually sees things as they are: an elephant. Besides this, we talked about hobbies, religion, and Masoud's language learning habits and future plans. Masoud asked me about the difference between Catholic and Protestants, on what grounds Christians allow for divorce, and whether there were many Jewish people living in Tallahassee. He enjoys spending time with friends, talking to anyone, and watching movies. He wants to go to grad school for statistics, as he studied mathematics in undergrad.  We also talked about some Islamic philosophers/mathematicians that we we...

  Date/Time: September 13, 2021 at 6:00pm Location: Zoom Topic/Skill: Writing Letters Feedback provided to tutee: I had the tutee write me a letter as homework. As we went through the letter together, I helped him to find the correct answers. I told him that when he explains what he wants to say verbally, he says everything right. So, as homework I told him to write at least 3 times a week for 5 minutes. I do not want him to think about being perfect when he writes and instead to just write how he would speak.  Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: I learned a lot in this session. Again, I surprised myself with how quickly I can come up with ways to remember writing techniques and ways to remember punctuation. Sulaiman's english is very good but he thinks too much when he is writing. Every time that I asked him to explain a sentence, he phrases it exactly how it should be written and instead when he writes he begins to question himself and think more about the...

  Date/Time: September 9, 2021 at 8:00am Location: Zoom Topic/Skill: Getting to know each other/Needs Assessment  Feedback provided to tutee: I worked with the student on identifying things in her home that started with each letter of the alphabet. Then we used the item that she brought and made it into a sentence.  Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: I learned very quickly that her understanding of the spoken language is very minimal. She understands vocabulary and can understand what I am saying if I talk very slow and use lots of gestures. I learned that what I had planned was not going to work as she did not understand many of the questions that I had ready to ask her. I had to pivot very quickly and figure out what kind of vocabulary she knew and what she didn't. I learned that she understands the days of the week, can count very well, can label things in her home, and knows a wide range of vocabulary. She knows more vocabulary than expected consid...

 I felt that my second session with Zheping went quite well. We met in the basement lounge of the Hecht House and spent the whole time working on pronunciation, as he had requested last time. Before the session, I downloaded a number of exercises and pronunciation charts to aid us during the session. The most helpful exercises were "minimal pair" lists, which include many pairs of English words with similar pronunciation that learners tend to mess up (e.g. mouse and mouth). We went through these lists together; first, I would read one from each pair and ask Zheping to tell me which I'd said. Next, I had hime read through the pairs, to see which sounds in particular he was having trouble with. His biggest problem sounds were the following: 1. The "v" sound as in "very". 2. The "th" sound as in "thought". 3. The "th" sound as in "breathe". 4. The "zh" sound as in "Asia". We narrowed the minimal ...

 I met with Ahnay via Zoom during the evening. Her native language is Spanish and she is in the low-intermediate group at CIES. As this was our first session, my goals were 1) get to know Ahnay, 2) work out a recurring meeting time (or at least the next session) and 3) assess her needs by asking her what she'd like to work on. There was a fair bit of communication difficulty during our meeting, which made it more difficult to meet these goals. As far as I can tell, Ahnay is married with at least one child and her goal with english-learning is to acquire a master's degree at FSU. She tried to ask (I think) how exactly the tutoring sessions are supposed to work, and I tried my best to explain that I would like to help her with a topic of her choosing over the course of the next 4-5 weeks, but I'm not sure how much she was tracking. Using the chat box in Zoom helped a bit, however. As for her needs, after much difficulty, I figured out that she was having trouble with the diff...

 For our second meeting, we met at the Hecht House and talked in the computer room downstairs. We talked more about each others' lives, particularly his life back in Saudi Arabia. He lived on a large farm with a very large family (9 siblings!). He also went to University and majored in biochemistry. He wants to work in lab, either in a hospital or in a forensics department, back in Saudi Arabia, and knowing English gives applicants a big advantage. I also talked a bit about my dad's life growing up because he too lived on a farm and had many brothers and sisters. It was a short conversation, but I think it was pretty interesting. 

 For our second session, we met in the same place (Strozier) and same time as before. We were originally supposed to meet on a different day but Masoud had to reschedule. During the last session, I took notes on some of the mistakes he was making. In terms of pronunciation, he had some issues with the "v" sound, as it doesn't exist in Arabic, but his biggest problem area was in vowel sounds. There were very few times that I had trouble understanding him, but all those times always involved a vowel mistake, so I figured it would be a good idea to review some of these sounds for this session. I prepared some minimal pairs involving the sounds he had trouble with and had him read them out loud first, correcting him when he made a mistake. We then reviewed some spelling conventions, so he could better recognize them when he's reading. Another common mistake I had noticed from our first session was that he tended to mix up the third person singular pronouns e.g. he would r...

