FSU TEFL 120

 June 8th, 2022 Ye-won (4 y/o) For this session with Ye-won, we continued working on the ‘ee’ sound. I also spent a few minutes looking at the words ‘I’ and ‘a’ and having her practice reading them. Although she knows the letters and words, when they appeared in sentences they seemed to trip her up. After a few practice sentences, Ye-won became much more comfortable reading those words; they were becoming automatic sight words for her.  For the speaking portion of the session, we went on another walk to Landis Green. She wanted to return to the fountain so we did. While we were talking there, a Golden Retriever ran up to the fountain and jumped right in. Ye-won and I got splashed a little bit, but it was a great conversation starter. The dog was very friendly and Ye-won and I spoke about pets for the remainder of the session.

 June 7th, 2022 Ye-won (4 y/o) For our reading activity I planned to focus on the ‘ee’ sound in English. First, I explained what sound ‘ee’ makes and why it is different to ‘e’. Then, we looked at different words where ‘ee’ is found. We practiced reading words like ‘green’ and ‘free’ which involve both consonant blends and the new vowel combination. Then, I had her read words I wrote on the board. I alternated between the double and single ‘e’ to ensure that Ye-won was actually paying attention and sounding the words out.  Then, for our speaking activity, I took Ye-won on a walk through campus to Landis Green. On the way there we talked about what she thought we would find at the ‘park’ and why. Then, I told her about what my favorite things to do there are. Once we arrived, she wanted to go to the Landis Fountain. We sat at the fountain and talked about the statues and the water. She had a blast and I think that going outside for tutoring provided the change of scenery Ye-won...

 June 6th, 2022 Ye-won (4 y/o) In this session with Ye-won, I wanted to challenge her a little bit. I found a story that was a little more difficult than the ones we had been reading previously. It involved some 4-letter words and reading those words involved blending consonant sounds. I wrote some different common consonant blends on the board and we practiced saying those out loud together. Then, I added to them and created words and we practiced those. For example, ‘dr’ and ‘drop’/’drip’, and ‘gl’ and ‘glad’.  After our reading activity, we played some pretend games like ‘doctor’ and we spoke about how her summer had been going and how excited she was about summer camp.

 June 8th, 2022 Yewon (21 y/o) For our last meeting of the session, I wanted to speak with Yewon about how she has grown in the past 7 weeks. I first asked her if she felt her English skills had improved. She agreed that they had. I told her that I agreed and then we discussed some of the specific ways I had seen her improve. A few major examples are her confidence, her preposition usage accuracy, and her vocabulary expansion.  We spoke about her plans for the break and I encouraged her to keep working hard the next session. I look forward to seeing how much Yewon grows by the end of the summer as I complete the internship at CIES.

 June 6th, 2022 Yewon (21 y/o) For this session, I wanted to sit with Yewon and do some extensive reading. She told me that she does a lot of intensive reading at CIES, but that she found that very difficult and tiring. While intensive reading is very important, I wanted Yewon to have an experience of reading a fun book that was level-appropriate because I love reading! She does enjoy reading in Korean, but reading English is very difficult for her.  To encourage her to actually read the book, I brought a book of my own and we sat next to each other as we read. She asked me any questions she had about unknown or confusing vocabulary, or about the book in general. I think that the book she chose, Frindle , was indeed level-appropriate because Yewon did not have many struggles reading it. She was shocked when I told her an hour had already passed because she normally struggles reading for periods longer than 10 minutes.

 June 5th, 2022 Ye-won (4 y/o) For this session, Ye-won and I continued what we had been working on for the past few sessions. We read another book that included many of the words we had been practicing for the past few days. In this book, the words did not necessarily rhyme with each other, but they were 3-letters and Ye-won could sound them out if she did not recognize them right away. We did this for 25 minutes. I am very impressed with the progress Ye-won is making. We also focused on the sight words we practiced the other day. I wrote some new sentences on the board for her to read that included the words we have been working on. For example, ‘The cat and the dog are fun.’ and ‘The hat is on the dog.”

