FSU TEFL 120 Certificate Course_Summer, 2023

      For this class I observed a group 3 listening class with Professor Ryan Fleming. To start the class off, the students had to take a 15 minute quiz on canvas. The students then did a bit of vocab review (language support) from a video they had listened to last class. From what I could tell, video described different types of balls used for sports and how they have changed over the years. Professor Fleming then focused on the idea of anachronisms. He explained this word in great detail. Professor Fleming used an old black and white soccer ball with the hexagonal panels as an example of an anachronism. He explained that soccer balls don't really look like this anymore, but when a non-soccer player thinks of a soccer ball, they still think of this old design. He also asked the class if the could come up with any examples. A student (Youngjune who is actually my tutee) gave the example of the black and white design of a Go board. After this the class had a more broa...

      We started off this session talking for a while like usual. We talked about cultural differences in universities in Korea vs the US. I love talking to Youngjune he's a great guy, and very funny! Next we read the poem "Because I could not stop for Death" by Emily Dickinson. Youngjune loves reading poetry in English and it's a great exercise to work on vocabulary and spark conversation. Next we talked a bit more and then started practicing prepositions. We did two fill in the blank worksheets. After this, Youngjune said he wanted to work on expressing himself better, especially with emotional words, so we did a little exercise. I would write a sentence, for example: "You've been trying to find an error in a computer program for 4 hours now", and Youngjune would write short sentences describing how he would feel using emotion words. I would go over them and check for errors, and then add a few more words on. For example:"I would feel frustrated a...

 Today I had a 2-hour tutoring session with Fatima. We began our session by reviewing the previous lesson that we worked on last week, about medical terminology and common doctor's questions. She was eager and excited to show how well she had learned the new vocab words I had given her to look over; This was exciting for me because it told me that I had done a good job making the lesson fun and interesting! Next, she told me about a presentation that she had coming up about social media usage in our generation. She interviewed me for the project, asking questions like - "how often do you use social media" and "what are your favorite social media platforms?". I thought that it was cool that she recorded my answers on her phone, so she could refer back to my answers. Later, we outlined this presentation together; She was nervous about it because she had to introduce the presentation to her class, so we made a little script that she could practice, in order for her...

This afternoon I met again with Ashwaq and we went over an activity she was having trouble with in class. The activity was for her reading class and she was completeing a fill in the blank based on a reading of the 3 different branches we have in the American government. We went over the vocabulary for the fill in the blanks and we created practice sentences for the words that she was having a hard time grasping. Throughout the session I could tell that Ashwaq was getting confused so I asked her if some visual aids would be better. Then, I made diagrams explaining the different parts of the government and once I did that I think all of the vocabulary and other concepts fell into place. 

Date/Time: May 31, 3-4PM Location: CIES Patio Topic/Skill: Speaking/Pronunciation Feedback provided: Today I met Tidiane for the first time. Due to this being our first meeting, I wanted to focus the lesson on getting to know him and his goals. Tidiane told me that his main goal is to practice speaking thus we practiced conversation for most of the session. I asked Tidiane common questions and also questions to get to know more about him and his home country. Tidiane told me he struggles with words that have 'W' in them so I pulled up a list of 'W words' and we practiced pronunciation. I also gave Tidiane some vocabulary worksheets to look over.  Lesson about tutoring: Since I have gotten more 'into the groove' with tutoring I am less anxious about the whole process and I think this was evident today. Tidiane and I spoke casually while also correcting his pronunciation when needed and I think it was a good way to begin our sessions together. 

 This morning I met with a new tutee for the first name. Her name is Ebru and my other tuttee told her to reach out to me because she needed more extra help. I was a little nervous at first because Ebru is at a lower speaking and listening level so communicating was much harder than how it usually is with Ashwaq. After the first few minutes of talking I think we both became more comofortable with eachother so it made the rest of the session easier. Ebru shared a lot about her life in Turkey and the stuggles she has been having in the States so I was able to give her some advice on enjoying her time here. I am excited to work more with her and I think we will be able to make a lot of progress in her speaking and listening skills. 

Date/Time: May 31, 12-1PM  Location: CIES Building  Topic/Skill: Writing/Grammar Feedback provided: In this lesson I worked with Fatimah on going through one of the essays she wrote in class and gave feedback. She only had minor spelling and grammar errors such as mixing up the order of letters in a word or forgetting to add a needed comma. After this I answered some questions that Fatimah needed to ask for a class assignment. Then we worked on verb tenses and I introduced some new vocabulary words.  Lesson about tutoring: Today I learned that it is important to be able to change direction in response to your tutees needs. I was not planning to go over verb tenses today but because Fatimah had a question that pertained to this subject, I made it apart of the lesson. 

      This was a fun session! We started off my chatting for a bit with a focus on talking about past events so Maria can continue to practice simple past tense. Then we moved into more work with double negatives. The most challenging part about this is explaining to Maria the difference between "nothing" and "everything" and when to use each one. Though we did a bit of this last session, we did a refresher this session as well. After this we did a bit more work on using passive voice. Maria struggles to stay in passive voice when speaking about a past event, and usually reverts to using present continuous when speaking about the past because it is easier than using simple past for her. To work on this I just had Maria tell me about various things that she has done in the past and asked to her focus on which verb tense she was using. In the process of working on passive voice, Maria started making infinitives passive as well when already using a p...