  Date/Time: September 6, 2021 at 6:00pm Location: Zoom Topic/Skill: Getting to know each other/Needs Assessment - Writing Feedback provided to tutee: I had the tutee write one paragraph about what his plan is for coming to study English in America. I gave him 15 minutes to complete this and then he sent it to me. We went through it together and corrected the errors. At first I told him what was wrong with it, but after getting more comfortable with the tutoring I began to ask him questions to lead him to the answer. At the end of the session, we had a complete paragraph. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: I learned that the student is there is to learn and though it is easy to just tell them what is wrong, there is no way to learn from that. The student is very capable of being lead to an answer and if they say/guess wrong it is not bad, but a learning opportunity for both of us. I also learned that I know more about the English language than I though. ...

  Date/Time: Friday, September 8, 2021 at 10:00 - 10:50pm Topic/Skill: Grammar - Present Progressive Teacher Presentation: The professor immediately started the class teaching the students how to play charades by modeling the game with a volunteer. She then seperated the class into 4 teams and had them come up with an action which they would then act out. Each team took that action and made a sentence out of it. The more adverbs, adjectives, connecting words, and actions they added into the sentence the more points they got. The winner got to take a selfie with the selfie prize.  Classroom Management: The professor went around the room as they were writing their sentences and read them, interacted with the students, and encouraged them to have fun with it. She had a LOT of energy. She also facilitated the students to discuss what the acting team was doing.  Materials: Pen, Paper, Clipboards, Whiteboard Student Participation: The students acted out their action word and wo...

Date/Time: Friday, September 1, 2021 at 2:00 - 2:50pm Topic/Skill: Listening to a Podcast and Writing a Summary Teacher Presentation: Professor McHarek gave the students the agenda for the day as class started and then had them listen to a podcast for the second time (they had listened to it during the day before). They were to take notes on it so they they could later write a summary about the podcast. Prior to listening, they were given a vocabulary sheet to study so that they would be able to listen for key words in the podcast to better understand the subject. They used these vocabulary words in their summaries. Classroom Management: The professor had the students listen to the podcast over 2 days so they would be able to understand more of it in order to write the summaries. As they wrote, she walked around and gave them guidance as well as clarified portions of the podcast. Materials: Speakers, Podcast, Whiteboard Student Participation: The students were required to listen and ta...

Date/Time: Friday, September 1, 2021 at 1:00 - 1:50pm Topic/Skill: Foundations Speaking Teacher Presentation: Professor McHarek started with the Expression of the Day in order to teach a new idiom to the students every day. Today's idiom was "Don't cry over spilled milk." The students and teacher worked together to figure out the meaning. The professor then led into group discussions where the students talked about two seperate topics. The first was face-to-face learning versus online learning and the second was studying in a small university versus a large university. She went over vocabulary the students could use in the discussion before starting the activity. Classroom Management: Professor McHarek walked around during the group discussions to ensure the students understood the topic and were discussing the pros and cons. She also took notes on the mistakes that she heard the students make. Materials: Microsoft Word and overhead projector Student Participation: Th...

Date/Time: Saturday, September 4, 2021, 12:00PM Location: via Zoom Topic discussed: Introduction and Culinary Arts Cultural and/or Linguistic topics you and your partner learned: Several years prior, Mehmet lived in New Hampshire and did a roadtrip from New Hampshire to California. We discussed his impressions of different parts of America versus Tallahassee. He previously lived in Istanbul, Turkey, which is a country my mother has travelled to many times for work. It was very interesting and informative to compare stories my mom had of Istanbul as a foreigner versus his experiences as a local. Foreigners and locals even use different currency in Istanbul. Mehmet previously studied mechanical engineering, but went back to school for culinary arts. He came to America to learn about different food and fulfill his dream of opening his own restaurant. He also shared his favorite cheesecake recipe with me, which I am very excited to try! 

 Date/Time: Saturday, September 4, 2021, 11:00AM Location: via Zoom Topic discussed: Introduction and Adjusting to America Cultural and/or Linguistic topics you and your partner learned: Fahad is from Kuwait and it was very interesting to hear about the cultural differences between America and Kuwait. He told me about the safety nets and education scholarships available to Kuwaitis. He told me the story of a time he got his Jeep stuck in the mud out at Alligator Point. We discussed the differences in how this experience was handled by a police officer and tow truck company in America versus how it would have been handled in Kuwait. He also informed me that I had been pronouncing "tabbouleh" wrong my whole life! Tah-boo-leh not Tah-boo-lee!  

