FSU TEFL 120

 Sangji and I met at Starbucks this time to continue practicing speaking. On the way there, he told me about his day and that he finally got his license and a car! He showed me his Korean license as well and we compared them, which led to him showing me his Korean doppleganger who turns out to be the owner of a TV network in Korea. We passed the business building on the way there, and he told me he had visited it a few days ago, but hesitated when using "visited". I used this as an opportunity to explain the contextual use of this word and how we usually use it when talking about a new place or landmark, where as for more everyday things we use "went to". He understood this very well. He told me he would like to continue improving his pronunciation, so I thought that minimal pairs would be helpful. I introduced the idea of minimal pairs to him and then had him practice a list of them with me. I noticed he had trouble with the "th" sound. I modeled how your...

 For this session with Melody we continued practicing her answers from part 1 of the speaking test sample. I noticed that she is a bit hard on herself and is very set on wanting to speak like a native speaker, particularly for the exam, so I took a few minutes to try and help her through these expectations and address her concerns. I explained to her that her fluency is actually quite good and I can always understand what she is trying to tell me, and that it is okay to not have perfect pronunciation all the time but rather focus on the communication of her message. I also noticed that perhaps because of this insecurity, she tends to use a lot of filler words like "always" where it may not make contextual sense. As we went over her written answers to the Part 1 questions, I helped her with this goal by reassuring her that her sentences made perfect sense when spoken but gave her suggestions of where to remove filler words or replace them with synonyms. For example, when descr...

 For my second session with Melody I prepared an activity for her to practice speaking. Melody is very clear about her English goals and seems super driven to achieve them. She said she wants to focus on raising her score on the IELTS in order to get admitted into her Master's program and would like to improve her speaking. For this session, I practiced part one of a sample IELTS test with her. She is already very knowledgable about the exam expectations and good at expressing it, but struggles with some verb tense structure which I helped her with during this session-particularly the difference between past perfect and past perfect continuous. Part one consisted about more general, personal questions that I recorded on my phone for us to review her mistakes. I wanted to focus on fluency of her ideas before we went in and corrected her mistakes. We agreed she would rewrite her responses and then practice speaking them to me without looking at our next session. 

Sangji and I continued our conversation about cars. I had him pretend that I was a car salesman and he was asking about getting a new car. I had him use vocabulary from the previous lesson but barely needed to remind him of it because he remembered a lot of words, and mainly struggled with structuring his sentences. I made sure to correct him on the most important mistakes like tense use. I noticed he has trouble with the different past tenses so I will help him with that more in detail in our future tutoring sessions, but during our conversation I just gave him the correct tense and briefly explained why it was wrong. Sangji is very determined to learn English. I have also noticed that he has good knowledge of some academic words like "alumnus" and "admissions" but struggles with more basic vocabulary. I will focus on these things in our future sessions. 

 For my third tutoring session with Sangji we met at All Saints Cafe since he said he wanted to try out new coffee spots in town. We began our session by just talking about his plans for the upcoming months, and the topic of cars came up. He had previously mentioned that he was getting a new car because it had been hard getting around town without one. This led to a conversation about the DMV in America since he told me he was planning on getting his license. We talked about how in Seoul he used both public and his own transportation, but in America it can be harder to get around without a car. I also learned more about Sangji's hometown outside of Seoul. Since he mentioned he was planning on getting a car, I decided we would focus on some useful vocabulary related to cars/buying a car for this session. First we went over this vocabulary which included some words for car parts that I thought might be difficult for him. I went over any irregular or new pronunciations as well. We als...

Amir and I visited the FSU Rez, which I took as an opportunity to tell him about typical American pastimes, such as “throwing around a football” and barbecuing. Obviously, these are practiced in many other parts of the world, but I found a way to relate it specifically to American culture by explaining the occasions upon which Americans typically do these activities, such as holidays like Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. Explaining these special days and their histories to Amir was a good way of incorporating American culture in our tutoring sessions, which I think remains faithful to Amir’s initial request when we first met, which was that I show him as much about the American way of life as possible. We also talked about religion and its influence on American holidays and government, as well as those of his home country. Amir used the word “secular” when describing Kazakhstan’s government, which I thought was great, while also noting that the country’s population is mainly Muslim...

For this session with Amir, we looked through the magazines I showed Daniel, which were New York magazine and The New Yorker. We talked about interior design and decoration, furniture, and aesthetics. To practice speaking, I asked Amir to tell me about his own aesthetic preferences, which he said rely mostly on practicality in function and cost. We also talked about politics, because the issue of New York magazine we perused was focused on the possible end of the federal right to abortion in the United States. Amir said he had heard about this, but did not understand it fully. I explained to him a bit about the history of the court case, as well as how the Supreme Court and federal versus states’ rights work in my country. He told me about the oligarchy in Kazakhstan and its relations to Russia, Cyprus, and the Britain, as well as the corruption rampant in the Kazakh government. It was very interesting to hear him articulate his culture’s views on corruption in government. Because we w...

Daniel and I continued practicing how to use ‘for’ and ‘since.’ To help in his efforts, I went beyond merely defining the words and showed him patterns in their usage and their contexts. This included looking at example sentences and comparing the words that surrounded ‘for’ with the words that surrounded ‘since.’ We tried to categorize the contexts in levels of certainty or specificity. Then, we spent more time plugging the two words into sentences. After a while, Daniel got much better and quicker at determining which word worked. I think he began to get the actual sonic rhythm of the two words and their uses, which made it easier for him to do the fill-in-the-blank exercises. After that we stopped practicing and I showed him some American magazines, New York Magazine and The New Yorker. We looked at and named food, furniture, types of clothing, and other basic commodities and life necessities. I thought this would be a good way to both expand Daniel’s vocabulary and his knowledge of...

For this session, Daniel told me he had been struggling with how and when to use the words “for” and “since,” so that is what we spent the session reviewing. To start off, I defined each word, showing him what they indicate when used in a sentence. Then, I compared them, explaining how they are similar (which they are, quite) and the small details and ways in which they differ. After we cleared that up, he practiced using “for” and “since” in sentences. We spent a long time going over this. I noticed he was mispronouncing since, so I explained to him the different ways that ‘i’ can be pronounced in different words, such as ‘since’ and ‘twine.’ I understand that the pronunciation is not immediately obvious so that is why I gave him the other examples, to show that it varies and will not always be easy to figure out. Daniel continued filling in sentences with either ‘for’ or ‘since’ until the end of the session. We decided we would continue working on this during the next session as well...

Daniel and I went over his classwork from that day, which was about English phrases such as “pay back,” “give up,” “”give back,” and “get back,” among others. The phrases all centered around the theme of charity and money. He said he was having trouble knowing when each phrase should be used, so we worked on this the entire tutoring session. To start, I went over each phrase, defining them and making sure to distinguish them from each other, because some of them were quite similar and I knew a distinction would be necessary for Daniel to know when to use each phrase. I used songs (by the Beatles) and visual aids (such as philanthropic celebrities) to define the words for Daniel beyond a mere textual definition. Next, Daniel practiced inserting the phrases in sentences, which further clarified their meaning for him. For the final part of the session, Daniel wrote his own original sentences with the phrases. After our session, he sent me a song in which he had noticed the phrase “don’t g...