 June 4th, 2022 Ye-won (4 y/o) In this session, as usual, Ye-won and I did a 25 minute reading activity and then a 25 minute speaking activity. For our reading activity, I used a book that had a lot of 3-letter rhyming words so that she could read with more confidence and ease. While we were reading I realized that Ye-won read the words she could sound out with relative ease, but she struggled with some sight words that were harder to sound out without knowledge of letter blends such as ‘the’. We practiced recognizing and reading the word ‘the’ as we read through the book.  Then, I wrote some sentences on the board and we read and talked about them. Ye-won has been improving her reading skills very quickly in the past few sessions.  For the next 25 minutes, we did a speaking activity and did some pretend play activities.

 June 3rd, 2022 Ye-won (4 y/o) For this session, Ye-won and I worked more on rhyming words. We practiced with the words we had looked at specifically the day before (words ending with ‘-at’). I would write a word on the board and she would sound it out. Then, I wrote another one next to it. After a few times, she got the hang of the fact that since the words were rhyming, she did not necessarily need to sound the whole word out - she already knew the ending. We continued this with a few different rhymes and sets of rhyming words. She was on fire by the end of the 25 minutes of reading.  For the second 25 minutes, Ye-won and I played ‘teacher’. This role-play game was very beneficial for Ye-won because she had the chance to speak freely and develop vocabulary used in specific situations. When it was my turn to be the ‘teacher’, I used the rhyming words we were practicing earlier and had Ye-won read them.

 June 2nd, 2022 Ye-won (4 y/o) For this session, Ye-won and I read a book and worked on listening comprehension and building her vocabulary. I would ask her questions about what I just read and then she would answer me in complete sentences. We also worked on spelling words by sounding them out. Ye-won is great at phonemic awareness and was able to do this with relative ease. I then tried to help her establish patterns between words by writing them on the board as she spelled them. For example, ‘cat’ and ‘rat’ and ‘bat’ all end with ‘at’, so they rhyme! We also played doctor for the 2nd half of the session. I liked how this activity went since it got Ye-won to come out of her shell with speaking. She was excited and was having conversations with me without me having to coax the answers out of her. 

 June 1st, 2022 Ye-won (4 y/o) For this session, I wanted to make the tutoring especially fun since it was Ye-won’s last day of school! We began with talking about her last day and what she did at school. Then, we did a reading activity for about 25 minutes. For the last 25 minutes we played Red Light, Green Light. Ye-won loves that game, so I wanted to incorporate it into our tutoring somehow. To do that, I created a new set of rules for the game and had her listen to them a few times (ex. Blue light means sit down, purple light means spin around 3 times). We played a few times taking turns between the roles. 

 June 1st, 2022 Yewon (21 y/o) For this tutoring session, Yewon and I went to Tom Brown Park, a popular park in Tallahassee. We drove to a small lake within the park and walked around it for about half the session. While we walked we talked about driving in Tallahassee and different cities around the US. I told her about driving in South Florida and what a nightmare it is. She told me about driving in South Korea, specifically Seoul. While we walked we also saw a lot of bugs; it is summer after all. As I was telling Yewon a story about my roommate being stung by a wasp, a wasp showed up in front of us. Yewon did not know what it was so I explained the difference between wasps and bees. I showed her a picture of both insects as well to help her.  Then, after running away from the wasp, we sat down at a picnic table near the lake. We spoke about some of the differences between S. Korea and the US. We spoke about heavier topics like politics and more fun topics like convenience s...

 May 31st, 2022 Ye-won (4 y/o) For this session with Ye-won, I wanted to hear her speak her own thoughts out loud more rather than just answering my questions. To support her in this, we did a show and tell activity using our families. I provided paper and crayons and set a timer for us to each to draw pictures of our respective families. We then took turns presenting our pictures. Although I know Ye-won has done show and tell at her school, I went first in order to model how I wanted her to respond. We took turns talking and then asking each other about the pictures. Then, I helped her practice writing her family’s names. She wrote her own name, her brother’s name, and her parents’ names. We also read through a short, level-appropriate book and I had her answer comprehension questions. We worked on building her active vocabulary by having her point to things in the pictures that were discussed in the stories and tell me about them. 