Today, me and Ashwaq met for two hours to go over two different assignemnts she had. In our first session, we spent the hour working on a speech she has to give in her speaking class tomorrow. I explained the common structure for informational speeches that we use in America and provided her with an outline. Then, we filled out the outline using the information she had from class. Once we had the basic information for the speech, I worked with Ashwaq on creating her sentences for each part of the speech. Finally, we added in the transition words that her professor wanted the class to include. Once all of the parts of the speech were finished, me and Ashwaq role played the classroom scenario so she could practice the pronunciation and memorization of the speech.  Later on in the day, we focused on the questions Ashwaq had about her upcoming grammar quiz. In this meeting, we focused on the work we did we adverbs last week. We did the practice work sheet she got to prepare for the qui...

 On Thursday of last week me and Ashwaq completed out 7th tutoring session. First, we continued practicing adverbs and focused on adverbs of time and adverbs of frequency. To do this, we practied with creating sentences for the different adverbs and did some fill in the blank activites. I noticed that once Ashwaq got the hang of the adverbs of manner in our previous session, she was able to pick up the other ones easier. After doing that, we started talking about how the classes at FSU have hundreds of students unlike in in her country where the classes are much smaller. So, for the rest of our session we walked around campus and I was able to show her some of the big lecture classrooms. Then we went to the strabucks on campus and Ashwaq was able to practice her speaking. 

 I met with Aaron yesterday, and we discussed the use of different prepositions of time, the simple present, and present continuous. I provided Aaron with two handouts that he worked through and I tried to provide him with explanations of when to use one verb form over the other. I used a similar technique as last time where I'd create mock conversations to show Aaron grammar concepts in practice. What I learned is that it is very important to be able to articulate concepts/ideas in a concise way and to be able to know the grammar rules yourself otherwise it will be difficult to do things beyond providing example sentences/when to use concepts. I personally had to review the prepositions of time on, at, and in which made it clear to me how it can be very confusing for English learners. 

 Date/Time: May 30, 12-1PM  Location: CIES Building  Topic/Skill: Speaking/Presentations  Feedback provided: In this lesson I worked with Fatimah on presentation and speaking skills. Fatimah had a class presentation later in the day and wanted to practice what she was going to say before presenting. We went over different phrases she could incorporate to boost her vocabulary such as 'passed away' and 'to be seen by someone'. Fatimah then asked if we could practice speaking with some casual conversation, I asked about her family, friends, goals and life back home. To finish I went over some new vocabulary words with Fatimah.  Lesson about tutoring: I learned that tutoring can be casual as well. Fatimah does not get a lot of speaking practice so having someone she can talk in English with for an hour or more each day is very beneficial. 

 Date/Time: May 26, 12:30-2:30PM  Location: CIES Building  Topic/Skill: Classwork  Feedback provided: In this lesson I worked with Fatimah on her classwork. First we reviewed an essay she wrote in class and went over her errors. Fatimah also had a powerpoint presentation due for class and was unsure of how to use some of the vocabulary she was posed with. I defined the unknown vocab for her and modeled how she could use it. Fatimah and I then worked on preparing her presentation and practicing it before she was to do it in front of her class. We then practiced speaking with typical conversation questioi Lesson about tutoring: I learned that having at least one day a week for your tutee to bring the work they want to work on is a good practice so that you can assist them with the areas they feel they need to most help. 

 Date/Time: May 26, 10-11AM  Location: CIES Building  Topic/Skill: Reading Comprehension Feedback provided: In this lesson I worked with Ye-Won on reading comprehension. First we worked on some worksheets. I provided various worksheets which dealt with identifying the parts of a story, labeling them in text, reading short stories and answering comprehension questions. After we completed the worksheets we read two books I provided as well, I read and posed questions to Ye-Won to make sure she was following. Lesson about tutoring: I learned that level appropriate activity is very important for tutoring younger children. Children are more likely to 'freeze up' if they do not understand a task or questions and usually do not have all the tools to address how to move forward when they are stuck. It is important to recognize the signs that an activity may be too difficult for a younger tutee.

 Date: May 29th Topic/Skill: Reading and Conversation/Speaking Classroom management: student-centered, focusing on making the activity entertaining while also reinforcing comprehension and conversation Materials: Eloise and the Very Secret Room book, whiteboard Feedback: Ye-won and I read Eloise and the Very Secret Room together. I continued to have her tell me or show me what some of the words meant in the book, and she seems to be understanding double vowel sounds much more than in, our last session (ie. ae or ie). She learned a new name that was a bit difficult for her, Eloise, but by the end of the session, she was reading the name correctly (albeit with a bit of hesitation). We also talked about the difference between the words "hear" and "here" and how they were different. Her reading comprehension is also improving immensely! She seems much more interested in reading when I reinforce that there is a story rather than solely recognizing letters and words, and ...

 5/25/23 Hours: 1 For this session, I gave Kangjin a prompt at the beginning of the lesson and had him give me a speech. He chose to talk about his favorite sport, golf. I gave him 10 minutes to brainstorm and jot down notes on what he wanted to talk about. I specifically instructed him not to write a script, only bullet points of his speaking points as I wanted him to work on his improvisational speaking skills. He then gave me his speech and I provided feedback at the end and aided him in pronunciation, intonation, and word choice along the way.  Afterward, he sent me a written piece on golf summarizing what he discussed in his speech and I will go over and edit the piece with him for our next meeting.

We continued reading "Stellaluna" during today's tutoring session. We spent the beginning of our session reviewing what she read last time. She could not remember too much of what had happened so I had her look at the illustrations and some of the keywords in the text to recall what we had read about during our last session. This method, especially using keywords, helped guide Ye-won in the right direction and proved to be a better review method than the review discussions we've had in the past. Ye-won seemed to be losing focus a lot today, so I focused more on using the book to stimulate discussion and talk about vocabulary. During our last session, I started to notice that Ye-won enjoys learning vocabulary and explaining definitions to me by acting out what the word means. When I explain any unknown words to her, she is more engaged and receptive when I act out the definitions with her. I might try to plan a vocab review activity where I ask her to act out different...