Remote 1:00-1:50 05/26/2022 Thursday Group 2 Speaking Class  Today I observed Dr. Angel Rios's speaking class. He teaches Group 2, which is lower intermediate level. Dr. Rios assigned each student a vague subject to speak about, such as government, religion, friendship, language, or family. From there, students pitched three main talking points about their given subject. The student speaking on friendship decided to talk about why friendships are important, how they lost old friends, and how they win new friends. Another student's subject was language. They chose to speak about the benefits of learning a new language, language and culture, and why people should learn a new language. I will share one more list of topics with you. The student's subject was family. They decided to talk about their mom and dad, their sister, and then themselves. There was no specific rubric these students needed to follow. This is evident as all of their spoken essays vary tremendously in purpo...

 Hecht House 3:30-4:30 05/18/2022 Last In Person Tutoring Session with Gwan-Yong Na Today marked my last in person tutoring session with either of my tutees. For our last session, I asked Gwan-Yong to create a presentation on his hometown. I had presented a short PowerPoint on my hometown the session prior, but his definitely outshone mine. Gwan-Yong decided to present three cities in South Korea to me in full detail (instead of one): Daegu, Busan, and Seoul. Each of these cities are important to Gwan-Yong for different reasons. Daegu is where Gwan-Yong was born and raised, Busan is where his college is located, and Seoul is the happening place in South Korea. His presentation included maps to specify which region he was talking about at any given time and plenty of images of each city's most famous sites and top dishes. He even included a link that took us to an extensive collection of Korean street fashion since he knows I plan to pursue a career in fashion. The PowerPoint was fo...

 Hecht House 5:10-6:00 05/16/2022 Last Tutoring Session with Ye-won Today was my last tutoring session with Ye-won. We began the session like we usually do with a book. We read the story A Trip To Toy Town . I was able to introduce new words to Ye-won's vocabulary, such as "wagon," "dollhouse," and "basketball." I would have her repeat proper pronunciation to me and then have her spell out the new words on the white board. As we read, I have Ye-won identify random objects. She was able to identify 90% of items; these items included a boat, toy truck, doll, and tricycle. For the past few sessions, Ye-won and I have been working on our own set of flash cards. I taught her two new terms to complete our flashcard set: sunrise and sunset. I gave her simplified definitions of each and repeated them both. I then showed her one time-lapse video of each from YouTube, so she could better understand the definition. I then had her draw pictures of a sunrise and su...

 For this tutoring session with Dong-Woon, we focused on the topic of music. It was mostly a discussion based session. I first wrote a few common music genres on the board and then played a video for him, in which he had to guess which genre matched with the music playing in the video. Afterwards, we talked about what type music we like, when we listen to music, music we hate, playing instruments, and concerts. I learned that his first concert he went to was a Maroon 5 concert with his badminton students in Korea. He also said he doesn't listen to music when he works out, which I thought was crazy because if I workout, I have to listen to music to motivate myself. He said that he gets distracted if he listens to music while exercising. At the end, I played him a clip of myself singing because he had shown me a clip of him playing badminton the time before. It was a fun discussion tutoring session.  

  On my fourth day with Henghua, we mainly focused on word stress to better his pronunciation. I printed out a few worksheets to do together. The first one was a table with 3 columns and a word bank of 3-syllable words. For this activity, he had to read each word out loud and try to figure out which syllable had the stress in the word, and put it in the appropriate column. For this worksheet, we worked on it together to help him get used to distinguishing word stress with support. However, for the next two worksheets, I had him do them alone with a time limit of 5 minutes for each. The other worksheets were also word stress worksheets but in the form of a maze. They were charts with around 36 words and he had to figure out the way through the maze by finding only words where the stress is the second syllable for example. After he did each one, we would go over them together and review his mistakes. For the next session, we decided to do time frequency and comparisons. 

 Remote 3:12-4:12 05/25/2022 First Remote Session with Gwan-Yong Na Today, we conducted our tutoring session via Zoom since I have returned to my hometown for the summer. Using Zoom did not hinder our productivity as Gwan-Yong was able to share the online version of  his pronunciation book on the screen. Our lesson focused on the "L" sound. For words, such as "although" and "little," my tutee had the habit of producing the "D" sound instead. The word "little" began to sound like "ladle." We corrected this mistake. The tutee had an especially hard time pronouncing the word "girl." He felt silly since he says this word all the time, but I reassured him that it is okay to mess up and try again. He tends to not pronounce the "r", which makes the word sound like "gull" (like in "seagull"). I told him to hold the "R" like in the interjection "Grr" and then add an "L...

 Location: Cascades Park Time: 3-4pm For this session, Yewon and I went to Cascades and sat on one of the couches outside of Powerplant Coffee. For the past few weeks Yewon has been talking about wanting to travel to New York once the CIES session ends and before she has to travel back to South Korea for nursing school. I decided that for this session we were going to plan her hypothetical trip to NYC.  We started by researching hotels and weighing pros and cons (price vs. location). Yewon eventually decided on one that costed a bit more money, but was in a great spot in the city. We then researched different restaurants and popular places to eat. She made a list of the top 5 places she wanted to try. We then did the same for different attractions and tourist places. Once she had another 'top 5' list, we wrote a summary of her trip.  I typed it up as Yewon narrated the trip to me using the research we had just done. I wrote most things directly as she said them. In most c...

 Location: Thomasville, Georgie Time: 4-5pm On Monday, I took Yewon and Diem to Thomasville, Georgia with my roommate and I. I wanted to introduce to them to a fun activity that college students in Tallahassee love to do. We spent a while shopping and talking. We spoke about different stores and what we liked and did not like about them. The main conclusion we came to was that all of the clothing stores were too expensive. All of the shop owners and employees in Thomasville are very friendly, so they were constantly asking us questions. I sat back and let Yewon and Diem take the lead on most of the interactions. Afterwards, we discussed common phrases used while shopping such as "I'm just looking/browsing" and "Could you point me to the...".  Yewon got to practice ordering coffee again, which is something we had focused on the previous week. I noticed that she was more confident this time, even though it was a brand new store. She asked the barista a few questio...

 Location: Cascades Park Time: 3-4pm For my third tutoring session with Yewon, we went and picked up some coffee before heading over to Cascades Park. Yewon has an amazing knowledge of English, but when she has to use it, she gets very shy and insecure. Before she ordered her coffee, we talked about the menu and what she wanted. We practiced a few times with me asking clarifying questions like "Do you want that hot or iced?" and "What size?". Once she felt confident, we took turns ordering and she did great.  Then, we walked around Cascades Park. There is a Korean War Memorial there that we ran into on our walk. That was a great conversation starter for us and it was very interesting to hear her point of view on something I had only briefly learned about in history class years prior. As we spoke, I corrected her use of past tense grammar and introduced some new vocabulary that she was unfamiliar with. 

