Nahid TS# 11 & 12

Student: TaeYuen
Date: September 30. 2015

Today's tutoring session with TaeYuen was for two hours.  I really like working with TaeYuen because he so full of ideas and is open to discuss and debate about several different topics in the realm of social issues.  He has a very liberal perspective and he always brings very interesting views into the conversations.  He wants to practice on his speaking skills the most.  We also worked on his composition project which was a very intriguing topic.  He decided to create a presentation on comparing and contrasting the insurance policies from South Korea and United States.  He also had to survey several people and learn about the perspective of Americans on the insurance policies here.  He interviewed me for his project and I told him about Obamacare and the perspectives that different people may have.  He taught me a lot about the Korean policies and how it works over there.  Every time I talk to TaeYuen, I learn just as much as he does.

Nahid TS#10

Student: Hyunji
Date: September 30, 2015

Today was another great session with Hyunji.  She is very enthusiastic about learning english.  I know she gets frustrated sometimes and overwhelmed with all the work she is being assigned in her classes, but she seems to always keep her spirits up in our sessions.  Today, I tested her on her listening skills.  She told me that she has an exam coming up with her listening class, and I told her that there is no time to waste.  I went on youtube and found Level 2 audio sessions with short stories.  I asked her to listen to the 2 minute audio and give me the main idea and three important details.  I was really proud of her because she ended up doing amazing.  I keep emphasizing to her that the thing that she needs to work on the most is her confidence.  She is a great student, and she would excel even more if she believes in herself.

KellyMichael-TS#10

Today I met with Sang Hyun from South Korea for a third time. He had stated before he wants to work on his conversational english, and I agree it's his weak point. The problem is that he is hesitant to speak. So when you are trying to carry on a one sided conversation, at some point you feel like you are just talking to yourself. Usually when I hit this wall with Sang Hyun, I try to prompt him with questions. This gets a response, but its usually muttered and "tip-toeing" around the grammar mistakes that are inevitable. At first I present a topic that might be new to him because I feel it is easy to speak about new things and what you think about them, and also I think it opens up asking questions by the student as a conversation prompt. After the new topic is stalled out, I will ask him about things from his life because I feel its also easy to talk about things we go through every day. This time we talked about the Korean military and his service career. At the end of the session, he asked for help with modal verbs so ill plan accordingly.

Neila TS#11

Today, September 30th, at 3:30 I met with He Jeong and Hyein. The girls had just finished class for the day so they were a little hyper. I had a reading lesson planned, but I decided that reading was not the best assignment for today. Instead, I decided we would play some games that would help with their vocabulary. We started out by playing Simon says. At first I was Simon, then the girls got to be Simon. They practiced the correct way of giving commands and also having to act out what was asked of them. Afterwards, we played sharades. Sharades was a little more difficult for them. We started with an easy category and then moved onto more difficult categories. All in all, the girls learned several new vocabulary words today and had fun doing so!

Neila TS#10

On September 17th at 5pm, I met up with my adult tuttee, Manal. I brought several different topics that I found online for TOEFL speaking practice. I showed Manal the video that we watched in class about how to prepare an answer for a TOEFL speaking assignment. After watching the video, I asked Manal different questions, she jotted down ideas and then spoke for a minute, answering the question. Once she finished her response, we went over her beautiful mistakes. Manal has a broad range of vocabulary, but has trouble with certain pronounciations and grammar.

Andrea CP#4

This was my first meeting with Keunhwa as a conversation partner. I was excited to meet with her because I think that in order to apply for EPIK, I need to learn more about the host culture. Meeting with her helped me feel more at ease about going to South Korea, I think. We talked about our personal lives, and I learned why she is in Tallahassee and what kind of experience she has a teacher. I was also very curious about the idea of hagwons and what kind of effect she thinks they have on student performance. I had been under the delusion that hagwons were the only way that South Korean students had of supplementing their school education, but Keunhwa explained that they are more like status symbols, rather than the be-all-end-all of education. Apparently, public schools also offer after-school programs and her opinion is that they are often better than hagwons. This was something that surprised me, but it was a pleasant surprise. As a social worker I'm always concerned about the effects that privilege and money have on kids, and I thought that families with no money for hagwons would have no choice for giving their children extra educational help. I like that there is a system that can help the less fortunate, even if it means not having the status symbol of attending a popular hagwon.

Andrea TS#11

This was my final session with Aviv. We basically went over the essays he had written beforehand, reviewing why certain things he had said were wrong. I just got the sense that it was useful to bring up the errors he made most frequently before we finished having tutoring sessions. In the end, I think that Aviv has a great handle on structure and he knows what he would like to say. He just needs extra practice on finding out where vowels go, because it affects his spelling frequently. This, of course, is a matter of him practicing on his own as much as possible. I don't think it's feasible to expect that tutoring sessions will fix all of his vocabulary and spelling issues. I hope that our sessions have helped him at least identify patterns in his errors so that he can address them with extra practice.

Andrea TS#10

This was my second session with Luna, my level 2 adult student. She had told me beforehand that she wanted to study pronouns and adjectives, so I prepared notes on both topics. I was a little surprised that she wanted to work on these topics since it seemed like she had a decent grasp on it the last time we met, but once we began work I saw what was wrong. She seemed to confuse words like "she" and "her" frequently, so I broke down the pronouns with a table. The table had each kind of pronoun listed and we talked about whether they were first person, second person, or third person. I think that seeing it in an organized fashion helped Luna. We also discussed adjectives, and we came up with examples together of the different kids of adjectives that exist. For each category, she came up with one or two examples of her own, and I would give her a few more with sentences.