During this session, we began reading a new book. I gave her two books to pick from and she chose the book "Stellaluna". This book is more challenging than the last one we read, but I thought I would give her the option to try reading it. One reason I believe this book is more challenging is that it contains longer sections of text and has more challenging vocabulary words. While it took her a bit longer to work through the text, it did not prove to be too difficult for her. The text also provided a lot of opportunities for discussion, specifically for vocabulary and the past tense. Despite "Stellaluna" being a bit more challenging, she did seem to really enjoy the story. 

This past Friday I met with Maryna to review how to construct conditional "if/then" phrases with various tenses. This is one of the most difficult grammatical constructions in the English language, which we spent the last two meetings covering before this one. Maryna's overall writing and reading skills are very high, as well as her knowledge of grammar. What she struggles with however are productive skills like speaking. She showed me a page of one of her practice problems from class, which was the first time in which I had difficulty explaining a grammar topic. There were five different types of conditional phrases given in the handout, one of which I did recognize at all. The handout gave rules for their use, which I did not think reflected the way native English-speakers use verb tense forms in normal speech. Maryna expressed to me that doing practice problems on a sheet of paper like I had been doing the past couple of sessions did not help her as much, since it does...

 This past week, I meet with Fatima for our first 2-hour tutoring session! I was unsure how it would go, given we usually do a 1-hour session, however, I think it went fantastic and created an even better space to dive deeper into our lesson and make it fun on both ends. Fatima mentioned to me that she gets nervous going to the doctor with her daughters because she doesn't always understand or know how to respond to the doctor's questions. This comment jumped into my mind when I was creating my speaking lesson plan for the following week, so I made my lesson plan on medical terminology and common medical questions. I was so excited to meet with Fatima because it meant that I got to test my lesson plan out on her, and it went better than expected! I started the session by giving her a list of common medical terms such as symptom, allergy, headache, fever, and more; She crossed out the ones she knew, and the rest we went over and gave definitions to. After writing these vocab wor...

 In today's session, I gave Do-Jun more writing feedback as he is an upper-intermediate to advanced English learner. I tried to give Do-Jun more grammatical corrections since he is advanced/upper-intermediate but also explained to him that his meaning got across fine and that we're just refining his English at this point. After talking through the feedback and answering questions along the way we discussed a Ted Talk article Aaron read and he asked me about a couple phrases he didn't understand from the reading. Surprisingly, I wasn't able to recognize some of the phrases off the top of my head but it's because they're used in writing more so than colloquial English but I sent Do-Jun a document explaining the phrases in depth after our lesson. 

 Thursday when Aaron and I met we went through a sample dialogue from a website called NAVER. One key concept we discussed was the verb "to break" when discussing money for example "Can you break this $20?". To practice the concept in use I pretended to be a customer and walked into the study room and had Aaron give impromptu responses to my questions. After that activity I had Aaron read an article on how the climate crisis is affecting people in India we then discussed relevant vocab from the reading in context. 

 Date/Time: Wednesday, May 24th/4:00pm~5:00pm Location: Starbucks near CIES Topic/ Skill: Speaking(Let’s talk about your family) Grammar(Present Perfect Continuous) Feedback provided to the tutee: I corrected my tutee’s grammatical errors in uncountable nouns, infinitives and gerunds. I explained the present perfect continuous with example sentences. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: ESL student has difficulty understanding the present perfect continuous. Also, she needs to work more on high-frequency words.

Date/Time: May 25, 1-2PM  Location: CIES Building  Topic/Skill: Vowels Feedback provided: In this lesson I worked with Ye-Won on vowels. First we identified what letters are vowels and what the difference between long and short vowels are. I provided seven worksheets which dealt with identifying vowels, labeling them as short or long, tracing/rewriting sentences, and reading short stories and answering comprehension questions. After we completed the worksheets we worked on her vocabulary and speaking skills with picture flash cards.  Lesson about tutoring: I learned that repetition is important for tutoring younger children. Rushing through an activity will result in less comprehension and ability to re-call, even if English is their first language. Having the tutee repeat after you or re-write what you wrote is a good way to practice repetition. 

Today I had my third session with Ye-won. For today's session, we continued reading the book we started the previous week: "Fancy Nancy It's Backward Day". Since it had been about a week since our last meeting, we reviewed what had happened in the first part of the book. I began this by asking if Ye-won remembered what the story was about and when she told me it was about "backward day", I asked her to describe what that meant to me. To briefly review some of the more detailed aspects of the story, we flipped through the parts we had already read and I had her describe what was going on in the pictures to me. These pictures represented some of the "backward day" activities that took place in the book, so it provided a good review as well as a description/speaking exercise. Afterward, we read the second half of the book and I continued to ask vocabulary and comprehension questions as we went. Based on today's session, I felt like her comprehensi...

Date/Time: May 25, 12-1PM  Location: CIES Building  Topic/Skill: Speaking  Feedback provided: In this lesson I worked with Fatimah on her conversation skills. Last session Fatimah told me she wanted to work on being able to talk about herself. I provided Fatimah with vocabulary such as physical traits versus personality traits. I also gave her examples of different types of conversations such as giving someone advice or complaining. We then worked on answering mock interview style questions such as 'What are your strengths and weaknesses?' or 'Where do you see yourself in five years?'. I corrected Fatimah's grammar and word choice as she spoke and defined new vocabulary for her.  Lesson about tutoring: I learned that it is important to understand what your tutee's short and long term goals are as an ESL student. This will help you customize your tutoring sessions to meet their needs. This is something Fatimah and I discussed in our mock interview. 

