FSU TEFL 120 Fall 1 2021

 This Class observation was a goo demonstration of a very strong lesson plan and awareness of the materials. I think also what helps is the intricate knowledge the teacher (Dr. Rios) had of the students' capability. He began the lesson with some review of vocab from the previous class and a schema building  activity that was done prior to this class. I cannot be sure, but he seems like he spent almost as much time working up to the article as the article itself. He was very able to hone in on what exactly the students were unaware of and needed help in. Additionally the class structure did a good job in engaging students ins as many aspects of language as possible. Instead of having the students read to themselves, he made them take turns speaking aloud. This helped the students work on speaking in addition to their readin skills. One thing I think about then, is comprehension. However, this was quickly assuaged when he spent a majority of the time working on composition and g...

 Jihye and I met again after a brief hiatus. I have a class immediately before our meeting, and if not for that our meeting would be my only obligation on campus, on a Friday. Class was canceled, I think you can do the math. After this break however, we met again as usual, though this time, slightly different. Typically she is rather quiet, but very attentive. This time, she had a question for me, what the States think of (in her case) South Koreans. This was a tough question, she was explicitly asking after stereotypes, which I try to avoid in principle. For another, the history of South Korea is young, incredibly young. Korean history itself goes back into ancient antiquities,  but the modern state known as South Korea only really came into existence as a result of Russia/U.S proxy wars. They have yet to truly be international actors as well. I commented on their lack of wars with America as well, typically our propaganda is a source of these pervasive stereotypes. I truly c...

 For our final session Bruce and I met one of my favorite aspects of writing, passive voice. When I call it my favorite, I mean I hate it and want it expunged. This was another such session where explaining the theory behind the language was quite difficult. I managed to describe the difference in terms of actual action, like a ball being picked up. Who acts? Me or  the ball? That is active voice, passive voice is when the object of action is  the subject of a sentence. See? This sucks, describing passive voice. It's less impactful, but it is also used in certain aspects of informal speech, emphasis or certain use cases. We worked through the theory first, and this is where our more rigorous review of syntax helped quite a bit. When I told Bruce that the object of action becomes the subject, he seemed to understand, and he intuited the difference in the sentence structure, while still understanding they meant the same things. Furthermore, he picked up the examples without...

 Bruce and I reviewed conjunctions in this session. However, it was more than just simple coordinating conjunctions. Bruce often comes to me with very ambitious ideas for a session. I think for tutoring to be more effective, I need to take a more active role in knowing what the tutee needs to know. This means that sometimes I need to tell the tutee what they are not doing well, as opposed to the other way around. This session Bruce came to me with a list of conjunctions and asked for help in learning the use case for each one. This was a monumental task for one session, and I was not sure where to begin. We began with some simple sentences, where I gave him both and asked for a conjunction that could make sense. He seemed to take rather well to this. What caused some confusion was "even though". The placement of the phrase has a large bearing on the meaning of the sentence. Effectively, you always want it before the clause you are taking into account. "Even though it was...

  Date/Time: November 10, 2021 at 7:00am Location: Zoom Topic/Skill: Daylight Savings/Review Feedback provided to tutee: Today I reviewed the past material with her as well as taught her watch Daylight Savings is. At first it was hard for her to understand but after I went back and reviewed it more thoroughly, she understood. She also seemed to remember 90% of the vocabulary that we had covered and was able to make sentences about the vocabulary.  Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: I learned that she retained a lot of the information that I had taught her and that I was thorough when I explained it all to her. However, I learned that for more complex subjects like Daylight Savings, it best to go slow and check in every step of the way whether or not the student understands. Once I did that, I was able to figure out where she got confused and work on that before moving on.

Date/Time: November 3, 2021 at 8:00am Location: Zoom Topic/Skill: Reading Feedback provided to tutee: We finished the second Magic Treehouse book this lesson. Je-ah learned all of the vocabulary words and can understand them in context.  Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: I learned that I enjoy helping students with reading a lot. It is rewarding to see how far they can get after just a few sessions. For the last session with Je-ah, I am going to go through all the past vocabulary words with her and do a full review of everything she has learned since starting her sessions with me.