  I went to the roller-skating rink with Amir because I wanted to show him a classic American pastime, including the food, the music, and the general mood. He told me that in Kazakhstan they do not have roller-skating rinks, but there are plenty of ice-skating rinks, and these are very popular. We talked about words like ‘balance,’ (and its synonym ‘equilibrium’), ‘blade,’ ‘in-line,’ and ‘rental,’ among others. Most of the time, when discussing these words (some of which were unfamiliar to Amir), I would focus on his pronunciation. His knowledge of English is extensive, so his pronunciation is one way I can help him improve. We talked about how the American accent is typically quite nasal, so the ‘a’ in the word ‘tobacco,’ for example, has a sort of high-pitched quality that does not come naturally to Amir. I am ambivalent about correcting this in nonnative speakers, because I do not believe that one accent is necessarily right and another is wrong, but when it inhibits general com...

I met with Daniel and decided that, instead of coming to him with a set lesson plan, I would instead ask him what he wanted to work on for our meeting. I offered choices of writing, reading, and speaking practice, and he said he would like to have a conversation. Throughout our lessons, we have often conversed and practiced speaking, but rarely through an entirely freeform approach. I thought this would be an excellent way to remove some barriers from his speech and allow for him to develop his fluency, rather than maintain a sharp, and at times inhibitive, focus on his accuracy of speech. He wanted to work some more on his use of the past tense, so I asked him to tell me about his week, what he did in his classes, and his trip to the hospital (he broke out in hives because of an allergy). As we conversed, I corrected his use of the past tense whenever there was a misstep, and praised and acknowledged his speech when it was accurate. I also taught him new words like ‘dizzy,’ ‘nausea,’ ...

  Amir and I talked about the flexibility of Russian as compared to that of English. He explained that, in Russian, you can build upon words more and more, and even invent entirely new words with parts of others, and people will understand what you are saying. We compared this to English, which Amir says feels more strict and less workable. I wonder if this is because of how much he has left to learn. As a native speaker, I think I feel that English is mostly freeing, a fluid language I can move through, although, at times, I can feel stuck or like I am searching for the right words but they don’t exist. My understanding, though, is that everyone can feel this way in their native tongue. I am still trying to figure it all out. Speaking with my tutee about these sorts of things makes me think hard about the student’s perspective, approaching the language as they are from the outside. We also talked about pronunciation issues, like the ‘th’ sound in ‘weather,’ which Amir pronounces l...

I met with Daniel and we went over temporal transition words, because he had mentioned in a previous lesson that he didn’t know words like “while.” As a warm up, we read an abridged version of the fairytale “Sleeping Beauty,” which deals heavily with time, and we picked out the temporal transition words. Then, I showed him a chart I made of transition words related to time, under the categories ‘before,’ ‘first,’ ‘next,’ ‘sometimes,’ and ‘last,’ as well as ones that fell under different categories like simultaneous time or sudden instances. I explained each phrase/word to him and showed him how they are often used together in a sentence and how, even when their arrangement is slightly modified, they can still be used to get at the same meaning. We ended the session by playing a fill-in-the-blank game so that he could test his knowledge of temporal transition words in sentences, and he did very well!  

For my final observation, I attended Mr. Ryan’s speaking class, which consisted of individual student presentations on the topic of university major/career goals. The students were in group 3 and they had to give a presentation of 5 to 7 minutes, which I thought was level-appropriate and manageable for the students. I found the majority of their presentations highly engaging and really well structured and organized. The students seemed to genuinely care about what they were saying, and I attributed this to the fact that the presentation was about something personal to them, which made the effort they would put into it authentic and full. I think presentations centered around the personal are best for students, especially those in a speaking class; we are most comfortable when we are talking about things we are familiar with and care about, and this comfort translated well into the student presentations. I also found that the slight exhaustion students displayed when searching for the r...

I observed Mr. Ryan’s listening class, which had students from group 3. I was really curious as to how listening would be connected to the other types of learning, and his lesson showed me how reading and speaking in particular came into play when teaching a listening class. The class started out with a review of the vocabulary from last class with a game of Kahoot. I think this is a reliable way to get students engaged, especially because competition boosts their intrinsic motivation to learn. The students then had discussions in small groups about a story Mr. Ryan had told the previous class, and which was related to the vocabulary. I think teachers telling students personal stories from their memory is a neat thing to incorporate in class because it gives students a real world example of storytelling from an actual human being standing in front of them, rather than a rehearsed recording. The class ended with students listening to a lecture, which Mr. Ryan split up into short section...

Date: 5/17 Time: 3:30-4:30 Skill / Topic: Listening and Speaking; Housing Feedback Provided to Tutee: For my second tutoring session with Sangji we decided to meet in the Starbucks at Strozier Library on campus. Sangji had previously mentioned that he was apartment hunting so I designed an activity that would help him practice conversations surrounding housing and speaking to leasing offices in Tallahassee. First, we did a vocabulary matching activity and asked him to match the picture to a word. He got most of the basics right, like kitchen, sink, living room, etc and as we moved on to the more difficult ones we went over those more, such as lease, amenities, utilities, etc. We then practiced describing his ideal roommate and his ideal apartment. I gave him some sample questions, like "Is your ideal roommate quiet? How often do they clean?" and had him practice answering them in full sentences. Lastly, I gave him some common questions to ask and had him pretend that I was th...

I went to Cascades Park with Amir, Nikita, Sarah, and Yewon and we spent the whole time chatting. Sarah made some tostones and chocolate chip cookies, and she explained to Amir, Nikita, and Yewon that tostones are a traditional Caribbean dish. We played a game of Cards Against Humanity, and anticipated that it would be useful in teaching Amir, Nikita, and Yewon some English-language slang (albeit dirty) and culture. And it really was! We talked some more about Greek life in America, and Amir was taken aback by the violence of fraternity life and why no one in America seemed to put a stop to it. He said that sort of thing would get people beat up in Kazakhstan, so he just couldn’t understand why it was allowed here. It got us all thinking about the American spirit and mindset. We also talked about celebrities whose names came up on the cards (like Meryl Streep, who Amir recognized from The Devil Wears Prada ) and Nicolas Cage (who Amir and Nikita knew immediately and absolutely loved, f...

On Friday, I went to the grocery store with Amir. I got the idea from Michael, who did the same with his tutee. On the walk there, Amir and I passed some big sorority houses, so I asked him what he knew about Greek life in America. He said he had some idea from his brother, who went to school in Canada and once rushed a frat, but decided not to join because he thought the hazing rituals were stupid. I told him some more about hazing, and we agreed that it seemed dangerous, violent, and exclusive. When we arrived at the store, we talked about breakfast and our favorite foods. Amir told me that he noticed that Americans eat a lot of bread and, even though he loves bread, he could never outpace us. He also told me about (his hometown) and the many trees that grow there, including apricot, which makes fresh fruit very common in the city. He also told me about the tradition of greeting visitors with tea, and that the whole affair is a chance to offer generosity to guests. During one instanc...