Date/Time: Thursday May 25, 2-2:50 Topic: Listening  Teacher: Ryan Flemming  Teacher Presentation: This class was a listening class. First, the class summarized a lecture they listened to about mob mentality. The teacher then went over how to write a summary with examples and practice. Then the students were tasked with writing an individual summary paragraph about the lecture they listened to. 

Date/Time: Wednesday May 24, 2-2:50 Topic: Listening  Teacher: Professor Kim Teacher Presentation: This class was a listening class. This class was about medicine, doctors, and the placebo effect. Students learned vocabulary relating to these topics. As the native speaker, I read a short reading out to the class. Then they watched and listened to a video about the placebo effect and answered related comprehension questions from a worksheet. 

 Date/Time: Wednesday, May 24th/3:00pm~4:00pm Location: Starbucks near CIES Topic/ Skill: Speaking(Let’s talk about your job) Writing a Paragraph(Do you prefer going to the mountains or to the beach?) Feedback provided to the tutee: I corrected my tutee’s grammatical errors in the past tense, double negatives, subject and verb agreement and passive and active voice forms. I helped her complete a narrative writing assignment. After we did some brainstorming, I helped her come up with some ideas and wrote a paragraph. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: My tutee had difficulty coming up with ideas related to the topic. She still has frequent pauses and hesitations but her speech is getting intelligible.

Last week I met with Khushi to help her out with SAT practice for the first time. She was to take the SAT just three weeks from that meeting, and wanted to work in as much practice as possible. We started with some reading comprehension questions, based on some short passages. I taught Khushi some test-taking strategies, like not reading the entire passage, just the first and last paragraphs and the first and last sentences of each body paragraph. This gave her enough information to answer most of the questions. She also highlighted some key phrases as we read. I encouraged her to skip over as much of the passage as she could, to save on time. After the reading passages, we worked on some syntax questions, like sentence parallelism and sentence style. These were significantly easier and Khushi was able to successfully answer every one. I think the biggest challenge for Khushi is not to get bogged down with unimportant details, especially words she does not know. I told her that if she ...

Since our last session was heavily focused on writing, I spent much of this session on conversation practice. It seems like he is starting to get more comfortable with his grammar in use and conversational skills. I noticed that he is starting to use more complex sentences and expand on his answers. For the past few weeks his responses have tended to be short and to the point, but today our conversation seemed to flow better. After the conversation practice, we did some timed writing practice. I gave him 10 minutes to write as much as he could about the rules of soccer. When going over his writing, I noticed that he tends to use run-on sentences. We worked together to find different ways to break his writing up into more coherent sentences. On another note, he also has a tendency to omit articles (which I have noticed in his speech as well) and to repeat 2 synonyms or phrases that have a similar meanings. I will try to develop some activities that can help in these areas. 

Ye-won and I finished our chapter book today (yay!). I was very happy with her engagement in the text, her reading comprehension seems to be improving. I found that it helps to ask immediately after we read the pages what happened and have her tell me in her own words what happened in the chapter. I really liked the chapter formatting of this book, it helped because I could ask Ye-won what she remembered from the first chapter, and then explain how chapters work and have her guess what is going to happen based on the chapter titles. Speaking is also going very well, it helps to discuss the chapters themselves, because she is able to associate words with their meanings once we start discussing what happened overall. 

Today Wonyoung and I talked through the different types of interrogative sentences. He had some trouble with the intonation differences between yes/no questions and open-ended questions, but this is definitely something that can be achieved through further conversation. Otherwise, I sent him home with my detailed notes on the different types of interrogative sentences and their structures, and we discussed some other problems he was having in his classes. I have both verb tenses and adjective/noun clauses that we are going to cover next week, but otherwise, he seems to be benefiting most from the speaking to help with his grammar in use. 

On Monday I continued SAT prep with Khushi. We read through three articles: one history, one social sciences and one natural sciences and completed the corresponding reading comprehension questions. Khushi had trouble with some of the words in the questions, like "contextualize". Once I defined some of these, she was able to accurately answer the questions for all three passages. On each practice set, Khushi received a 10/11. The three that were missed, I must admit, were second-guessing on my part. I gave Khushi some reading strategies last session, which included reading only the first and last paragraphs as well as the first and last sentences of each of the body paragraphs. This session, when reading through the whole passage, I encouraged Khushi to summarize in her own words each paragraph, especially for questions which asked about general overviews or how the authors connects ideas together. Though difficult, when I helped her to summarize, we were able to answer quest...

 5/23/2023 Hours: 1 For this session, we talked more about cultural expectations in Korea, specifically about punctuality. She told me a story about how she went "crazy Korean mom" at her son's principal for giving him an "unexcused early leave." She asked if attendance was a big deal in the US and explained that in Korea, students are expected to have perfect attendance records. She works for admissions at the university she works at in Korea and said that if a student has one or more absences, they are less likely to be accepted. I explained to her that though attendance is stressed, it is not as heavily emphasized and doesn't really affect you or your prospects of getting accepted into university unless it is an excessive number of absences. We also had a long discussion on the treatment of women in Korea. As with everywhere, many unfair expectations are placed on women, in Korea, it is more rigid and enforced, as Confucian ideals heavily influence Korean...

5/18/2023 Hours: 1 For this session, he talked more about his job as a journalist and Korea. He said that at first he was spending half the year in Korea and half the year in the US and then eventually decided to quit his job to be in Tallahassee with his family. He explained that it is very unusual in Korea for the husband to be the stay-at-home spouse, as it is usually the other way around. In Korea, it is expected that the wife is the one to be making sacrifices or adjustments for her husband. He said he was offered a position in the United States for the company he worked for but they would've had to relocate to Los Angeles, so he ultimately rejected the offer after considering it. He learned the phrase "turn[ed] down" which means to reject/decline. 