Andrea TS#9

This was a tutoring session with Hye-jeong, my six year old tutee. We followed the same basic format that I've used in our previous lessons. This time, her mother brought a test that Hye-jeong did in class for us to review together. I was impressed with her grades, and pleased that she's doing well in school. For the most part, she only got a couple answers wrong. I hope that our sessions are helping. Afterwards, we reviewed her spelling words and finished her homework. She was being a little flighty during this session but I managed to keep her attention by reminding her that we could only read Maybelle (the chapter book we have been reading together) after she finished her homework. This seemed to be enough incentive to keep her on track. I had never needed to discipline her before, and even though this was a very light kind of behavioral correction, it felt strange for me. Finally, we did some handouts based on the topic of fall, since the first day of fall was on the 23rd. She seemed especially excited for Halloween.

Andrea CP #5

Yesterday I met with Keunhwa, along with Frankie and Hunter. I knew that both Frankie and I want to go to Korea to teach, so it seemed appropriate for both of us to speak with her. We learned a lot about etiquette during our conversation, even if it was mostly informal chatting. I asked Keunhwa about how students are disciplined in South Korea because reading chapter 14 in the book made me wonder about that. Other than that, we mainly talked about things like humor and colloquialisms in America. I realized that it is difficult to explain phrases that Americans use often to non-Americans. I struggled to clarify some of the things Frankie was trying to say to Keunhwa, especially when he was trying to discuss philosophical topics.

GarretTS#7

September 29th, 2015


Today at 9:30 pm I met with Khyrsi Prosperi, who initially was my conversation partner. Khyrsi expressed to me that she would like some tutoring help with her writing and grammar and so I offered to tutor her. We met at the library and I thought that this would be a great opportunity to test out one of my lesson plans, and so I had her do the assignment from my writing lesson plan. essentially I went through the whole assignment with her and she gave me her composition. I will grade this and meet again with her sometime this week. Initially I thought that Khyrsi was either a group 2 or 3 student, but come to find out she is actually in groups 3 and 4. She is in group 3 for writing, grammar, and listening, and so my assignment was perfect. Considering that I want to teach adults, I believe that working with Khyrsi will give me great experience doing so.

GarretCP#3

September 29th, 2015

Today at 7:30 pm I met with Jorge Gamba at the library. Jorge is from Mexico and is currently studying at FSU. I met Jorge through a mutual friend of mine and when he discovered that I am about 40 to 50% fluent in Spanish, he approached me about helping him out with English and American culture. Today we met and just talked about life and personal interest. He told me that he plans on pursuing a PHD in philosophy and that he is passionate about traveling, music, and education. He is very cultured but is still getting adjusted to the Westernized culture in the United States. He also explained to me that he is doing his best to stay away from spanish speakers while in the US, but will help me with Spanish if I help him with English and with learning the culture here. I laughed and told him that he did not have to help me for me to help him. Jorge is extremely intelligent and generally seems like a good guy - and I look forward to forming a relationship with him. He invited me out for a beer and I told him that I am very, very busy. He insisted that we go out for "just one drink" sometime this week. He said,  " lets go out for only one hour, first drink is on me, brother." I laughed and told him that I will do my best. So far he seems as though he is a sincere person with an honest interest in the culture here in the US.

Justin TS#5

Today, September 29th I met with Yuma. We have been making some good progress each time we have met. Today we focused mainly on reading and pronunciation. Our session began with a fairly easy reading section about bathing and using of restrooms in the United States. Yuma questioned why in English we only have one word to determine a room where you go to the bathroom and also shower. In Japanese they have different words to describe the two locations. Then we read an article about soccer. Yuma did very well in this exercise. He said some words were difficult but he understand a large majority of it. After this we read an article about London. This one was a little bit more difficult due to some of the vocabulary used within the article. However, Yuma did extremely well. He struggles with a couple specific pronunciations like women or clothes but he works hard at fixing those mistakes. Yuma says that he enjoys developing his reading, listening and pronunciation skills. I'm excited for our next session.

Nahid TS# 7, 8, 9

Student: Hyunji Song
Date: September 23, 2015

This session was very long and we ended up working together for three hours.  I really like working with Hyunji because she is very dedicated and determined to learn so much.  She is a serious student and is always striving to do better.  She told me that she wanted to be more confident when she spoke English.  So, I started off the session by having her watch part of a TEDTALK clip called "Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are" by Amy Cuddy.  Amy Cuddy talks about students having more confidence when speaking to others by changing their body language and behavior.  After the clip, we talked about the video and went over some key points.  Then, she showed me her essay that she needed to re-submit and asked me if I can go over it and point out the mistakes.  We thoroughly went over her essay and I explained why she had some grammar errors.  After that, we worked on a project that she has to do in one of her classes.  She has to lead a discussion and we went over some ideas on how she could do it.  She came up with really good ideas and we evaluated them.  Then, I helped her with key points on a debate that she had to do in her speaking class.  I realized that Hyunji's strong point is writing.  She is a phenomenal writer and goes into great detail in her work.  We just need to work on her speaking skills a bit more to regain some self-confidence.

Nahid CP#6

Conversation partner: TaeYuen
Date:  September 23, 2015

On this day, I had a great conversation with TaeYuen.  I met him in the CIES building and I learned so much from him.  He is from South Korea and is a Public Administration major in his country.  His English is fairly well and he loves to explore different topics.  At one point, we were talking about his love for History.  He said that not enough people know about Korean history, or history of many Asian countries, for that matter.  He said that it is extremely important to know about history so it doesn't repeat itself.  He seems like a very intelligent person and I think that he is going to do great things in life.  He seems very passionate about all that he does.  He asked me several questions about my studies and seemed to be curious about my plans and where I might end up.  We shared a lot of the same views on sociology and education.

Nahid CP#5

Conversation Partner: KeunHwa
Date: September 22, 2015

Sadly this was our last conversation session.  I really enjoy talking to KeunHwa.  I learn so much when I listen to her perspective on things.  On this day, we covered topics all over the spectrum: spirituality, non-profit organizations, cultures, life in South Korea and Colombia.  I was telling her that wherever I end up, I want to do some non-profit work and volunteer.  She told me about an organization in South Korea that I can work with that involves refugees.  She had me thinking a lot about what my next step is going to be in life.  I found a short poem in Spanish and I translated it for her.  When I saw it, I thought about her.  It was about the art of giving and how doing things for others fills our spirits with peace.  She is a wonderful person and I hope we cross paths again one day in the future.  Who knows, maybe in South Korea.