May 27th, 2022 Yewon (21 y/o) For this tutoring session, I wanted to practice real life speaking skills with Yewon. To do this, we went to the Governor’s Square Mall. Before we went inside, we had a practice conversation with a store employee and a food service worker. I told her about some common phrases she should say and what she might hear back in return. Once she felt comfortable, we went inside.  Yewon was looking for some clothes to wear on a trip to Tampa over Memorial Day weekend so we went to certain stores to look for that. She asked the store employees for directions and to help find different items that she was looking for. She also spoke to employees about fitting rooms and which items she liked and didn’t like (and why) once she tried them on.  We also ordered food at the food court, which was good reinforcement of what we had practiced in coffee shops for the past few weeks.

 May 25th, 2022 Argonaut Coffee/ Midtown Reader For this tutoring session, Yewon and I met at Argonaut Coffee. We focused this week on how to build confidence in her English skills. We spoke about which class she finds the hardest at CIES and she told me that reading is very hard for her under strict time constraints. She told me she hates reading, which made me sad because I love to read, and I know how fun and engaging it can be, even in a 2nd language! We then spoke about her reading level in English and her favorite book genre.  We spoke about some different reading strategies and what she should do to build her confidence. After going over differents strategies, we went downstairs into Midtown Reader, a small locally-owned bookstore. We browsed all of the different sections and I pointed out some of my favorite books and genres.  Based on our earlier conversation, I directed Yewon over to the Middle Grade book section. I wanted her to have an extensive reading experi...

For my last day with Dong-Woon, we looked over the "s" and "th" sounds and vowels again- especially the "i" and "e" ones. We had previously done a quick review of vowels before, however, I wanted to go more in depth with explaining long and short sounds. I explained this difference and gave him a list of words for him to pronounce. After each pronunciation, I asked him if the vowel was short or long. Once he started to get the hang of it, I had him make two lists of ten words that use the short "e" and "i" vowels. This proved to be a little challenging for him, but I helped to guide him along the way. Then, I showed Dong-Woon a website that shows the mouth's position when making the "s" and "th" sounds. The website has an animated mouth that makes different sounds and shows the exact movement the tongue and mouth are supposed to make. I had him practice these sounds a few times until he got them correct...

During my last tutoring session with Henghua, we worked on intonation and the use of emotion during speech. We started out with a discussion on the two types of intonation: rising and falling. I explained the patterns, how both sound, and when they are usually used. I then had him try to speak a few sentences using either rising or falling intonation. After this, I played some audio clips from a website that used rising and falling intonation and had him try to distinguish between the two. He did a good job in hearing the differences. It was just a little hard for him to do it in his own speech. I then wrote out 2 sentences and had him read them in different ways- like: angry, happy, worried, sad, etc. I modeled how to do it for him and how I would say the sentences in those different emotions. We decided to work on these topics this day because he told me that these were things he struggled doing when speaking English, and that he wanted to get better at them. At the very end we did o...

For this session with Dong-Woon, we continued with learning about consonant blends. I gave him a few worksheets for us to do. I first re-explained the difference between consonant blends and digraphs. Then we worked on a worksheet together, sounding out each word and putting them in the appropriate columns. After that, the next two worksheets focused on "sh"/"ch" and "s"/ "th" minimal pairs. I would speak out a word and he would have to follow along down the chart, letting me know what the last word I spoke was. For the "s"/"ch" worksheet, he did well overall. However, I noticed he struggled quite a bit in differentiating the "s" and "th" sound when listening. Because of this, we decided this would be one of the focuses for the next session. After these activities, we started a new story (“Jack and the Beanstalk”) from the book I borrowed. I asked him if he had ever heard of this story and he said that he n...