 5/18/2023 Hours: 1 I met with Sujin and she told me her plans to visit Charleston, South Carolina for the next weekend. She is planning a short trip with her son and husband and she explained that she is very interested in local history. I've noticed that she has gotten better at monitoring her speech, she will slow down for some words and pronounce them deliberately and slowly, especially words with repeated consonants like "competitive." We also talked about the kind of music that we listen and we bonded over how we listen to pretty much everything. 

On Saturday Yewon and spent about half the session reading, and the other half talking about what we read about, as well as had some general conversation for the other half of the session. She is doing very well reading the text, she mostly does not need me to read the story with her. We are focusing mostly on comprehension, which she seems to be catching on to, but generally understanding vocabulary has been very good so far.

 Yesterday I met with Aaron for our second tutoring session; we discussed countable and uncountable nouns but additionally did some mock conversations. One thing I did to make sure Aaron understood concepts was use what we discussed in impromptu questions. For our next session, Aaron wants to do some dialogue practice using this website called Naver. For the next session, I'm going to create a more thorough lesson plan. 

 Today me and Ashwaq had our 6th tutoring session together. We spent the first 20 minutes doing practice with the past continuous and past perfect continuous tense. To do this, I gave Ashwaq a list of about 15 sentences in the present tense and then had her convert them to the past tense. After that, we went over the different categories of adverbs and what they are all used for. We focused mainly on the ad verbs of practice and did some excersises doing fill in the blanks. Once that was finished and me and Ashwaq both felt that she had a good understanding of the adverbs of manner, we used the rest of the time to start going over adverbs of time. 

Date/Time: May 19 @ 12-1 PM Location: CIES Building  Topic/Skill: Direct and Indirect Articles Feedback provided: In this lesson I used the elements that Fatimah struggled with in the last tutoring session and incorporated them into this lesson. Definite and indefinite articles were the focus of the lesson. First I defined what definite and indefinite articles are and then I provided Fatimah with two fill in the blank worksheets to practice using the different articles.  Lesson about tutoring: I learned that it is important to actively note in your mind what your tutee is struggling with in order to incorporate those deficits into your next lesson.

 Date/Time: May 18 @ 12-1 PM Location: CIES Building  Topic/Skill: Writing Feedback provided to tutee: In this session, Fatimah and I discussed the elements of writing a story. I discussed key vocabulary such as what a character, setting, plot, theme, conflict, point of view, and more are in a story. I provided Fatimah with an excerpt from the first page from the first Harry Potter book, and we identified the previously mentioned vocabulary found in this excerpt. Afterwards, I had Fatimah write a short story using the elements of a story we had been discussing. I read and provided feedback to her short story with most of her issues arising from small grammatical errors.  Lessons about tutoring: From this session I learned that is important to be able to adjust your tutoring plans quickly. Certain elements of a lesson may be shorter/longer than the time that was allocated for that activity. In this scenario, a good tutor must be able to provide additional explanation or be...

 Yesterday I had my 5th tutoring session with Ashwaq. For this session, we went over a class activity she did in her grammar class which she struggled with. She had to watch a video and create sentences using adverbs and adjectives as well as using all the different grammar tenses. When going over the worksheet, I noticed that she had the most difficulty with the past tenses so we decided that that is what we will go over today. Aside from the past tense, Ashwaq was having trouble with the use of adverbs. The main issues were the spelling and placement of the adverbs so we will also be working on that today.  Overall, I am feeling more confident in my ability to actually teach someone and am more comfortable with the teaching itself. 

 Date/Time: Wednesday, May 22nd/12:00pm~1:00pm Location: CIES building Topic/ Skill: Grammar (adjective, adverb) Feedback provided to the tutee: I explained the concept and usage of adjectives and adverbs. I helped my tutee make example sentences with adjectives and adverbs. With my help, she could finish the final exam practice sheet. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: ESL student couldn’t tell the difference between adverbs and adjectives. She needs to practice making more sentences with adjectives and adverbs.

 Date/Time: Wednesday, May 22nd /11:00pm~12:00pm Location: CIES building Topic/ Skill: Grammar (the five patterns of sentence structure) Feedback provided to the tutee: I explained the five patterns of sentence structure to my tutee. The five patterns are as follows: Subject + Verb, Subject + Verb + Subject Complement, Subject + Verb +Object, Subject + Verb + Indirect object + Direct object, Subject + Verb + Object + Object Complement. I provided my tutee with example sentences of each pattern. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: ESL student has little knowledge about the patterns of English sentences. She needs to be more exposed to the basic patterns of English sentences.

Abraheem came to our third meeting on Thursday hoping to work on revising the concluding paragraph in his paper. This was definitely my most challenging tutoring session because it required me to really break down the writing process and truly teach. Up until this point, I felt like I was more of a helping hand, but this session really challenged my skills as an English teacher. I found the best way to work through this process with Abraheem was to talk through his conclusion and the potential directions he could take. I would offer suggestions that would push him in the right direction. For example, in the restatement of his thesis, he did not mention the two soccer players that his paper was about. I explained the importance of mentioning them in this sentence and he revised the sentence so that I mentioned them both by name. As we worked on his conclusion, I noticed that speaking his revised conclusion out loud while I wrote down what he was saying and provided feedback in the form ...