Justin CO#3

Today I observed a level 3 speaking course taught by Derrick Pollock. His class began with having each student introducing themselves to me to help build their skills. They said their name, where they are from and what their major is. His next exercise built upon past lessons. The students were given a question where they were meant to use the 2nd conditional. After this, the class focused on what it takes to make a presentation. One of the main questions was how to create a presentation and what types of tools should be used. Some of the main ideas were creating an outline, adding creativity, and adding personality. A majority of this class was student lead and Derrick would walk around the class and monitor how they were doing. I enjoyed this level of English, it really felt like there was good back and forth discussion between the students and the teacher. Something that I did think about however, is how to deal with students who misbehave or who affect the class as a whole by cracking jokes.

Nahid CO#3

Instructor: Marilyn Sohan
Date: September 23, 2015 (2:00-2:50)

This was my last classroom observation and I really enjoyed it.  I observed Marilyn's Level 2 Listening class.  I thought it was pretty cool because she had them listen to a recording and the students had to decipher what was the main idea and the main topics. She put the students into pairs so they can evaluate and compare their notes from the recording and come up with the answers together.  I noticed that some students were having a difficult time formulating proper sentences, but Marilyn walked around and worked with each of the groups.  She was very attentive and had complete control of the class.  I liked how direct she was with the students and how she knew how to capture all of their attentions.

Keunhwa TS#8

Date/Time: Sep. 25/ 04:30~06:00

Location: LeLoy Collins Main Library

Topic/Skill: Field trips of American middle and high schools, Pronunciation Packet/ Speaking, Pronunciation

Feedback provided to tutor, Hannah: I asked Hannah about her middle school field trip, because I have to prepare a presentation for my English class.  I’ve had a unique experience of a three-day field trip as a teacher which means that I took charge of making reservations for resorts, restaurants and many places for sightseeing.  She told that she’d had day trips in her middle and high schools. When she was a student, she lived around Orlando, so she could go to theme parks.  She told that she could have had an abroad field trip if she had had a European history class.  Some foreign language high school students have their field trips to England or the U.S. but it is a big burden to their parents as Hannah said.  

And then we stated to study the sentence stress part.  She read aloud those sentences and I marked stressed words in sentences.  She told that she did not say like that with friends.  I agree on this, but I can’t hear every word people say when I hear news or fast speeches of native speakers.  I thought that I could not hear every word because native speakers did not stress every word.  If not, still I do not get familiar with some sounds of words, or I do not know some words.

Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutor, Hannah you learned: I learned differences between Korean and American field trips.  A tree day field trip is not common in the U.S. and if a class takes a field trip, five or six chaperons are needed. 

I still have a question about listening.  I do not need to hear every word when I hear English, but I hear every word when I hear Korean.  Is this my misunderstanding? 

Keunhwa TS#7

Date/Time: Sep. 21/ 03:00~04:00

Location: LeLoy Collins Main Library

Topic/Skill: Revising and Ben Franklin practice/ Writing and speaking

Feedback provided to tutor, Neila : I brought my three classroom observation blogs and she revised them.  She changed my sentences into simple but easier to understand, so I felt that her editing was similar to a stroke of a professional artist. 

And then I showed her Ben Franklin practice which I had been working on over this weekend.  She was interested in it, too.  She read a dialog with word stresses and intonation, and I marked them with some symbols.

Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned:  I had a lot of practical lesson from her.  First, I should capitalize the first letter of all words after a colon. Second, ‘barely’ should be put before a verb.  Third, feedback is an uncountable word, because it has a lot of responses in it.  Forth, ‘in 3 separate groups’ is more understandable than ‘divided into 3 small groups’.

In American English, Every sentence has content and function words. I should stress the latter to sound natural.  Like Korean, I should pronounce linking sounds smoothly.  Pronouncing linking sounds and stressed words seemed evident and clear to Americans, but I have no choice but to learn rules of pronunciation like grammar.  I think that I should learn and teach how to pronounce more naturally to communicate each other.

Keunhwa CP#6

Date/Time: Sep. 22/ 02:30~03:28

Location: At CIES backyard                                     

Cultural and/or linguistic topics you and Nahid learned:  She asked about my weekend, but I did nothing special because I had a lot to do for this course.  I said to her that I was feeling down with no reason.  She listened to me carefully and let me take my time to tell my feeling and she told me about her roommate who had difficulty with getting along with her boyfriend.  She advised her that nobody could solve her problems, so we had to find solutions by ourselves.  I totally agree with her.  It’s me that know the problem very well and do something to resolve it.  She gave me a paper with a piece of poetry which was originally written in Spanish but was translated into English by her for me and an image of a pigeon inside many hands.  It made me open and relaxed, so I told her that I was depressed.  She said that she was, too.  And she shared her mother’s advice when she is gloomy.  That is go volunteering right now.  While I was talking with her, when I go back to Korea, I would volunteer for people from other parts of Asia or refugees from North Korea.  She has clear and assertive goals in her life, I’m sure that she will make it.

Aviv TS#12

September 27 at 8pm, Jun-Suk and I had our third tutoring session. I had prepared a list of questions that required Jun to come up with his own sentences. As we were talking, I guided Jun and gave him enough support so he could freely express himself. Jun has a high comprehension level, but it is difficult for him to express himself in speaking.

Aviv TS#11

September 26^th at 6pm, Neila and I had our third tutoring session. We started our session by going over my blogs, I had prepared my notes for Neila to look over. She pointed out my errors. Then she gave me time to go over them and correct them as needed. To continue, as an exercise we discussed different sentences and how I phrased them, and then we came up with different ways to rephrase them. It was a good exercise and helped me express myself in writing. I found my sessions with Neila to be very helpful and I’m looking forward for our next session.     