For this session with Henghua, we went over reduced forms. He had told me during our last session that this was something that he wanted to learn more about, so we decided to work on it on this day. We discussed what reduced forms are and when they are used. I showed him a website that had the most common reduced forms and we looked over them, as well as, some examples. I also gave him a reduced forms worksheet that he could keep, which showed the long form and reduced form. I noticed he was worried about saying them, so I told him that he does not need to worry about using them in his speech. This is because he only needs to worry about recognizing it when he hears them. On another website, I played audio clips with reduced forms and had him try to understand what they were saying. If he couldn't figure it out himself, I helped him in understanding what they said. After this, I gave him a dialogue that had the written long forms and I read out the lines using the reduced forms. Wh...

 On this day with Dong-Woon, I helped him with consonant blends. I noticed during our lessons that he seemed to struggle with blending a few consonants, especially the letters "s", "r", and "l". So, I first showed him a worksheet online with pictures on it and had him tell me what each picture was. I then asked him if he could tell the pattern and he got it correct. I explained to him what a consonant blend is and how it is different from a digraph, like "sh". We went over each of the three letters and some of the different blends they can have. I then showed lists of consonant blends using the specified letters and had him read them out for practice. I had him read the words starting with the first letter and then blending it with the second letter, and so forth. Afterwards, we read "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" from a book I borrowed from the library. I practiced the scaffolding method for this activity. I read a whole paragraph first, the...

 For this meeting with Henghua, we worked on "e" and "i" vowel pronunciation, heteronyms, homographs, and phrasal verbs. I first went over each vowel sound, both long and short. When I asked him if he had ever learned about short and long vowels, he told me he didn't. I was actually surprised by this because I thought that this should have been one of the first things he was taught. After this, I played a video that better showed the difference between "e" and "i" because I had noticed that he struggled with these sounds in our previous sessions. I then had him look at a list of minimal pairs and read them out loud. We practiced a few of these and then played a minimal pairs bingo in the same way that I did with Dong-Woon before. I had him read out each bingo word so he could practice the sounds. After bingo, I explained what homographs and heteronyms are and had him read out a few sentences with them. I then showed him a list of homographs a...

This tutoring session with Dong-Woon was very fun. I first went over the "r" and "l" consonants and how the mouth is positioned in order to make the sounds. We then watched a video that helped to explain the tongue and mouth position better. I then had him practice saying a few words, like "rate" and "late", until he was able to do both sounds correctly. After having gone over how the consonants are pronounced, we played bingo using "r" and "l" minimal pairs. I put all of the words in a random word generator and had him read each one for the bingo game. We then briefly went over vowel sounds and looked over some examples, these also included a few double vowel sounds. For the last activity, it was odd-one-out once again; however, there was a twist with this version. I printed out a list that had 4 words per line that all sounded similar except for one. I then cut each line out and had Dong-Woon figure out the odd sounding word...

 On this day with Henghua, we worked on his pronunciation and word stress. I first showed him a couple of minimal pairs and played audio clips that pronounced each pair. I then had him tell me which word was pronounced first and then second. We went over those and we practiced how to pronounce the words correctly. I then gave him a few worksheets that we did together. The first one was an activity called "odd-one-out". This activity is when there is a selection of words that have similar sounds and the student has to find the one word whose pronunciation is different the rest. The next few worksheets were based on word stress. The first one had a bank of 3-syllable words, with 3 separate columns. Henghua had to sound out the words and figure out which syllable held the stress of the word. After this one, we did 2 maze worksheets based on syllables. Once he finished each worksheet alone, after giving him a time limit, we corrected his mistakes together. I think this session wa...

 During my 6th meeting with Dong-Woon, we worked on pronouns- personal and possessive. I first started by writing out a few sentences that were the same, in which the only difference was the pronoun. I then asked him to tell me the difference. Afterwards, I explained subject, object, and possessive pronouns one by one. I gave an explanation of the definition and an example. I would then write out the list of the pronouns and have him come up with an example sentence for each one. To continue with practice, we did an activity using cards. I wrote sentences on index cards that correlated to one another and had him match them. An example of one matching set is: "Alan is in the military" and "He fights in the war".  We then did a similar activity online, matching pictures to a sentence that had a pronoun related to the picture. Lastly, I wrote out sentences with two possible answers for a pronoun and had him circle the one he thought was correct. We then went over the a...