I really enjoyed watching Dr. Rios teach! I shadowed his morning composition class, and I believe the level was upper intermediate. During the class, Dr. Rios met individually with the students to go over the second draft of their essays. The essays were all basic, descriptive style essays, and could be about almost anything from my understanding. Since the students were having their second drafts critiqued, their thesis statement and paragraph organization was already mostly perfected. Most of the revisions Dr. Rios made were subject verb agreement issues or sentence structure errors. The thing that stood out to me the most about Dr. Rios's class was how quickly he was able to read over and correct a paper. He got to almost all the students in the 50 minutes, and gave each one very detailed and accurate feedback. I will definitely try to shadow another of Dr. Rios's classes next week because I love the way he teaches! He's a very chill guy and seems to love his job quite a...

               Another fun session with Maria! We chatted for a while at this start of this session, focusing mostly on things that happened in the past to let Maria practice using past tense. While we were chatting, I realized that Maria often has trouble maintaining a passive voice. For example, she would say something like "this morning, I woke up early and eat eggs for breakfast." She also didn't understand that while using a passive voice, it is still necessary to use the simple present form of a verb when when an infinitive phrase is used. Maria would say things like "After work yesterday, I walked to a trail to ran". We worked on use of passive voice for a while by speaking about our childhood, and Maria spoke about her sister a lot. Whenever she would make a mistake, I pointed it out and she could usually correct herself. At the end of the session we did some work on the difference between "nothing" and "anything", and I gave Maria a ...

                  This session with Youngjune was a really fun one! We started by chatting and telling a few stories and what not to warm up and get more comfortable. Then I had Youngjune try to explain something to me while I took notes on his mistakes, so we could go over them afterward. This was very fun because I learned that the reason we call computer glitches "bugs" is because back when computers were first invented, real bugs would crawn inside the tubes and chew the wires which would cause a glitch! After we went over Youngjune's mistakes, we read three poems and talked about them after. Youngjune learned some new vocab and he especially liked "O Captain my Captain" by Walt Whitman. This is still Youngjune's favorite exercise to do, and I think it's great because he gets practice reading, speaking, and he gets new vocab as well! The last thing we did was to go over all the different ways we can use the verb "get" in english...

For this session, we started out chatting for a bit like usual. Then I we started talking about the types of past tense verbs. We went over example of all of the past verb tenses, and I found a worksheet that we could do together that would solidify the information. During the worksheet it became evident that Maria needs help using the simple past tense. Instead of using simple past she usually just uses past continuous to avoid having to use any irregular verb forms. Since sometimes it is necessary to use the simple past tense, we did two worksheets using simple past tense to get Maria more comfortable with irregular verbs. I also pulled up the sheet I have her last tutoring session with the common irregular verbs in case she needed help. We focused on simple past tense for about 30 minutes, and by the end Maria was a lot more comfortable using this verb tense. It was a very productive session!

     It was a pleasure to meet Youngjune! We started off the session by getting to know eachother a bit and just chatting. Youngjune from South Korea and is at FSU with his girlfriend who is also doing CIES! Youngjune studies computer science back in South Korea, and is currently working remotely as a software engineer. While chatting we discussed Youngjunes goals with English, and I got a good idea of some areas we could work on improving. It turns out that Younjune's biggest goal is to have a high enough level of English to be able to rent a car in the United States, which I thought was a very interesting goal. He also loves Korean poetry, and wants to be able to read and understand English poetry. Youngjune can usually understand English when it is spoken to him, but he has difficulty producing speech himself. I decided that the best thing to do for now would be to get Youngjune to speak as much as possible in our sessions. To finish off the session, we read two short ...

     For our second session, we started out by chatting for a few minutes like before to warm up. During this time I don't really try to correct her English at all in order to lower her affective filter. It's also honestly just because it's nice to talk, Maria is a very smart and funny person! When we got into the actual session, I noticed that Maria was making a few errors with countable and uncountable nouns, so we went over the difference between the two and I found a worksheet online which we worked through together. Maria picked it up quickly so we didn't spend too much time on this. We also did a quick review on definite vs indefinite articles because Maria said she wanted a refresher. We finished off the session by going over a few common colloquialisms, but the one we spent the most time on was "agreeing vs disagreeing with something". For example, you can say "I agree with" or "I disagree with" and idea or concept. Overall it was a...

In this session we mostly just talked and got to know each other a bit. Maria is from Bogota, Colombia, but has been living in the U.S. for about two years with her boyfriend. She works in the real estate industry, and wants to improve her English to become better at her job. Maria is already an amazing English speaker, but wants to work on pronunciation, grammar, and comprehension of colloquialisms. In the first session, we did a bit of work on simple past because whenever Maria uses past tense, she usually uses past continuous instead of simple past. At the end of the session, I gave her a list of 50 commonly used irregular verbs so she could practice her usage of simple past for next session. It was a super fun time and I learned a lot!

 Students were given a worksheet on conditionals, in their past couple of classes they discussed the different types of the conditional tense. The worksheet was broken into three sections in order to foster a classroom discussion and have students share their answers out loud. Dr. Kennell walked around the classroom while the students completed the worksheet in order to ensure students were making progress on it, if he saw mistakes he'd help students to correct them. He also made sure to read the instructions out loud to make sure all of the students had a clear understanding of what they had to do.  One technique he used to correct students was repeating what they said back to them with a questioning intonation in order to encourage students to correct themselves.  What I learned: Rapport is huge in the classroom setting. Learning occurs best when students are comfortable enough with the teacher to make mistakes. The affective filter in language learning is huge because ...