For my second session with Amir, I invited him and his friend Nikita over to my house for a spelling bee and conversation. Some other friends of mine came over, too, and we all participated in the spelling bee. Amir got a pretty difficult word and spelled it almost perfectly, except he missed one vowel. The rest of the contestants tried their best to spell the words, some failed, others succeeded. In the end, we all marveled at how strange English spelling could be. After the contest, we all talked—mostly about the differences between the United States and Kazakhstan, where Nikita and Amir are from. We learned a lot about one another’s countries, including the social scene, politics, and customs. Amir said he felt that he had leveled up somehow in English because he was encountering new words and slang he had never heard before. Plus, he could only speak in English because that was what everyone else was speaking. He was glad to be in this sort of social setting, where the language was...

For this tutoring session, Daniel and I worked on the simple past tense, the past continuous tense, and compound sentences using “used to.” As a warm-up for the session, I asked Daniel to write an entry in a dream journal, in which he related a dream he had in the past and tried to use as much past tense as he could. Once he was finished, we went over the entry and identified instances of the past tense and made corrections to his errors. Next, we went over a fill-in-the-blank handout I created, also focused on the past tense. To end the session, we watched a clip from a silent film ( The Kid ) and I asked Daniel to explain what had happened, using past tense again. I noticed that he has some trouble with irregulars, which is not surprising, so we discussed going over these in a future tutoring session. Another thing that came up was transition words, which Daniel said he would like to learn more about. Our next tutoring session will cover temporal transition words.  

  For my first tutoring session with Melody we used a majority of the session to get to know her and the skills she wants to work on. Melody is from Taiwan and speaks three languages/dialects: Mandarin, Cantonese, and some Japanese. She is a teacher herself and gives piano lessons to kids over zoom. She has two master's degrees and is shooting for her third at FSU in Music Therapy. She told me that she wants to improve her IELTS score and wanted to focus on her speaking and listening skills. She really wants to have conversation and make friends, so we agreed to practice different conversation topics through activities. I asked her what she found most challenging about English in addition to speaking and she said she wants to improve her vocabulary as well her accent, so I told her we will focus on pronunciation as well. Next week, we will work on those skills and meet once a week since she already has another tutor.

 For my first tutoring session with Sangji, we mainly used up the time to get to know one another, learn about his goals for English learning and more specifically, his goals for our tutoring sessions. Sangji is from a town near Seoul in South Korea. He arrived from South Korea very recently and does not know a lot of places around Tallahassee. He also has his Master's degree which he got outside of the US. He wants to get into a PHD program at FSU for business and marketing. We talked about his goals and he said he struggles mostly with speaking and listening skills. Sangji is in group 2 at CIES and he told me that he is currently learning the future tenses. He told me that he has a good understanding of the grammar he is learning in class, but would like to be corrected on it as well during our sessions. We agreed that we would be working mostly on those two skills and practice formal and informal conversation. For our next session, I will come up with some conversation topics th...

 Hecht House 2:00-2:50 05/12/2022 Thursday Listening Class This course observation is unique from the others because it is my first time seeing back to back lessons of the same class. I wanted to see how a professor would continue the lesson from before to the next day. The teacher began the class with a True or False quiz based on the listening activity from the day before. He played the podcast Hawaii False Alarm again for the class. The students then proceeded to respond to the quiz questions. The questions pertained to phrases uttered in the podcast. There were missing words and the students had to fill in the blanks with the new vocabulary words. They then had to recall if the filled in sentence was true or false. This is a great activity to see if students are not only paying attention, but also understanding the material. I noticed that the teacher makes it a point to ask, "Do you want anymore information about this?" before moving on to the next topic. I will be sure ...

 Hecht House 2:00-2:50 05/11/2022 Wednesday Listening Class The teacher began the class by reviewing the vocabulary quiz from the previous lesson. The quiz contained words, such as "convey," "organism," "bioluminescence," "thermal vents," "photosynthesis," and "chemotroph." I was surprised by how advanced the vocabulary was as I did not know the meaning of some of the words (like chemotroph). The teacher then began to introduce a new subject area. He asked the class if they knew what the word "hoax" meant. They did not. He then proceeded to search the definition for the class using "The Learner's Dictionary" (recently bought by Britannica); it is a website that provides definitions that are easy to understand. Once he clarified that the entire class knew what a hoax was, he played a podcast reporting about a fake bomb threat (Hawaii False Alarm). He then broke the class into small groups to discuss what...

 Hecht House 1:00-1:50 05/11/2022 Wednesday Speaking Class Students were given the task to make a PowerPoint presentation on a topic of their choice. Today, I was able to witness two presentations. One titled "Am I an Empath?" followed by another titled "Why I Chose Independence at 16." The first presenter explained to the class what empathy is and why it is an important (even necessary) skill to have. This presentation was followed by a quiz that tested how empathetic we were from a series of questions. I scored 55/100, which is considered average. During this discussion, the students learned the American phrase, "Keep your spirits up!" The teacher provided the class with the definition "To not live in fear, but to continue on with your day." They also learned what the phrase "read between the lines" means (definition: to not have all the details but to take an educated guess from what you know). The second presentation entailed a more...

 Hecht House 2:00-2:50 05/09/2022 Monday Listening Class    The students had just finished a chapter, so they spent the entirety of the class completing activities individually as a form of review. Each assignment required the students to listen to a short lecture, maximum of three minutes, and then answer some comprehension questions. Because the students were doing work on their own, I decided to take the opportunity to ask the teacher some questions about her class. I asked her about what sort of listening activities she likes to assign. She told me about a website she likes to use called lyricstraining.com. The site offers a closed activity in the form of a game. It has an array of music videos with lyrics displayed on the screen; there are words missing and the students must listen to the music to fill in the blank. The song does not continue playing until the student submits the right answer. I could see myself using this site in the future for listening activities....

 For my fifth classroom observation, I observed Olivia James teach a level 4 listening class. The start of class consisted of a free speech/free level speaking/listening discourse with the entire class. Ms. James began to discuss a scenario that occurred to her and asked students opinion on it. The class then progressed into a discussion concerning the video that was being watched throughout the previous class sessions. The video was pulled up unto the projector and was used solely as a reference to the conversation. Ms. James spoke the most of the class time about stress and her personal experiences, the students participated whenever they felt comfortable or motivated. The dynamic of the classroom was extremely laidback and conversational. 

 For my fourth class observation I observed Dr. Felicia teaching a level 3 grammar class. For the start of class she split the class students into their pre-determined small groups to go over the corrections she had made on their submitted short paragraph. She brought me to her computer to explain how she graded student submissions, she was very sure to not be harsh on the students, using phrases like "beautiful mistake" to not perpetuate negative backwash. The rest of the class was spent discussing the structure of infinitives and their place in a sentence, she would call on students for very example and threatened to call on the students who did not raise their hands to ensure even classroom participation.