 This session that I had with Henghua, he actually did a little bit of preparation work beforehand. He had told me in the last session that he wanted to do an activity that involved him recording his speech, which I would then listen to and see if it was understandable. I thought that this was a great idea. So on this day, he came ready with a few recordings of him reading a passage and played it for me to hear. I listened to them, asked him to pause it when there were unintelligible words, and wrote them down. After the recordings, we went over these words and how to pronounce them correctly. He told me that he listened to a native English speaker reading the passages and tried to recreate the accent that they had. I told him that it actually makes it harder to understand him and that he should focus on pronouncing each word, rather than connecting the words when he speaks. I told him that when he copies a native English speaker, it takes a lot of listener effort. After that, we d...

  For my next session with Dong-Woon, we worked on speaking about daily routines, frequency, and habits. I first started out with some questions that had him talk about each thing he does everyday, from when he wakes up to when he goes to bed. After talking about what he does each day, I wrote out some of the more common indefinite frequency adverbs and had him answer questions that I had ready using those words. He then did a quick frequency drill before starting on the topic of habits. I explained to him that there are good and bad habits and gave him examples. I then asked him to come up with his own habits that he does and those that he does not like. I quickly went over what a pet peeve is and gave him some of mine. We talked about this for a while and lastly, we did the Korean lesson of the day.

On this day, Henghua and I worked on when to use “as...as” and how to talk about frequency. I had us look over some sentences using “as…as” and “more/less than”, and asked him to tell me the difference. “As…as” and “more/less than” are both used to make comparisons; however, “as..as” is used to compare things that are equal, and “more/less than” is used to compare things that are unequal. I then had him come up with his own examples using these comparative words. After this, we discussed indefinite and definite frequency words, with examples. I gave him a definition of a definite frequency word, like “what is the word if you do something once everyday?”, and have him guess the adverb (such as, “daily). After reviewing these words, I asked him questions that would lead him to use any of the frequency words. At the end of the session, we did the Chinese word of the day again. 

  Date/Time: 6/13/22 @ 5:20PM Location: Hecht House Topic/Skill: Reading and Speaking Feedback provided to tutee: After reading 2 books, I had an activity with a fajita/burrito-making set. I modeled how to make the food, asked her to name the ingredients, and we followed instructions on how to make a delicious burrito. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: I enjoyed my last session with Ye-won. She greeted me with enthusiasm and was speaking English to me to tell me about her day. 

  Date/Time: 6/11/22 @ 11:40 AM Location: Hecht House Topic/Skill: Reading and Speaking Feedback provided to tutee: After reading 2 stories, I had an activity where we baked cookies together. I modeled how to take an order, how to set up the cookie tray and cookies, and how to use an 'oven' with 'oven mitts'. I prompted her to repeat after me and asked her to tell me what she was doing. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Highly interactive activities really are the best way to encourage children to feel comfortable speaking English. I believe this wholeheartedly. I also feel that I have built a good rapport with Ye-won.

  Date/Time: 6/8/22 @ 5:20 PM Location: Hecht House Topic/Skill: Reading and Speaking Feedback provided to tutee: I read another 2 stories and did an activity with a pizza shop. She repeated the new vocabulary words and phrases like "cut the pizza" and asked me what my order was. Of course, I modeled this for her. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: I forgot to mention earlier but children are more likely to listen to adults when they feel a sense of autonomy. I always show her what books I brought and give her the choice to pick which story she wants me to read first.

  Date/Time: 5/23/22 @ 5:20PM Location: Hecht House Topic/Skill: Reading and Speaking Feedback provided to tutee: I read 2 books and did the same activity as last time. I brought different cloth items. I engage in a lot of student interaction by pretending to eat the food with her. Making activities fun is an amazing way to engage with children. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Practicing things I realized/learned from our last lesson made this lesson flow much more smoothly: sitting on the floor, encouraging repetition of new vocab words, and playing with her.

  Date/Time: 5/20/22 @ 11:40 AM Location: Hecht House Topic/Skill: Reading and Speaking Feedback provided to tutee: I read 2 books and asked simple comprehension questions to maintain engagement. The activity involved learning a lot of vocabulary and some phrases. I had a felt board with cloths in the shape of food and nature. She very much enjoyed touching the fabric and naming the items.  Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Simple repetition of words and actions works best with Ye-won. Sitting on the floor is also more engaging and fun.