Elizabeth CO#3

Thursday, September 24th


On September 24th, I observed Derrick Pollock's Speaking class for Group 3. Derrick began the class by having the students introduce themselves and tell where they are from. After this, Derrick asked the class when and how to use the first conditional "if". The class offered up some examples and Derrick explained the purpose of the first conditional. He looked up a website with examples of this topic with fill in the blank for the corresponding verb phrase. Together with the class, they went over this rule. Derrick then asked the class to break up into groups and answer the question "If you could change anything about your life, what would you change?". While class was talking, Derrick walked around and listened to the students answers. The class was then asked to share some of their responses with everyone and Derrick wrote some of the answers on the board. He corrected the grammar for some of the answers he heard and gave some extra examples to help solidify the concept. Once this activity was finished, Derrick discussed the debate they were to have the next week. He explained what the students should do to prepare and what they should do to have strong debate points. To model a proper debate, Derrick played a video of middle school children debating the topic of uniforms in schools. Derrick then ended the class with a funny YouTube video of a fictional debate in an ESL class.



Elizabeth Lopez

Elizabeth CO#2

Tuesday, September 22nd

On September 22nd, I had my second class observation with Ryan Flemming. This class was Listening for Group 3. At the beginning of this class, Ryan went over the agenda for the week. He covered what was discussed in the previous class and what they were to do for the next few days. After about 10 minutes, Ryan had the class go to the computer lab in CIES. Here the students were to do a practice quiz on the computers. This quiz was similar to what was to be given in the next class and allowed the students to assess their skills and see what they needed to work on. Ryan went to help each individual student that needed assistance or clarification on questions. If students finished with extra time, they were able to go on a website for song lyrics called lyricstraining.com. This website lets students type in the lyrics to songs as they listen to it so they can work on their listening skills. 

Elizabeth Lopez

Elizabeth CO#1

Tuesday, September 22nd

On September 22nd, I had my first class observation with Andrew Wilson. This was his 9 am grammar class for Group 2. Andrew started the class with introductions by everyone from the class. He then had the class take out their homework assignment. This assignment involved writing and answering an advice question, in the style of an advice column. After having the class share a few examples, Andrew moved on to the subject of superlatives. In the previous class, they discussed the difference of adjectives between two people. In this lesson, Andrew had the class, including myself, use an adjective (pretty, good, smart) and use it to describe someone in comparison to three or more people (prettiest, best, smartest). Andrew then passed back graded tests to the students. He reviewed some questions that were frequently missed and the class had the opportunity to ask questions on what they had gotten wrong. For the last part of class, Andrew had students share some descriptions he had them write the previous class. This involved each person selecting another student in class and describing that person in a few statements. Afterwards, the class would guess who the description was about. Andrew also wrote some of the examples on the board and corrected the grammar.


Elizabeth Lopez

Elizabeth TS#6

Monday, September 21st


On September 21st, I met PJ for his 5th tutoring session. At the beginning of this session, I had PJ watch a video on the life cycle of butterflies and another on how Monarch butterflies migrate and hibernate for the winter. After watching this, I answered some of PJ's questions and we discussed the changes some insects go through. After this video, PJ read an article on how butterflies and beetles change throughout their life cycle. After reading, I had PJ verbally answer some comprehension questions. We then watched another video to see how Ladybugs, which are beetles, change during their life cycle. We discussed the role of predator and prey, cannibalism, and what other bugs molt their skin as they grow. PJ was able to recall that spiders also shed their skin as they grow bigger, just as beetles and caterpillars. We then read another story called "Terra's Terrarium". Before beginning, I explained to PJ what a terrarium was and quickly looked up what they look like and how to make them. I later had PJ read the story aloud and answer some comprehension questions at the end.



Elizabeth Lopez

Elizabeth TS#5

Thursday, September 17th


On September 17th, I had my first tutoring session with Boram Kang. I met Boram at Starbucks and asked a few questions to get to know her before assessing what she needed to improve. Boram told me about how she is from South Korea and recently took the TEFL course the semester before me. She is looking to take the TOEFL in a few months and has been studying for it so she can go on to get her Masters. She brought out her TOEFL workbook and showed me a few of the things she's been working on. She told me she mostly wants to work on her speaking skills and we worked out the best times for her to meet me.

Elizabeth Lopez

Elizabeth TS#4

Monday, September 14th


On September 14th, I had my fourth tutoring session with PJ. At the beginning of the session, I assisted PJ with some idiom homework he had been assigned. Once completing this, I prepared some fourth grade reading comprehension passage for him to read. The first passage I had PJ read was called "Achoo!" and it was about why we sneeze. This short, page-long passage came with comprehension questions at the end. I verbally went through the best questions and had PJ answer it to see if he understood the passage and could recall important details from it. Afterwards, we watched a video explaining why we sneeze. We then read another short passage about different types of teeth. Before the story, I asked PJ if he had lost any of his baby teeth and if it made it any harder to eat certain foods. This helped him think about how the teeth work to chew your food. After the passage, we verbally went through the comprehension questions at the end and watched a video reexplaining the different types of teeth. PJ seemed very interested in the idea of wisdom teeth and their purpose, so I explained this topic more thoroughly to him. Lastly, we read passage on sharks and some interesting facts about them. After the passage, we watched a video about Great Whites to see some of the shark facts demonstrated in the video.


Elizabeth Lopez

Hannah TS #8

This past Friday I had the chance to meet with Keunhwa again. Once I finished work I went to go meet her at the Leon Collins Library. Once we met up Keunhwa asked me a few questions about field trips in the U.S.. After that, she told me about how field trips are different in Korea. She has to present a project on it in the next week so she wanted ask me since I'm American. Afterwards, we talked a bit about our future team teaching class. We decided that on the next session we would try to dedicate some time to looking over our lesson plans and planing which one we would like to cover. After we finished that we continued to go through the pronunciation packet. The topic that was covered in that section of the packet was sentence intonation. (Where you put stress on the important part of the sentence). I wanted to let her know that even though we stress certain parts immensely in exercise, that the intonation is a lot more relaxed in normal speech.