 For my third class observation I observed Mr. Ryan teaching a speaking class. The beginning of class consisted of Mr. Ryan asking the class how their progress was going on the upcoming project. The project being discussed was that of a video of the student describing their life and hobbies. Mr. Ryan was patient and helpful when students would discuss their projects progress and the questions they had. During the class a student had a question of what was the name of something in the class (an electrical outlet). Mr Ryan did not directly answer but instead asked if other classmates if they knew. Following discussion Mr. Ryan then played a video of him presenting on his life and hobbies. Once the video was complete a short quiz was given to see if the students understood what Mr. Ryan was saying.

 My second observation was with Mr. Ryan and was a listening class. Ryan went over the schedule for the day by displaying the schedule on the projector while verbally telling the class the words on the board. Mr. Ryan was very skilled at speaking clearly. slowly and loudly. After Mr. Ryan finished the schedule for class, he then prescribed a timed reading of 6 minutes while he walked around to see if anybody needed help. Once the timed reading was complete Mr. Ryan then split the class into small groups to discuss what was just read, Mr. Ryan called on a few students to explain the article and engage the class. Following the small groups Mr. Ryan then played a 12 minute scientific video, pausing it occasionally to catch the class up to ask if they had any questions, that completed the class.

 My first class observation was with Dr. Angel Rios and was a reading class.  The first portion of class consisted of Dr. Rios pulling up the article that the class was supposed to read for homework. Dr.Rios worked through this article with the class, reading most of it himself while occasionally calling on students to read/explain what certain paragraphs meant. The next portion of class consisted of the students reading over the next assignment and taking notes. I took notice of how much involvement and excitement Dr. Rios elicited out of the students. Dr. Rios engaged the class through his energy and repeated student involvement and feedback, he guided the students through while still allowing them to make their own conclusions based on the reading.

  Date/Time: 5/11/22 @ 5:20 PM Location: Hecht House Topic/Skill: Reading and Speaking Feedback provided to tutee: I read 2 stories. During each story, I asked basic comprehension questions on the story, asked my tutee to point to certain pictures on the pages, and asked her to predict certain scenarios. She did better on answering comprehension questions and could identify simple pictures, but had a lot of trouble trying to think/speak a prediction. The speaking activity involved taking orders at a hamburger shop (a playset I borrowed from my workplace). We practiced speaking by learning the ingredients of a hamburger and how to take an order from a customer. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: My tutee is a child, and so is more responsive when the lesson is highly interactive and fun. Children are not meant to sit and talk. Therefore, I asked her to find ingredients I hid in the room and to 'walk' into the hamburger shop. 

  Date/Time: 5/10/22 @ 7PM Location: Tomahawk 51 on Tennessee Street Topic/Skill: Axe throwing Feedback provided to tutee: I had a fun time getting to know Nikita. He introduced me to some of the other CIES students in the upper intermediate division. We all practiced throwing axes at wood and played competitive games against each other. Afterward, we ate Chick-fil-a. I learned about major political differences between Kazakhstan and America.  Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: I learned that American culture is known to a decent extent in so many areas of the world because of Western movies. Nikita and his friends kept telling me that living here, going to university, and doing crazy (but legal) things felt exactly like living in a movie scene. 

  Date/Time: 5/9/22 @ 11 AM Location: Anhay's apartment Topic/Skill: building vocabulary (everyday household items) Feedback provided to tutee: We covered kitchen appliances and household items like 'lamp'. She already knew 'door', but not 'door handle' or 'door frame'. For our next session, I want to cover the verbs/phrases associated with these household items. Ex: open/close the door, turn on the stove, preheat the oven, etc. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Anhay loves cute and colorful things to study. I bought some colorful stickers to label her household items. She was very happy with them. It is important to understand the student's likes and dislikes within the scope of the lesson. 

 For Dong-Woon's third session, we worked on demonstrative pronouns (that, this, those, these), the 3 different "there"s, and how to talk about sports. He had told me in the previous meeting that he struggled with those two grammar points, so we worked on it during this meeting. I wrote down the words this, that, these, and those and then pointed to objects and had him tell me what they were. For example, I pointed at 2 pens and had him say, "those are pens". When he used the wrong word, I would have him retry using what he knew to get the right answer. Then, I went explained the definition and when to use each one. I did the same thing with there, their, and they're. I had him give me example sentences using each word first, explaining the definition second. After reviewing these grammar points, we went over how to use the words "play", train", compete", study", and "practice" when talking about sports. For the last activi...

Since Henghua told me during our last session that he wanted to focus on more real life conversations, I decided to focus on typical phone conversations in America. I had him first listen to a short video that had 2 conversations, one that was formal and one that was casual. Afterwards, I had him try to guess what the difference was. Then, I had him listen to it again, but this time while watching it so he could read the subtitles. I chose a video that I felt was very realistic in how American people actually speak and that had some idioms that I thought he wouldn't know. One example of an idiom from the video was, "wanna go grab a bite?".  During the second run through, I would pause the video after every line that I thought he might not understand and then we went over it. After this, we did an activity in which we were back to back and pretended we were having a phone call. I had us use common phone situations, such as making a complaint to customer service and calling...

 For my last class observation, I watched Dr. Ciappetta's grammar class with group 3. She started it off with a warm up, asking everyone how their weekend was. Afterwards, she followed an inductive approach and started with a partner activity. She had the students get in pairs to work on some questions together in order for them to answer with an infinitive. A few minutes later, she went around the room asking each person their answer for those questions to make sure everyone participated and only corrected the sentence if it was not understandable. When trying to correct some students' grammar from their answers, she would use the repetition implicit corrective feedback. She would repeat what the student said but in a question form. For example, she said "you can't go?" because the verb that they were supposed to use was the past tense. Once everyone finished answering, Dr. Ciappetta went over the grammar point- infinitives and gerunds. She explained what they ar...

 Time: 3-4pm Location: Redeye Coffee in Midtown For my 2nd session with Yewon, (the 21 year old, not the 4 year old) we went to a coffee shop that I had recommended last week. We spent a few minutes discussing the menu and I answered a few questions that she had about it. We took turns ordering and then picked a table to chat at. Yewon caught me up on how she has been taking care of her roommates cats for a few days while she was out of town. I was happy to hear this because she had told me last session that she had not spoken to her roommate yet and was very nervous about it. However, since she was taking care of her cats they were talking on the phone each day and she was excited to be making friends with her.  Yewon really desires to make American friends so we spoke for a while about how she can make friends in the summer in Tallahassee. We also talked about her American name, "Hailey" - she picked it herself when she met someone nice with the name.  We wrapped up the...