Date/Time: Saturday, September 4, 2021, 1:00PM Location: via Microsoft Teams Topic/Skill: Introduction and Skill Assessment Feedback provided to tutee: Abdulrahman was very conversational and able to articulate many of his frustrations in learning English. He told me that he has a neighbor he practices English with. I encouraged him to continue this as much as possible. I also explained to him that there is typically a plateau of learning in the intermediate stage of learning English, which seemed to comfort him. I asked him about fields he was interested in so that I could tailor medium-frequency vocabulary review around his interests. Some of my assessment also came from exchanging emails and texts with him. His strength is in speaking and listening, but he needs more focused practice with spelling and writing production.  Lesson(s) about tutoring or the tutee: In class, we learned about the plateau that many intermediate English speakers face. It was helpful to apply that knowle...

 Date/Time: Friday, September 3, 2021, 8:00AM Location: via Microsoft Teams Topic/Skill: Introduction and Skill Assessment Feedback provided to tutee: Because Je-Won is young and seemed self-conscious about speaking English, my primary goal was to give high-energy, encouraging feedback. Since he had studied English in school, his strength was reading. He recognized almost all of the classroom vocabulary I showed him (textbook, teacher, pencil, etc.), but he was very shy about speaking. He also had a hard time understanding certain questions like "What is your favorite food?" and "Do you see your friends at school?" However, if I typed out the sentences in the chat and went over each word with him, he was able to understand and respond to these questions with short answers.  Lesson(s) about tutoring or the tutee: This was my first time working with a child and my biggest takeaway was how much affectation plays into English learning for a child especially. When I work...

 My goal for my first tutoring session with Zheping was mainly to get to know one another, but also to assess his English skills in doing so. I began by asking him questions, mainly those listed on the needs assessment handout, but also some of my own as the flow of the conversation dictated. He also asked me some questions about myself, so we truly did get to know one another. Zheping's native language is Mandarin Chinese, but he's been studying English for 10 years or so. However, I gather that prior to coming to CIES, his English education was primarily of the grammar-focused, "academic" classroom sort that is common in many (usually Eastern) Asian countries. Zheping's goal in pursuing English skills at CIES is to enter a master's program in computer science at FSU. As for assessment of Zheping's English: He made very few grammatical mistakes in his speech, though we stuck largely to fairly familiar and easy topics. He did say, just once, "gooder...

 8/31/21  3:pm IHOP - Appalachee Pkwy Introduction. Getting to know one another. Tutee is here to study English only. We talked about where he lives and his friends here.  I learned about taking a student assesment.

 I met my tutee Masoud in the library. I started the session off by talking about how since this was out first lesson, I wanted to simply talk to him, get to know him, and assess how I could best help him during these sessions. We had a pretty long conversation where we discussed things ranging from why he wants to learn English to our favorite movies and TV shows. After that, we worked on an assignment from one of his classes and went over some of the mistakes he had made. At the end of the session, I asked that he bring some of his grammar homework to our next session and that he prepare some specific questions about it for me. I told him I would review notes that I had taken during the session and prepare a lesson of my own. 

 I observed Ryan Flemming's grammar class for group 3. I would say that the lesson for the day was inductive. He began by reviewing some answers to an assignment from the previous class. He projected the sentences on the board and asked the students to point out what was wrong with each sentence. Most of these sentences involved the use of the present continuous, some used the past continuous. After that, he briefly went over how and when to use the continuous aspect before moving on to the first activity. He projected a series of funny and strange pictures from world news on the board and asked the students to get together and come up with sentences describing them. After a few minutes, he asked some students to present their sentences. The second activity was a roleplaying one. The students were asked to get into groups where they would take turns pretending to be a cop questioning them about their whereabouts that morning. They had to form questions and answers using the past co...

 I met with my conversation partner Sulaiman at Starbucks. We couldn't sit inside because of COVID so we began talking outside, but it was difficult to understand each other because of all the loud noise, so we sat in his car. We had a short but nice conversation; he talked about his farm back in Saudi Arabia and how he moved here to learn English because there aren't good opportunities to learn it back there. I talked a little about myself and then we agreed to meet again tomorrow. 

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