Hannah TS #7

This past Wednesday I had the chance to meet with Youngseo again! When I got to the library Youngseo's mom told me that Youngseo wanted to show me something. That something was two 100%s on her past spelling and reading tests. I was really glad that her hard work had paid off! Once her mom left we started working on her homework for the week. After we completed her homework assignment we started to read through the two books I brought with me. while reading the books, I made sure to ask her comprehension questions throughout just to make sure that she knew what she was reading. Once we finished reading through the books we colored a picture together and then I helped her write a letter to her friend! Before this next Wednesday, I will make sure to print out a couple more word searches since she loves those so much.

Frankie TS #9

Sunday I had met up with shy and mild mannered Inhyeong for our second session. She came in bright spirits and always laughing a bit, a quality that betokens the deference of Koreans so I've noticed. We broke the ice, as it were, with a game of three statements, one of which is a lie that the other participant must guess at. I thank Andrea for this little speaking game, as I find it of good use to limber up a tutee's English mindset. After this, I had reviewed with her some of the idioms that we covered prior and I asked to see how comfortable she was with possibly utilizing them in conversation with a native speaker. The goal I feel for these next few sessions will be to embolden her confidence in the knowledge she already possesses in order to begin communicating with her surrounding environment. The activities of the session, thus, were centered around speaking and listening. A notable success during this session was listening to a song by Tears for Fears, Sowing the Seeds of Love. This song features heavily many idioms as well as a melodious line that was fun to listen to again and again. She learnt the meaning of "sowing the seeds" as well as what the "birds and the bees"  mean. It was a fun lesson to be sure. 

Frankie TS #8

I met with Henrique, a 28 year old from Angola, this past Saturday. He truly is the model pupil, for he aspires and hungers for knowledge. Our session was particularly distinguished from others in that I was able to employ my background in Latin and Greek during this lesson as well as a variety of other methods, which I find far more efficacious in elucidating grammatical knowledge. This session was centered on a piece of reading he brought with him on the flora and environs of Tallahassee. This material provided us with a multitude of new vocabulary that describe the distinctive qualities of Northern Florida. As mentioned above, the techniques we used to define these new words encompassed top down and bottom up methods. Contextual clues, as well as inferring meaning through antonyms and synonyms were incredibly successful. For example, coming across the word massive he was able to master the meaning of it through the antonym little, as well as learn a new word, huge, a synonym. Compound this with his learning the words antonym and synonym themselves. I feel that his verve and zeal were matched with mine equally throughout the lesson, and I anticipate our future meetings to be punctuated with the same ebullience. 

Frankie TS #7

For the first I met 22 year old Inhyeong, from Chungju, Korea. Incidentally, we were introduced to one another through another tutee, Henrique, on account of my being stood up by two other tutees. She was willing to start English tutoring and I was more than happy to oblige. Our first session was quite fun, as she has only been in the US for about a month now and her English is not as up to par as her peers back in Korea. She told me of how they would make fun of her incomprehensible English; however, I feel that their command of the language was only strong enough to understand perfect grammatical English. Inhyeong's ability to speak, in my humble opinion, is actually fairly good. Though, despite it being true that there is not a level of fluency in order to have a conversation she still had enough comprehension to understand our first session reviewing idioms. In particular, I was quite proud that she grasped the concept of literal and figurative. She learnt what it literally would mean to "be in a pickle." But of course we went through he figurative meaning, as that is the idiom commonly employed. I looked forward to our next session, which happened to be the next day. 

KellyMichael - TS#9

Yesterday I met Nayun at the library again. This time she had come with her school backpack and had a few pages of exercises to work on. Besides doing two pages she brought, we did a page of exercises from the book for 1st graders that I brought. Also this time I sent the book home with her so she could complete it at home. The book contains spelling, vocabulary, math, and reading questions for 5-7 years old and is recommended for first grade. Nayun easily completes these exercises. I have found she is more willing to chat with me allowing me to see where she really needs work, which is her speaking. I will be using some speaking exercises with her next time. Still the obstacle is the library and the respect for quiet that I think holds us back some. Even so, improvement has been made I think and she seems to want to engage more each session.

Aviv TS#10

September 26^th at 8 pm, Jun-Suk and I had our second tutoring session. To start off the session, I prepared a list of topics and questions that Jun and I can discuss. After a small chat, Jun started to read out loud for me from a book titled “Tree of Love”. As he was reading out loud I was taking notes and pausing him to ask questions about the book and different subjects that the book and Jun relate to. We continued with the discussion about the book and what the writer was trying to say throughout the story. Even though Jun is only 8 years old, I was successful at getting him into a deeper discussion and helping him to generate his own ideas and explain them to me in English. In our next session, I hope to get similar results.

Aviv TS#9

September 25th at 8pm, I had my first tutoring Skype session with Jun-Suk from South Korea. He is a third grader. Before the session his mother and I discussed what Jun’s weak spots were and what she wanted me to go over with him. His mother, Jung Ryu, told me that he mainly needed to work on his speaking skills, especially speaking with contacts. So he and I chatted. I asked him questions about himself. Jun told me that he lived in the US for 5 years (and he's only 8) so he had to use English in his daily life. Then he read a story he liked out loud to me. As he was reading, I was asking him comprehension questions about the book. I had a good time talking with Jun and helping him with his reading and speaking skills.

Hunter TS#10

On September 23, I met with Henrique and Blanca to work on pronunciation.  I have been making notes of Henrique's pronunciation over the course of this first fall session and had delayed working on pronunciation until we discussed it in class and I could equip myself properly.  Henrique has considerable difficulty differentiating between and saying the voiced and unvoiced alveopalatal fricatives [sh], [dj]   and alveolar fricative [s].   For Blanca, difficulty came to her not in distinguishing the [s] and [z] when she heard them, but just in pronunciation. 