  Time: Saturday May 7, 5:20pm-6:20pm Location: Hecht House For this tutoring session, I met with 4-year-old Yewon for the first time. We began our session by reading a book about pets. This book was right on level for her because she was able to answer my questions about what we were reading and point to the things I asked her about as we read. The book also had speaking and reading practice incorporated at the end of each chapter which was helpful for Yewon. She is great at phonics and is a pro at letter sounds, so we spent a little while practice blending the letter sounds together to read a whole word.  Then, we played with playdough and took turns guessing what each other was making. We also played a few rounds of Simon Says which gave Yewon the opportunity to run around the classroom and play (when Simon said of course).  Overall the session was very fun and I look forward to meeting with Yewon in the future. 

Today I attended Dr. Rios' reading class, which was taught to group 3 English-speakers. I was curious as to how this sort of class works because I think of reading as a silent, independent mode of study. So, I wondered what role a teacher would play in improving a student’s reading, especially with a more advanced group like group 3. In class, Dr. Rios went over some vocabulary, asking the students to use the words in a sentence, give him their definitions and synonyms, asking them the difference between several of the vocabulary words. I was pleasantly surprised at the level of the words they were going over, as some of these would be unfamiliar to some native English-speakers. I asked Dr. Rios about what sort of work they do and he told me about their reading logs, which are based on news/opinion articles from the news and gets students to focus on the very important components of comprehension and summary. This class session helped me understand how I could support a student in ...

 I met up with my tutee Amir for the first time. Our session went really well! We spent over an hour talking about many things, including his background, his knowledge of English, his various academic interests, and the things he would like to improve on. He is from Kazakhstan and highly interested in history and economics, which we spent some time talking about. I gave him a copy of The New Yorker that I had in my bag so that he could read over some of the articles because they could give him a sense of American culture and arts, which he wants to learn more about. We talked about listening to podcasts and watching videos about American history, which would benefit him because it is interesting and it will teach him new things about the United States and speaking English. He also shared that he would like to improve his conversation skills, specifically when to know what words/tone of formality are appropriate and when. I am not as sure how to teach this aspect of English, but for...

  My fifth class was Dr. Ciappetta’s group 4 reading class. I didn’t know exactly what to expect but it was far less interactive than the other classes I observed. I think this was mainly due to the fact that it was a more advanced class and just the class that I happened to be observing. Dr. Ciapetta told me that the class was going to be more dedicated to the student’s final research papers, and so they would mostly be using the time to read academic articles to prepare. This got me thinking how as the students move up levels, they get to apply their skills a lot more and use it in a more academic setting, which is very useful especially for students who write a lot of papers.

  My fourth class observation was for Mr. Ryan Flemming’s group 4 grammar class. This class was a little different than the group 2 observation of Dr. Rios’ class mainly because it was at a more advanced level. I did notice that the class was equally as structured but there was more free practice involved. I really liked Mr. Flemming’s warm-up activity to practice the third conditional, “who said that''? The students had to guess who in the class said a certain statement using wouldn’t have, shouldn’t have, etc.. The statements told you a lot about the students’ personalities and sparked conversation and jokes which I thought was a good way to start the class. He spent quite a bit of time going over future assignments for the week and also made sure to make it clear what the next steps for class were by displaying canvas for the students to see. The activity was very fun and he asked students to give advice and possible solutions for the titanic sinking as well as differentiate...

  For my third class observation, I observed Ms. James’ group 4 listening class. Compared to my previous class observations, this one had a little bit less lecturing but was still very interactive. Ms James used a very interesting video to spark a little more interest, questions, and overall conversation between the students. So even though it was still a listening class the students were speaking a lot and so was Ms. James. She made sure to model for the students by giving her opinion on the video about futuristic cities first, and then asking for theirs. I think by going first it makes students a bit more confident or at least familiar with the activity they should be doing. In all the classes I observed until this point I notice that a big thing the teachers do is always ask for opinions. I think this encourages conversation and also leads the students away from highly controlled practice, where they can do more free practice since they are a bit higher level. She also focused o...

  For my second class observation,I observed  Dr. Rios’ group 2 speaking class. Dr. Rios started right off the bat by going over a previous activity. I noticed that after students were asked to share their sentences, Dr. Rios made feedback the the classmates’ job as well. I think this is helpful to make the classmates accountable for each other’s work and create a more dynamic environment, where they feel comfortable sharing their mistakes and get used to speaking. For the activities, Dr. Rios made the speaking very structured, by making sure that the sentence had 1. Name, 2. Topic, 3. An Opinion, 4. Two reasons & two examples and 5. Conclusion.. He also made a point of how they should avoid repetition to the best of their ability so they can be understood more clearly. Lastly, I noticed that Dr. Rios corrected vague wording and made a point of explaining WHY it is wrong/unclear  to use a certain word. For example, he corrected a student using the word “things” and en...

For my first class observation, I observed Dr. Rios’ group 2 grammar class. Dr. Rios started his class by going around the class and reading sentences out loud in the past simple tense, which I thought was a good way to immediately bring in the attention of the class and make this an active classroom. I also noticed that Dr. Rios rewarded the students who came up with more complex sentences, and used their sentences as examples to teach the lesson. I thought this was an encouraging way to make sure the students felt more confident in their sentences. For his activity, Dr. Rios incorporated a lot of conversation between the students and with him, and students were constantly asked to share their opinions. He also shared his opinions, which I think makes the students trust the teacher more and makes the class more fun. The last activity was for the past continuous tense. He started to explain the concept with example sentences and then brought it back to the active participation where st...

 For my first tutoring session with Gwan-Yong, I utilized the time to get to know each other as I observed his english speaking skills. In comparison with my other tutee, Gwan-Yongs english speaking skills are advanced and he posses a fair amount of confidence and fluency when speaking to me about his home or what he likes to do. I discovered where he as from specifically in South Korea as well as what he enjoys spending his time doing and what he hopes to achieve in life. We share similarities as we both posses a passion for the engineering side of education and knowledge. When asking what he wants to practice and learn he informed me that he hopes to work with his other tutor on intonation and pronunciation, but with me would rather practice vocabulary from specific topics he is interested in and desires knowledge on. Some topics that Gwan-Yong hopes to practice include finance, industry, economics and politics in America, this will provide a great deal of new, lower frequency wo...

 For my second tutoring session with Dong-Woon, I provided materials in the form of an english magazine on the national parks on America. This magazine was laid out in front of us and as we progressed through each new page showing a different park in the USA, I would use a map of the US to geographically locate these parks for him. This simultaneously familiarized Dong-Woon with the relative geography of the US while teaching him some vocabulary that relates to geography. I frequently asked him questions about the geography of South Korea to grant him practice with some of the same words that I just used to explain to him US geography. As the tutoring session progressed, Dong-Woon's speaking skills and confidence in himself expanded, about three quarters of the way through, during our talking of his weeks schedule of tennis i recommended that we engage in a match of ping pong, with the sole rule of speaking the entire time. This task of engaging in an active sport while utilizing h...