Last week I had Do-jun submit some writing samples to me to assess his understanding of grammar. I wrote feedback on the writing sample before the class started and reviewed it with him making sure to stop and ask if he had any questions. Speaking about the feedback and the way he worded his sentences enabled him to get a better understanding of the semantics of the English language and he was able to catch some of his own mistakes.  We also discussed an article I had him read before class. I modeled reading it out loud and then he read the last couple of sections of the article. As I was reading it I had him stop me to ask questions about vocab/phrases he didn't understand then I explained it to him. Next class, Do-Jun is going to submit another writing sample for us to discuss and we're going to discuss another article as well. I'd like to go over a video as well too since Do-Jun's English is at an upper-intermediate/advanced level. 

Yesterday I had my second tutoring session with Ye-won. For this session, we read "Fancy Nancy it's Backward Day!". After our first session, I became more familiar with Ye-won's reading level, and I believe that this book was more level appropriate for her than the one we read during our first session. Before beginning the book, I asked Ye-won to guess what "Backward Day" was based on the illustrations on the front cover. She was able to get a good understanding of what the book was going to be about before we began reading. The book was a bit more challenging than "Goodnight Moon" and I was able to incorporate comprehension and vocab questions as we read. For example, I would pause to ask Ye-won to identify certain objects in the illustrations or to explain the meaning of some of the vocabulary words. I enjoyed being able to talk through some of the vocabulary and finding fun ways to help Ye-won remember the meaning of some of the words. For examp...

 Date/Time: Wednesday May 17, 2-2:50 Topic: Listening  Teacher: Professor Kim Teacher Presentation: This class was a listening class. First, the class learned about 5 idioms, their definitions and how to use them. The teacher gave many examples and reiterated the words until all students could recite them with competency. Then, the students listened to a clip from a movie with a dialogue worksheet to fill in the blanks. This was both entertaining and allowed the students to be exposed to new words and conversation elements. Sarcasm was one of the figures of speech that students were exposed to and the teacher expounded upon how and why it is used

 On May 10th, 2023 I met with Dojun Kim through zoom. Because it was our first session I spent most of it trying to get to know him, his level of English speaking, and his goals for our sessions. He is studying Innovation Transportation at an Aviation University in Seoul, South Korea where he currently lives with his wife and child. He currently works in flight control and is in the process of getting his flight dispatcher certificate. In his line of work he oftentimes needs to communicate with airline stations from different countries and English is the main default language that they can all communicate in. He studied English during highschool and middle school but has not had a formal form of study since then. He tries to incorporate learning English into his everyday routine by listening to the radio and documentaries in English. He says that what he struggles the most with and needs to utilize the most in his career field is speaking and listening in English. He does not curre...

 Yesterday afternoon I met for a third time with Maryna. We continued where we left off last with correct tense usage in forming hypotheticals, although this time we focused entirely on grammar. Maryna's main confusion lay in when to use the simple past or the present perfect. I modelled some sentences on a sheet of paper, and went over various examples as part of the activity. After demonstrating some different models, I used an inductive approach to explain the correct tense usage based on the examples. The main hurdle I realized came not with tenses, but with aspects. I figured out a pattern based on when perfective and imperfective verbs were used, and explained this to Maryna. I gave the explanation that imperfect verbs show incomplete action, while perfective verbs show completed actions. I tried using an example of an imperfective/perfective verb pair from Ukrainian, although this confused the point too much. Nevertheless, by the end of the session, Maryna was able to use th...

 Today I observed Dr.Felicia's level 4 reading class. We began the lesson with a schema-building activity, where the class discussed various kinds of storms and natural disasters. One student from Saudi Arabia spoke about the crazy sandstorms that they have back home, saying "Imagine a bad rain storm, but replace the water with sand". Other students talked about earthquakes, cyclones, and typical rain storms we have in the USA. Dr. Felicia did a great job getting her students engaged in the lesson through this schema-building activity. After this class discussion, the class read an article about the lightning capital of the country: Florida. A good chunk of time was given to the class to read the article; The first time the students read for comprehension, the second time students used highlighters to point out main ideas and notes in the margins, which will help them to paraphrase and summarize. After each time the students read, the students broke into groups and discus...

 Date/Time: Wednesday, May 17th/12:00pm~1:00pm Location: CIES building Topic/ Skill: Speaking(Let’s talk about your favorite class and your country’s current issues) Vocabulary Feedback provided to tutee: I taught my tutee new vocabulary(I got goosebumps, dictator, foreigners, alley, rescue team, refugees, steep, conservative, liberal, corrupt, etc.) I tried not to interrupt her while she was talking. After she finished her speech, I corrected grammar errors and provided words that were more proper in the context. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: ESL student has difficulty coming up with some words. However, she is making progress little by little.

 Date/Time: Wednesday, May 17th/11:00am~12:00pm Location: CIES building Topic/ Skill: Speaking(What did you do yesterday?) Vocabulary(adjectives to describe your feelings) Feedback provided to tutee: I taught my tutee adjectives to describe feelings(delighted, joyful, bubbly, content, marvelous, sorrowful, annoyed, irritated, tense, gloomy, miserable, frightened, terrified, ashamed, worried, timid, etc.) I provided correct forms for irregular verbs. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: ESL student has difficulty using the correct form for irregular verbs. ESL student has limited vocabulary.

 Date/Time: Wednesday, May 15th/11:00am~12:00pm Location: CIES building Topic/ Skill: Speaking(How was your weekend?) Grammar(will, be going to, present perfect tense, simple past tense) Feedback provided to tutee: I corrected my tutee’s grammatical errors in her speech. I explained the usage of be going to and will to help my tutee distinguish the difference between them. I encouraged her to speak without worrying too much about making mistakes. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: ESL student has trouble using simple past tense and present perfect tense. She often misused will and be going to in a sentence.