In working with Henrique, I created a series of minimal pairs, first between [sh] and [s]  and then with [sh] and [dj].  When dealing with the latter, I demonstrated to him that tongue placement and mouth shape are quite similar to their affricate associates, [ch] and [j], but held out indefinitely like [s]. I then showed him that the [dj] sound is the exact same as [sh]; the only difference is that for [dj] you must vibrate your vocal chords. Once he understood well how to produce the sounds, we built up the sounds with syllables, tacking on vowel sounds to the end.  ex:  [sh]-[a]   [sh]-[i]  etc.  And then finally forming short, monosyllabic words:  Shoot.  Shot.  Sheet.  Shun.  etc.  I then would say a minimal pair aloud and have him differentiate between the two. 

I did similar exercises with Blanca.  Since she didn't need to work differentiating between [s] and [z] when she HEARD them pronounced by someone else, we simply went over the mechanics on how to produce [z].  Again, I had her pronounce [s] while vibrating her vocal chords and try to mimic the sound a bee makes.  We then built up to syllables.  Then monosyllabic words.  And then finally, I had her say a series of minimal pairs to contrast between the [s] and [z] sounds.

Hunter TS#9

On September 21, I met with Raiyaan, a student who had come to me the previous week requesting that I tutor him.  I had spoken with him on numerous occasions in the past and had a pretty good gauge on his needs assessment.  He speaks very carefully and clearly without many issues.  He told me that where he personally feels he needs most improvement is in reading.  He proceeded to pull out a book that he had taken it upon himself to read for pleasure, "To Kill a Mockingbird."  I must admit I was quite impressed with his selection.  He had only just begun reading it, still only on the first chapter.  We pulled an excerpt from a passage he had already read which gave him some difficulty.  We worked on the words he didn't know, and I guided him step by step into using context clues to first gain an implicit meaning of the word and had him give me his estimated definition.  (He had little difficulty understanding the overall meaning of each paragraph.)  With some words like: diminish,  I provided him with a few tricks to remember and apply in the future.  I pointed out that many words that begin with dim- in English mean "to lessen, or make less."  I gave the example of the verb "to dim" as in "to dim the lights."  He instantly understood the connection and excitedly replied "Because there is less light, you have made them softer.  Like to diminish is to make smaller." 

I then realized that to someone who knows little of America's history, especially in terms of racism, the strength and meaning of the book might get lost in translation.  Thus, I decided to provide him with schema and we discussed racism in the south back in the time that the book takes place.  He was worried that I would give away the story and I assured him that it is necessary to understand the history to appreciate the book fully.  I was careful not to give away any spoilers.  I plan to bring in a couple separate, short reading exercises for our next session and also continue to work on the book.

Aviv CO#3

On September 24th at 2pm, I had the chance to observe Candace Walters listening class. Once all the students entered, there were only 4 students, so Ms. Jasmine's class and Mr. Kyle's class joined. Ms. Candace started by asking all of the students to introduce themselves. Then, she introduced the characters from the TV show "How I met your Mother". To follow up, she then showed a list of vocabulary on the board that we will find in the episode we were about to watch. Students participated by guessing vocabulary and then giving sentences with them. Afterwards, we watched an episode of "How I met your Mother", with no subtitles, that’s what the students chose. It was a great extensive listening lesson for the students. At the end of the episode, Ms.Candance gave feedback and answered any questions the students had. I learned that by watching native English speaking shows, students improve their listening skills and vocabulary use in an enjoyable manner.

Aviv CO#2

September 24th at 1pm, I observed Jasmine Carnell's speaking class. The class was smaller than usual because there were a lot of student celebrating Eid al-Adha. There were 5 students in the class. The topic of the class was family relationships (Mom, Dad, Uncle etc...). Jasmine divided the class into 2 groups, each student had a work sheet that they had to fill out by asking their classmates different questions. Jasmine walked around and gave feedback. Afterwards, Jasmine went over errors and wrote them on the board. The class was lively and the materials that were used were a work sheet and the board for writing down vocabulary and feedback. I learned that group activities in speaking class, creates a great classroom, work environment and helps students immensely with their communicative speaking skills!

Neila TS#9

September 26th at 2:30pm, I met up with He Jeong and Hyein. I brought different colored pencils and paper for us to do different writing and drawing projects. I started with asking the girls to arrange the colors into warm and cold colors. We then went over different things they could draw with the warm colors and with the cold colors. He Jeong chose the warm colors and drew a sun while Hyein chose cold colors and drew the ocean! We then moved on to different categories, for example fruit. We played hangman, which helped with their spelling. They had to guess the fruit for hangman and then draw it! Afterwards the girls decided they wanted to use the paper and make diaries. We folded papers to make booklets and I had them write about their self while drawing pictures to go with their writings. We ended up doing an hour and 45 minute session instead of an hour, time flies when you're having fun! They have a very good level in writing, but still make some beautiful mistakes. They were excited about coloring, writing and playing hangman and it helped them learn!

Neila CO#3

On September 24th at 2pm, I had the chance to observe Jasmine Carnell's listening class. Once all the students entered, Jasmine wrote down the lesson plan on the board. The topic was to be on vocabulary review followed by a pyramid and then a crossword puzzle. There were only 3 kids in the class since it was a Muslim holiday, so instead we joined Ms.Candance's classroom, that Mr.Kyle and his students had also joined. Aviv happened to be observing Candace's class, so we both observed the same class. Ms.Candace started by asking all of the students to introduce themselves. She then used the projector to introduce the characters from the TV show "How I met your Mother". To follow up, she then showed a list of vocabulary on the projector thats in the episode of the TV show we were about to watch. Students participated by guessing vocabulary and then giving sentences with them. Afterwards, we watch an episode of "How I met your Mother", with no subtitles. It was a great extensive listening lesson for the students. At the end of the episode, Ms.Candance gave feedback and answered any questions the students had. I learned that even with watching a show, students improve their listening skills and vocabulary use in an enjoyable manner.