 For my first tutoring session with Dong-Woon, the majority of the session was spent getting to new each other. I was able to converse with him using simple, slow spoken english words. For periods where he could not understand my spoken word i supplemented using hand gestures, and if that were to fail using a writing pad to draw what I meant. For this tutoring session I hoped to establish a feeling of trust and safety between us, that I would not grow impatient or angry if he was having trouble finding the right english words to explain himself or if I could not understand his pronunciation. He informed me that he loves sports and American culture, that it would be beneficial for him to be given a topic to talk abut at each tutoring session and a list of words to go with that topic so that he could memorize them by next session. Dong-Woon shows great enthusiasm for learning this language and is understandable in written word, he lacks the confidence and vocabulary to express himsel...

 For my second session with Dong-Woon, we worked on interview questions, important words, and examples of what he could say. We first started off with a review of his writing diagnostic from the first session. I noticed that with the sentences he was creating, there were different ways that they could be understood. This made it a little difficult in correcting his mistakes because I couldn't tell if he was saying, "I want to go camping in Tallahassee" or "I want to go to the camping grounds in Tallahassee." I didn't know if he wanted to use the camping as a gerund or as a noun. After we looked over his writing, we watched a sample interview video and then discussed the questions that were used. I explained to him what the questions are asking and looking for in their answers, as well as giving him examples of some possible answers. I thought that it would be fun to do a language exchange at the end of each session. Since I am helping him with his English, h...

At the start of my second meeting with Henghua, we went over his writing diagnostic sample that I corrected beforehand and discussed some of his mistakes. His writing was very accurate, there were only some more practical things that I helped him with like using "I hope to" instead of "I wish to" because it is more natural in the English language. Afterwards, we did an activity I prepared. I chose three short clips of some anime movies that are translated into English, had him watch them, and then asked him some comprehension questions about the video clips I showed. He got most of them right and those that he didn't know the answer to, we rewatched the clips with those specific questions in mind. We had a short discussion about the movies afterwards and then we did one last activity. I watched all of the clips that I picked and created a list of words that I thought were interesting so that we could make up a story. I had it so that we each would have to create...

 For my first tutoring session with Dong-Woon, it was relatively similar to Hengua's. We started off with getting to know one another. I discovered that he really enjoys sports and was actually a Badminton coach back in Korea, coaching professional players. After we talked for a little bit, I got him to take the same online diagnostic test as Hengua and writing assignment. We went over his mistakes as well and talked about why they were write or wrong. I noticed that he struggled a bit with prepositions and there were a few times in which I struggled to understand him. He was able to make the main points of a sentence, but it was unable to create fully understandable sentences. We talked about what he wanted to work on for the future sessions and he said speaking, listening, and getting a job. So we decided to focus on interview terms, common questions, and possible answers for the next meeting. 

For my first ever tutoring session as a tutor, I met up with Henghua to help him with English. We first began our session with a simple conversation focused on learning more about each other. I found that we both like Japanese animation movies and shows. He told me his favorite one was Death Note, which is also one of my favorites as well. After talking to each other, I got him to do an online diagnostic test that I previously chose and a quick writing one too. We went over his answers from the online diagnostic and corrected his mistakes, explaining why they were wrong. We then discussed the things he wanted to work on during our sessions and he said he wanted to focus on: pronunciation, speaking, listening, and intonation. He also told me he was an audio learner, which I thought was very interesting while making sense at the same time. At the end, we decided to do some listening comprehension and discussions for the next session. 

 On this day, I observed Group 2's grammar class with Dr. Rios. Like other classes that I went to, Dr. Rios started off with a review of the work they did the day before. they were working on the past continuous verb tense. They did an activity where they had to come up with their own example sentences using the prompt, "create an excuse about why you couldn't do your homework using the past continuous". He walked around the classroom and looked over their writings, choosing some that he wanted the students to say when he asked for the examples they made. He got the students to say these examples and wrote them on the board, giving them feedback and correcting their sentences. For the correction part, he would get the students to repeat themselves if they needed to fix a verb tense using the elicitation technique. Another activity that they did was going outside to create example sentences with their grammar point by people watching. I think this was a good way to get...

 For my third class observation, I went to Dr. Rios's reading class with group 3. Before the class started, he played American music in order to create the ambience of American culture within the classroom. Dr. Rios was really good about keeping the students engaged and their attention by using examples with the students' names and physically moving his body around. Right off the bat, I felt the comfortableness of the classroom. He made it a place where mistakes and not knowing something was okay. He would also go into detail about words they did not understand and used real life examples so that they were able to recognize it in future settings. Dr. Rios was able to make the lesson fun even though it was a dry reading. At the end of the class, he reinforced the good things that the students did and praised them for doing a great job with this reading. 

 This day, I went to Dr. Ciappetta's listening class for Group 2. They began with a review of the audio recording they listened to the previous day and worked together in pairs to answer some questions Dr. Ciappetta prepared. Compared to how she spoke to the students in Group 4, I noticed that Dr. Ciappetta used slower speech in which she focused on dictation. She would walk around to make sure the students were doing the work and paying attention to any verbal mistakes they were making. After going over the questions, there were some that she wanted them to give her more details. Therefore, she told the students to pay attention to a certain part and replayed the video. There was also one moment that I really liked in the class. A student had left to go to the bathroom and knocked on the door before re-entering the classroom. Dr. Ciappetta went over to the student after he returned to his seat and explained the cultural difference between knocking on a door in general and knocking...

My first class observation was with Group 4 Speaking. However, Mr. Flemming was absent that day because he was sick, so Dr. Ciappetta acted as the substitute. She started off with a quick warm up asking everyone how their lunch was and what they ate. Their assignment this day was to just work on writing their class discussion that they have to present in the future. It seemed that everyone in the class had a good dynamic. They were able to ask questions and talk about the subject of their presentation with one another with ease. There were a few times when I was unable to understand the students’ English while they were speaking. Yet, Dr. Ciappetta was easily able to understand it. I think this shows how beneficial it is to get to know one’s students in the beginning because it helps with overall communication. Since I was unable to see how a speaking class worked, I have decided to visit another class next week.

  Date/Time: 5/5/22 @ 7PM with Nikita Location: Hecht House Topic/Skill: Conversation Feedback provided to tutee: There was not much feedback to provide to him. He is one of the upper-level students and speaks English fluently. I did introduce to him a few idioms and discussed the differences between Kazakhstan culture and American culture. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: We mainly talked. Nikita is looking for American friends. He told me incredibly interesting and shocking stories about his native country. I learned that he is trilingual and has studied in Singapore. He enjoys the peace and nature in Tallahassee and wants to discover new things. I spoke very informally and fast and he understood me perfectly. 

I observed Olivia’s Speaking class, which she was teaching to Group 3 students. This class was pretty relaxed because the students were engaged in independent work, researching, brainstorming, and preparing for a speech that they are to give next week. The students are meant to give a speech of 4 to 7 minutes, along with a PowerPoint, that expresses something about their core values. To prepare, they visited a museum on campus that focused on a famous politician and his personal values. They then discussed what matters in their own lives, such as money, love, climate change, etc. They also analyzed speeches to understand how they are organized and given. Part of their preparation included coming up with a topic, a title, and a purpose for their speech. This assignment is important because it gets students thinking about how to express their individuality in a language that is unnatural to them. I’m interested in how this thought process might make students learn something new about the...