  Date/Time: 5/20/22 @ 8PM Location: My apartment Topic/Skill: Speaking, Reading, Listening Feedback provided to tutee: We played Cards Against Humanity again. This time, we chose cards that made the most sense and were logical. Any American idioms and jokes that weren't understood were explained. Everyone had a chance to read out the cards. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Although this would not be appropriate for the classroom, this game is a great way to understand American meme culture and relate to younger students. 

  Date/Time: 5/18/22 @ 5:20PM Location: Hecht House Topic/Skill: Reading and Speaking Feedback provided to tutee: Read 2 stories, one of them being a pop-up book about emotional regulation. The activity was matching faces, identifying emotions, and using playdough to create the emotions. I thought this would be a great activity to learn about emotions and talk about them, by Ye-won refused to talk about emotions and avoided any sort of discussion. She only wanted to complete the activity with playdough. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Some things don't work out. Maybe talking about emotions was too personal, or maybe Ye-won doesn't feel comfortable. I think my activities should be more simple and interactive.

  Date/Time: 5/17/22 Location: Anhay's Apartment Topic/Skill: Practicing pronunciation of words Feedback provided to tutee: based on my observations from the last sessions I chose to create a lesson based on speaking in order to practice pronunciation. She told me more about her daughter's school and I asked her how she talks to the other students in the classroom. As a preschool teacher, I gave her some pointers. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Meaningful conversation is engaging and great practice for speaking and vocabulary learning. I read this in the textbook and realized now how true it is. It is one thing to understand from reading and a better thing to understand from experience. 

  Date/Time: 5/15/22 @ 6PM Location: Cascades Park Topic/Skill: Cards Against Humanity Feedback provided to tutee: I brought the game Cards Against Humanity to practice using American idioms and jokes while also practicing completing the sentence. We made it a point to choose very inappropriate and outlandish cards. I explained any idioms that were not understood and read the cards aloud at an appropriate rate. The tutees also practiced speaking by reading the cards aloud. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Upper-level students may still not be familiar with American Idioms. It is also important to teach vocabulary in context (which the cards gave).

  Date/Time: 5/14/22 @ 3PM Location: Strozier area Topic/Skill: organizing fine details in a presentation  Feedback provided to tutee: After gathering the information Sadman needed I gave him time to write down key points within his subtopics. After hearing him out I asked him guiding questions to help him figure out if his ideas flowed well or if they could be better organized. I didn't want to give him answers or make him change his presentation just because of my opinions. I made sure to keep this tutoring session student-centered and not sage-like. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: The importance of student-centered activities. I really think what I did helped Sadman as he seemed very pleased with his work.

  Date/Time: 5/14/22 @ 1 PM Location: Strozier Area Topic/Skill: How to do research Feedback provided to tutee: I helped Sadman figure out how to do keyword searches in Google in order to find information for his presentation. Apparently, he chose a topic he knew nothing about and didn't want to ask his teacher to change the topic. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Students can feel intimidated by teachers for whatever reason. It is important to encourage students to learn to ask for help or voice any concern.

  Date/Time: 5/13/22 @6PM Location: Strozier Library area Topic/Skill: Presentation skills Feedback provided to tutee: I explained to Sadman the importance of the order/progression of ideas when making a presentation and how they must be connected/flow together. I helped him reorganize the order of his presentation. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Not everyone knows how to give a presentation, much less create one. I saw the video that Mr. Flemming modeled but it still did not help Sadman. He thought that Mr. Flemming did such a perfect job and so he stressed himself out over the presentation that was due soon.

  Date/Time: 5/12/22 @ 11AM  Location: Anhay's apartment Topic/Skill: Labeling household items with stickers (a continuation from the previous session) Feedback provided to tutee: I corrected her pronunciation on some items in her living like "couch" instead of "coach". I also answered some questions she had about her everyday interactions with her daughter's teachers at school in regards to how to talk to them in a polite manner. She often volunteers there and wants to talk to the teachers more. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: It can be very easy and confusing to pronounce a word incorrectly and end up saying a completely different word. I'm pretty sure "sit on the coach" is not preferable. I will work more on speaking with her.