Neila CO#2

September 24th at 1pm, I entered Vicky Golen's Speaking class as an observer. Vicky explained to me that it was a Muslim holiday, so the class would be a little different. Kyle Kaminski's class joined up with Vicky's class. The topic of the day was eating etiquette at a restaurant in the United States. They devided the class into 3 groups, Kyle sat with one group, Vicky with the other and I sat with the 3rd group. Each group read from the book and then discussed different scenarios in. Kyle, Vicky and I helped with each one of our groups. Giving them different scenarios to think about and helping when they needed it. Afterwards, we discussed each groups answers as a class. Vicky gave feedback and had a very positive attitude. The class was lively and the materials used were the textbook and the board, for writing down vocabulary. I learned that group activities make for a great classroom ambiance and help students immensely with their communicative speaking skills!

Neila TS#8

On September 21st, I met up with Keunhwa at the LeRoy library at 3pm. We started out the session by talking about how our week was going, then we discussed different classroom assignments. Keunhwa brought some of her blog entry's for me to look over and point out errors before she submitted them. I circled some beautiful mistakes I saw in her blog drafts. As she corrected them, we went over the errors. Afterwards we started working on, what is called the Ben Franklin practice. I read different sentences and Keunhwa circled which words were stressed and underlined which  words blend together when speaking. I had never heard about the Ben Franklin practice, but I will be sure to use it again in the future!

Justin TS#4

On Thursday 9/24 I tutored Yuma. This was our second session so I had a little bit better idea of what he wanted to work on. We began the session with a writing activitity. I had fairly open ended questions for him so it gave him a chance to be creative and gave me a little inshight on who he is what he likes. We spent some time talking about how he can adjust his sentence structure and a little bit of grammar work. After this we talked about minimal pairs and how that can help him with pronunciation and identification of words. We went over a lot but he seemed to know a majority of them but we worked out some kinks in pronunciation. Adding to this we also went over some homophones to clear up some questions he had. Near the end of the session we talked about what he wants to improve on most. He replied that he would like to get better at reading full sentences and the pace of english speaking. Knowing this, next week we can work on a couple articles which should allow him to practice reading, pronunciation and add some vocabulary.

Frankie TS #6

I had the most sincere pleasure of meeting with Luna for the first time today. She, like Mario, is also from Bogotá, Colombia. However, unlike Mario she is 30 years old and has attended higher education for 13 years in Colombia. She has been here for 2 years and is seeking an international law degree from FSU Law School. I applaud her noble efforts to aid her country and those abroad with her degree, as this is her aspiration. We both were quite hungry so for convenience we had lunch at Chili's, I can't seem to escape the place. At any rate, we had a fiercely successful exchange of ideas and I learned that she desires to improve upon her accuracy in speaking. Her pace of speaking is quite fast and I feel she can express her thoughts freely, though her sentences are frequented by some errors. I anticipate future sessions with her to be as jovial and productive as today's was. 

Frankie TS #5

I had my very first session with 18 year old Mario from Bogotá, Colombia yesterday. This was my first session with an adult, as I have only tutored 4th grader P.J. prior to this. This experience  was one characterized by many differences, namely, the motivations for acquiring English. In a sense I have a deep appreciation for a child's ability to capture the innocence of knowledge, the attempt of using language to explore the world and understand it, free from all fetters of grammatical necessity. While for Mario it was immediately obvious that his pursuit of English is purely a means to an end, in order that he may enter a university to study business. This session, consequently, was characterized by an open willingness to attempt difficult tasks, such as reading the material that I provided for him. My best explanation for this phenomenon would be that as adults we have a different grasp of reality that is defined by external motivations. I look forward to more sessions where I will be able to test this hypothesis with the different types of reading materials by which Mario seeks to improve his reading abilities as well as some writing assignments for similar reasons. These two areas require the most attention, as he was placed in a level three speaking class, something that was instantly evident by his fluid speech. 

Matthew TS #7

Tutees: Matthew and David Hong
Friday, September 18th 5-6PM

Tutoring multiple students was more difficult than tutoring only one student. I think a part of this was because I still treated the activity as a one-on-one, personal interaction. I started off the session with a reading passage on a Native American myth. I think this story was a great pick because it was interesting and took some critical thinking to understand what the passage was about. The students comprehension were both on point and had no trouble understanding the story. They did have some difficult with vocabulary terms, such as "clever" and "persistent." The former, I asked them to try to use context clues but they were unable, so I used the words in a better context than the story had used. Persistent was not in the story but was used as an answer to a vocabulary question. Similarly, I gave them context for them to understand the meaning. Persistent is easier to explain with examples than a definition or translation anyway. After the reading exercise, we did some vocabulary exercises from my first lesson plan, since Matthew had some trouble in this are in the writing exercise from the previous week. It seems when he is mindful about what subjects or verbs to choose he is better at this activity. It also may be easier to choose than produce a correct grammatical term. This tutoring session gave me a better perspective on how to utilize my time and how much time certain activities may take with disruptions.

KellyMichael - TS#7

Hamoud had mentioned in one of our previous sessions how much he enjoyed movies, so for this tutoring session I decided we would watch a few movies scenes then discuss. The choices for the movies were "Tombstone" an action western based on the story of Wyatt Earp and the OK Coral, "The Outsiders" based on S.E. Hinton's book about the struggle of a young man growing up against odds society gave him, and "Weird Science" a comedy where two high schoolers create a woman with their computers. These are three movies I thought spoke about American culture, each one set in a different era of the US, but very representational of the times. The scenes we watched together, I gathered they enjoyed it. One of the topics that surfaced because of dialog in the movie was the idea of sarcasm, and how meaning can be obscured to be the opposite of the grammatically correct sentence. It was a good cultural exchange of ideas, much laughter and enjoyable conversation. We also talked about guns in our culture, and it was difficult. It's not a topic I know anything about, besides the law. This is one topic I will try to avoid in the future.