Date/Time: 5/5/22 @ 9AM Location: Pool area of Anhay's apartment complex Topic/Skill: Speaking and vocabulary review Feedback provided to tutee: I did some research from the last session on questions Anhay had that I did not know the answer to. The questions were related to possessive nouns & adjectives and the word "so". Afterward, we reviewed some vocabulary from her CIES classes and practiced conversation in English. Anhay feels pressured to make sure her sentences are grammatically correct, and I told her what I learned from class: it is more important to practice fluency with errors and refine sentences later.  Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Now that I have solidified my needs assessment, I need to produce more structured lessons or specified topics we will cover for our tutoring sessions. I notice Anhay wants to practice her English speaking skills but has a very limited vocabulary. Therefore, I want to practice conversation and i...

I met my tutee Oksana for the second time on Wednesday, May 4 in Hetch house from 3-4pm. It just so happened that I observed Oksana's listening class that day, where she began working on a presentation about her personal values. We continued to work on the presentation together during tutoring, brainstorming three subtopics for Oksana's overall theme of connecting to people from different backgrounds. Talking about the presentation lead us into a lesson about building persuasive arguments. Oksana showed me an essay outline template she was working on for her composition class that had almost the exact same structure as her presentation outline and was able to apply strategies from working on the PowerPoint speech to her essay. I realized that many of the concepts I learned as a creative writing student are still applicable to teaching EFL writing. (I will prepare an example of a simple and comprehensible introduction paragraph and thesis statement to share at our next session.)

Date/Time: 5/4/22 @ 5:20 PM Location: Hecht House Topic/Skill: Reading and speaking Feedback provided to tutee: (Context: student is a child) Read children's books and asked comprehension questions throughout the reading. I did an interactive activity with an alphabet mystery box. The student pulled out mystery items, was asked what the item was and what letter it started with, placed the item on the corresponding letter board, and produced the sound the letter makes. During the activity, I asked questions about some of the items. For example, when the student pulled out a cookie, I asked if they liked cookies and what cookies do they like? The student was very engaged. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Notice when students do or do not pay attention. Give small hints to guide them toward the answer. Award praise for trying and keep prompting for answers. For example, use phrases like "not quite" and "good try". 

For my second class observation, I attended Professor James' 1-1:50pm listening class on Wednesday, May 4th. The students spent the entire class period working on their current project, a short speech about their personal values accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation. First, Professor James' showed the students PowerPoint presentations' from previous classes as inspiration. She engaged the students in a class discussion critiquing the examples and encouraged them to be creative with their own presentation. After the class finished going over the sample presentations, Professor James gave each students an outline to help plan their presentation. (Students could chose from two different templates, a flow chart and a bulleted list; which I thought was a nice way of accommodating different organizational styles.) Professor James gave students time to work independently on their outlines and went around the room to discuss their topics one on one. She showed a clear interest i...

I had my first tutoring session on Monday, May 2nd with Oksana from 5-6pm at Hecht House.  We began by discussing Oksana's background and her goals. I learned that Oksana is from Ukraine and holds a undergraduate degree in engineering. She is studying English so she can find work or attend graduate school in the United States. I asked Oksana about her expectations for me and what she was looking for in a tutor; I wanted to be as helpful to her as possible. We discussed her classes and some aspects of English grammar and composition that she was struggling with, including the difference between sentences and paragraphs. I then gave her feedback on a reading assignment, which Oksana read aloud to help me gauge her fluency. At the end of our session, we agreed tentatively to meet for an hour in the evening on Mondays and Wednesdays. Texting is the best means of communication for both of us; Oksana will confirm that she is available before Monday and Wednesday evenings. 

For my first tutoring session, I met with my tutee Daniel. I thought that the most important things to get out of this first meeting were to understand a little bit about who Daniel is, what his level in English is (including his speaking and grammar abilities), how he spends his time, and what about learning English he enjoys the most. He told me about his background: that he is from Bogotá, Colombia, he has no brothers or sisters, and that he was on a basketball team back home. I asked him what his hobbies were, and he told me he likes to play video games. We talked about his learning style and he told me he feels most confident speaking English when he is playing a game, which allows him to speak naturally. I knew this would be useful in how I would go about teaching him. I will try to make our activities comfortable and fun so that his speech is the best it can be. He also told me that he would like to focus on using the past tense. For our next tutoring session, I will plan an act...

I visited Dr. Rios' Grammar class, with students from Group 2. The class began with a review of the homework, which included a crossword puzzle (an idea I really like because I think it is fun and engaging) and original sentences using the simple past tense, which the students read aloud. Dr. Rios corrected the students by asking them to repeat themselves or by correcting their conjugation. He posed a challenge to his students to write complex compound sentences. The class then started a speaking activity during which students told their partner a story about a memorable moment in their lives. Then, they told their partner's stories aloud, practicing the simple past the entire time. The next lesson was on past continuous, focusing on how and why the simple past is often joined with the past continuous. I noticed that Dr. Rios explicitly stated the purpose of each activity, so that students knew why they were practicing what they were, which encourages intrinsic motivation and g...

For my first class observation, I attended Professor Flemming's 2-2:50pm listening class on Monday, May 2nd. Professor Flemming was absent that day and Dr. Rios substituted for him. The class began by listening to a four-minute podcast about offshore oil-drilling. Students were instructed to listen to the podcast and take notes. Afterwards, Dr. Rios called on students and asked them to list pros and cons of offshore oil-drilling. He wrote down students' answers on the whiteboard in a t-chart with a "Pros" column and a "Cons" column. This activity tested students' listening comprehension skills by asking them to summarize and categorize the arguments they heard spoken on the podcast.  Next, the class read an article about bioluminescent marine organisms. Dr. Rios took turns calling on students to read allowed from the essay, testing their reading fluency. After each paragraph, Dr. Rios asked students to tell him the main idea of the paragraph, testing the...

 Date: 5/3/22 Topic/Skill: Speaking (group 2 with Angel): Time Speaking  Teacher Presentation: The instructor had lots of energy. The lesson was a continuation of the day prior. The day prior they had learned the rules of time speaking and during my observation, they put the rules into practice. Classroom Management: The instructor began the lesson by prompting the students to recite the rules of time speaking from the day prior. The students were unprepared for the lesson and had trouble remembering, so the instructor gave hints to draw the answers out from them. While students were doing the assigned activity, the instructor played background music. Materials: computer, projector Student Participation: Students constructed their arguments, reasons, and examples about time speaking, then presented them and practiced speaking.  Feedback presented: The instructor always gave feedback on how their mini-presentation could be improved. Lesson(s) on teaching I learned: Always ...