  Date/Time: 5/17/22 @ 10am (L$ Grammar Flemming) Topic/Skill: Subjunctive  Teacher Presentation: None. The class was a continuation of the previous day. Classroom Management: The teacher would have to call attention if the class got off topic with discussion. Materials: computer, projector Student  Participation: The activity was to read an article about a controversial topic and use the subjunctive to make recommendations on the debate. Each student contributed their own thoughts and opinions using the subjunctive. Feedback Provided: The teacher facilitated actual discussion on the topics and corrected any mistakes by repeating back the phrase for the student to hear. Lesson(s) on teaching you learned: It is important to incorporate activities that can foster actual discussion with original thought. I realize that highly structured activities would be very boring. 

  Date/Time: 5/12/22 @ 10am (L3 Grammar Felicia) Topic/Skill: Gerunds and Infinitives Teacher Presentation: None. The lesson was a continuation of the day prior. There was no explanation on what gerunds and infinitives were as the students already knew from previous lessons. Classroom Management: The teacher asked guided questions and called on students randomly to answer. Materials: Computer, projector Student  Participation: Students answered the teacher's questions and participated in the activity on the board. The activity was to convert sentences with infinitives into sentences with gerunds. Feedback Provided: The teacher reviewed each answer as soon as it was given and corrected any mistakes immediately. Lesson(s) on teaching you learned: Immediate correction can be valuable as it sets the correct course for future activities. Leaving incorrect answers as is could mislead students into answering questions incorrectly again.

  Date/Time: 5/9/22 @ 1PM  (L3 Speaking Olivia) Topic/Skill: Presentation and organization of topic Teacher Presentation: none Classroom Management: Presenting order in which students present and making sure questions asked were related to the topic Materials: computer, projector Student  Participation: 2 Students presented on their respective topics with a short discussion after each one. This can include any comments or questions classmates had.  Feedback Provided: Olivia gave immediate feedback and wrote notes/grades on the rubric paper as the students presented Lesson(s) on teaching you learned: It is important to learn how to multitask: listening to students, already understanding the rubric, and grading while students present.

Amir and I walked around College Town and talked about the different sort of nightlife we encounter and prefer. I told Amir about the annoying things that often happen at college bars, like when people try to have conversation over incredibly loud music and no one can hear what anyone else is saying. Amir said that it is strange that this happens because people in Almaty usually just dance and do not bother talking over loud music. I told him that nightclubs are almost exclusively places to dance and bars are for having conversation. We compared cigarette consumption and vape consumption amongst people our age and found that, according to our subjective experience, both are popular with adolescents and people in their early 20s. The same was true for how and what we drink during a night out. I think conversations like these are helpful to foreigners and natives because they remind us that we are not as different as we think we are, no matter where we are from.

My conversation topic with Amir during this tutoring session was more lighthearted than usual, but it still circulated around an interesting area of American life and culture: entertainment and pastimes. We compared Kazakhstan entertainment and leisure activities with those of America, including TV. Amir told me how television in Kazakhstan works, which I found totally interesting. In Kazakhstan, television is operated by the government, which means that they are in control of what gets shown. For example, they do not have advertisements the way we do in the United States, with our proliferation of commercials. I wondered how this might affect a person’s disposition toward consumerism and materialism. Amir has complained about how people in Almaty often wear showy clothes to display their class and wealth levels, which I find an ironic result of the country’s former position as a part of the USSR. I think this shows just how much the East has been Westernized economically (that is, mad...

Amir and I seem to circle around the endlessly interesting conversation topic of comparative government. We landed on this topic again during our tutoring session; it seems to get at some of the fundamental differences between American life and life in Kazakhstan (which is heavily influenced by Russian government styles). We agree that, at first glance, the countries seem quite different in terms of how they run their government and how the people of each country react to the various levels of incompetence and criminal activity in their government representatives and structures. However, the deeper we get into this ongoing conversation, the more we come to find that both governments are deeply corrupt and prey upon their people—Kazakhstan is simply more overt and its people are more aware of the corruption. We have come to the conclusion that in the United States, the situation might be even more sad because the majority of Americans seem either unable or unwilling to acknowledge the d...