Neila TS#7

On September 16th I met up with Keunhwa at books-a-million. We did a CP session for an hour and then went into a tutoring session for another hour. I taught her how to use Google docs for classwork assignments and how you can edit and share documents with friends. We then discussed several words that she struggles with. I tried to give her simple, but straight forward explanations. I also helped Keunhwa with roman numerals, something that she had been trying to understand, but it wasn't coming to her eaily. Then we went on and read from the book for class. I read out loud as she followed along. I had a very enjoyable time with her. It was as much of a tutoring session for her as it was for me. She helped me in understanding many techniques I can use for tutoring.

Elizabeth TS#3

Monday, September 7th

        For this tutoring session, I met up with my child tutee, PJ, at his home and we read a story from his fourth grade textbook called "Why Does the Moon Change Shape?". At the beginning of this lesson, I spoke with PJ about the Moon and asked if he had noticed its different shapes. He had but did not know why it happened. Before beginning the story I found a Google image of the phases of the Moon and went over the different form it can take throughout the month. I had PJ begin reading the text and would pause at the end of each page to go over the topics he had read about. After reading a page how the Moon revolves around the Earth, I showed him a YouTube video visually demonstrating this process. This seemed better to ground the information for PJ, as he began asking many questions on how the Moon moved and its relationship with the Earth. After continuing to read the passage, PJ read about the Sun and its role in the Moon cycles. I showed him another video on this topic and we discussed how the Sun is at the center of our solar system and its extremely hot temperatures. PJ seemed very fascinated by the topic and the visual images helped him to grasp the subject and formulate more questions on what he had learned. After reading, I drew out how the Sun shines on the Earth and Moon. Using his world map and globe, we spoke about how sunlight reaches different parts of the Earth, such as Florida vs Korea.

Elizabeth TS#2

Friday, September 4th


           On Friday, September 4th, I had my second tutoring session with PJ. This was my first time tutoring PJ alone. During this session, I had PJ read a passage about spiders from his fourth grade textbook.  I began by talking to him about spiders and asking what he thought about them. Though he didn't particularly like them, I describe a few of the cool abilities of spiders, such as web building and catching prey, to get him interested. I would have PJ read to the end of each page and then pause to test his comprehension of what he just read. I would ask a few questions going over the basic facts in the story, such as the names of the spiders body parts or the types of webs they can make.

After reading a few pages, I would choose a particularly interesting fact on the spiders, such as how they molt their skin. I would then show PJ a YouTube video of a real spider doing what he had just read about. I did 4 separate times during the lesson to help reiterate the subject PJ has just read. After we finished the passage, I used PJ's whiteboard to go over some of the vocabulary and concepts in the story, such as predator vs. prey, how spiders grow, and how they lay eggs. We also drew and labeled the different body parts mentioned in the text.

Frankie TS #4

I am absolutely thrilled to write this blog entry for P.J.'s tutoring session last night, for we had the most successful and exciting session to date. I had prepared for the session by bringing a Far Side cartoon book by Gary Larsen in the hope that through the power of humor I could entice P.J. to learn. While the lesson did start out that way I was reminded just how young he is, as he had noticed the FSU Library stamp on the pages and asked me if I was tested on the material in the book. I vividly remember being such an age where I would've asked the same question. I told him that I could make a test for him on it but he declined, ha. At any rate, I informed him that we unfortunately had to work out of his assigned textbook from school and so he chose tornadoes. This proved to be an excellent choice as we watched several videos, one a kids' TED talk which was an animated video explaining how tornadoes are formed. The other videos were real footage of tornadoes forming and some ripping apart homes and towns. The raw force of mother nature is truly humbling and I believe among the many scientific facts he learnt that session he was able to walk away with a deeper respect for mother nature as a force of life, and not merely a subject or topic of study. I am excited to see what we can review next week, hopefully there will be other reading materials that engage him on the same level. 

Frankie CO #3 & #4

I had the opportunity to observe both Kyle Kaminski's speaking course and Ryan Flemming's listening course. The first began with Mr. Kaminski approaching each student and addressing them by name with a warm and inviting smile and greeting. I was taken aback by such a gentle gesture, it intimated the close relationship he has with his students. The flow of the course was very relaxed and seemingly more productive because of his cool and collected persona. The agenda consisted of reviewing last week's biographical presentations, an introduction to timed speaking, practice, and then lab work. The timed speaking was presented to the class by a group of students he asked at the beginning to go over the chapter and give a summary to the rest of the class. This was a lesson in itself as summarizing was part of the speaking lesson. The class learnt how timed speaking works after he had modeled to them. They all were given a practice topic and he asked students to give their responses for each section of the assignment. After which they had time to go into the lab and record their responses on Sanako,  a recording program on the computers. The objective was to come back the next day and transcribe their recordings, eventually to enter their errors into a log. 

For Flemming's class I was greatly impressed by the thorough  presentation of information he was able to achieve through the use of a word document. If there were one salient aspect that is worth commenting on for his course it would be his transparency with his students. At no point was the class engaged in an activity that he had not already prepared and showed them though his document. Moreover, I felt what was more worth noting than the content of the course was his organization of the class. He had divided up the students into groups so as to maximize exposure to English by disbanding those who came from the same country or spoke the same language. This I feel will be something I would take into account for my future teaching. 

Ellen TS#11

Tutee: PJ Chang

Date/Time: Saturday 19 September 2015, 10:30-11:30 am

Turns out PJ and I did not do a lesson on video games this week. I was showing Professor Kim my lesson plan for teaching Summary and Paraphrasing. She suggested that I do that lesson with PJ instead because summary and paraphrasing are important skills for students at any level. I checked through my original presentation to make sure none of the material was too advanced for a forth grader. It all seemed fine but I would be sure to keep an eye on PJ during the lesson. PJ really got the concept and the lesson went very well. I think the reason PJ can grasp the lesson relatively easily is because summary and paraphrasing are skills everyone uses instinctually even if we do not know what they are called. To teach these two techniques it more about honing preexisting skills than anything else. I used fun videos and quotations as source text for the practice. I like videos with less dialogue for second language learners who are at lower level. PJ was raised with English and Korean but the presentation was originally intended to teach second language learners. The videos worked for both demographics.