Daniel and I worked on an upcoming presentation he has. The project is about places he would like to travel to. He did a practice run of his presentation for me, and, as we went along, I mentioned some information I thought he might want to add, and he took notes. I probed further about why he was interested in particular locations, which got him talking about history and culture. I told him I thought it would be great to add these insights to his presentation, to make it a bit more complex, and then we both worked together to come up with how he could best phrase and integrate the new information. Thinking about the structure of his project, I am impressed with how well organized it is. This organization significantly improves his fluency and accuracy in speech by giving him a solid framework to vocally express himself. I think concentrating on structure like this is good practice for when he has to think on the fly in conversation.

  Daniel and I practiced speaking today. I spoke with him for an hour about the trip he went on back home. I made sure to ask him to focus on using the past tense almost the entire time, and we again reviewed issues like irregular verbs whenever they came up and he had a question about how to put a particular verb in the past tense. I have noticed that he is much more confident when he speaks compared to when we started our tutoring sessions over a month ago. His vocabulary and fluency have increased, which is very encouraging. I think that, although it is subtle, his hold on the grammatical structure of English sentences has improved the most and that is what has upped his fluency. My thoughts were confirmed when he told me he feels he has learned a lot over the course of our sessions, and I think it is good that we are on the same page in terms of evaluating his competency.  

 Remote 4:08-5:08 06/01/2022 Remote Session #2 With Gwan-Yong Na We began the session with open discussion. I asked Gwan-Yong Na about his recent trip to Tampa. He drove with a group of ESL students from Tallahassee to Tampa for Memorial Day weekend. There, they stayed in an Airbnb. They spent a day at Busch Gardens (from 10am to 10pm), but he could only muster up the courage for one rollercoaster. Though, he did enjoy the Congo River Rapids. He expressed the weather was "crazy." This was because the weather alternated back and forth from clear skies to thunder storms throughout the day. They spent another day at St. Pete Beach. This was when I learned Gwan-Yong Na cannot swim. He took lessons as a boy, but has since then forgot. After this delightful conversation, Gwan-Yong Na asked me about my recent car accident (Fair trade no?).  For the past few sessions, Gwan-Yong Na and I have been practicing the "R" and "L" sound. Today, we reviewed both. He strugg...

For my session with Melody we practiced speaking with part 2 of the speaking test sample I found online. We started the session with her telling me about her weekend and the wedding she went to. She showed me some pictures and we talked about some cultural differences between American weddings and Chinese/ Japanese wedding traditions. Melody is very good at identifying her own mistakes and has a very good base knowledge of vocabulary, but when it comes to thinking of these in a conversational setting she struggles to remember them. To help counter this, for the pre-activity part of our session we came up with a list of transition words and phrases to help her speech flow better. She was able to come up with quite a few on her own, and I supplemented with some new ones. We divided the list into opening, middle, and conclusion words/phrases. She wrote these down in her notebook. I then recorded our conversation and went over her answers 2 sentences at a time. This time she was able to ve...

 Today I decided to focus my session with Sangji on reading and writing skills, since we have not touched on those as much. Sangji told me about his weekend in Tampa and we had a conversation where he told me about what he did, where he stayed, what he saw etc. He actively asked me questions about his pronunciation during our conversation which I took time to go over when I noticed he was speaking in the wrong tense, or didn't know a vocabulary word. I could tell he was eager to correct himself after I gave him the feedback. This way we were able to develop some prior knowledge about travel vocabulary before I had him write for our activity. He also showed me pictures from the weekend which I took as another opportunity to learn new vocabulary from what he showed me, such as picnic table, outside area and counter. He learned words like roller coaster, ride, terrace, resting, drink vs drank, and others. I gave him the list of words he had just learned for him to refer to. Then I had...