Wonyoung and I started by having a brief conversation about his trip to Wakulla last Friday, where I took notes on his biggest mistakes, and then we finished up covering our idioms. I quizzed him a bit on the statements we learned last week before we got into some of the new ones. He said he forgot, but in the end he actually remembered how to use them, which I am considering a success! After those, I decided to use a Grammarly course on how to structure interrogative sentences, and we went through the lesson together. I had previously prepared the differences in question sentence structure in English vs. Korean, which seemed to help him recognize the differences in how we pattern our questions. He was very confused with why we would use the verb "do" twice in a sentence (ie. Did you do this?), so next week I will bring some material to explain this phenomenon. 

 Date/Time: May 15th, 2023 / Olivia James Topic/Skill: Infinitives and Gerunds /Speaking Teacher Presentation: The teacher presented the usage of gerund and infinitive objects in sentences. The teacher provided model sentences with gerund and infinitive objects. Classroom Management: The teacher had the students make sentences with gerund and infinitive objects on the worksheet. The teacher encouraged the students to participate in the speaking activity with positive feedback, correcting errors and giving example sentences. Materials: Worksheets, Powerpoint, Whiteboard Students’ participation: The students made sentences with infinitives and gerunds in pairs. Feedback Provided: The teacher gave extra help to the students who had more difficulty understanding the activity. The teacher provided positive feedback and example sentences. Lesson on teaching you learned: The way EFL teachers provide positive feedback and have students participate actively in activities.

Date: May 17th Topic/Skill: Rebuttals and expressions to use when you agree/disagree with someone.  Classroom management: Student-centered, focused on students expressing their thoughts to the best of their abilities through group work.  Materials: Microsoft Word, whiteboard, handouts, YouTube videos Feedback: Had students express themselves and finish their thoughts completely before coming in with corrections. Further, after an extended discussion, the instructor addresses common mistakes and has the class correct the grammar together.  Lesson on teaching learned: Allowing students to express their thoughts completely, rather than interrupting and correcting them, can help the students feel more comfortable talking in the classroom. I liked the way the instructor brought common mistakes to the front of the classroom, this allowed students to be reminded of these rules, as well as provide feedback for themselves after realizing their previous mistakes. Further, they do n...

 Monday I had my first tutoring session with Fatima, who is around my age from Saudi Arabia. I was so eager for this session because I find middle eastern culture very fascinating, as it is so different from my own in America. We started the session by getting to know each other so that she would trust me as a teacher and also a friend! She told me all about her family who she moved with to America; Her husband is studying electrical engineering in the States and she also has two daughters - one 5 and one 2 years old. She told me that she will probably have 4 more kids, as middle eastern families are very big with lots of children. She was shocked when I told her I didn't want to get married or have kids until I'm 30 - saying "you won't be able to have kids then - you'll be too old!!" - I thought this was really funny, and showed just how different our two cultures are. She told me that speaking is her weakest subject and that this is her requested area for tu...

 For my second tutoring session with Ruth, we met via Google Meet. My first reaction to this session was that Google Meet is not a good option for English tutoring, especially for someone who is not learning at a very high level. It was hard for both Ruth and I to understand each other because we were not face to face, couldn't read each other's body language, and the online format made it harder to read lips and listen effectively. I will definitely keep this in mind moving forward - a good lesson to learn! Before this session, I created a Google doc with the outline of our activities/curriculum for the day: this included pronunciation activities, common English mistakes for Spanish speakers, and a culture section about Lousiana, her future home. We began by touching on a common mistake by Spanish speakers, one being the addition of the "e" sound to words that start with S. For example, Ruth would pronounce the word school, "eschool" - this is because Spani...

 I had my first tutoring session with Ruth last Friday and I loved every bit of it! We started the session by introducing ourselves and getting to know each other. I learned that she was born and grew up in Peru and decided to move to Spain later in life. She spoke of how beautiful Spain was and how delicious their food is. Her favorite food is ceviche, which I have never tried but will definitely dive into it this summer when I'm in Europe! She told me that she loves the United States and more specifically Tallahassee because of its weather, more spacious neighborhoods, and the very friendly people here. She said that she thinks it's funny how everyone smiles at each other and says hello because no one does that in Spain. I learned that Ruth is a very good English writer and reader, but has trouble with speaking and pronunciation due to her thick accent. That is going to be our main focus for tutoring - vocab, pronunciation, and day-to-day English, with some business terms as ...

 This Monday I observed Mr.Ryan's level 4 speaking class. Right off the bat, Mr.Ryan welcomed everyone into class and jumped into a discussion of how the class is going so far; I joined a group of 3 students, who said they have enjoyed the class, even though it was one of their harder subjects. They shared with me that they all have been working on a specific type of presentation called a "Pecha Kucha", where every slide on their presentation plays for 20 seconds and immediately moves on. This presentation style helps with concise language and getting straight to the point of the slide - a skill that will be very useful in real life! One student named Kushi presented her project on Interior Design, the route she hopes to pursue later in life. I noticed that she was very nervous to present, but did a fantastic job! I later spoke with her about the presentation and noticed that when she was speaking to me, she never tripped on her words, so this tells me that her English is...

 Date: May 17th Topic/Skill: how to use "I used to" and "I'm not used to" in context Classroom management: Mostly lecture based with encouraged class participation. Lots of questions asked towards the students to reinforce the meaning of the phrase and how it is used.  Materials: video and website explaining the uses of the phrase, song lyrics, handout given at the beginning of the week.  Feedback: Correction and guidance at the end of class if students needed assistance with their worksheet, as well as grading their worksheets as they finished so they could receive immediate feedback.  Lesson on teaching learned: Professor James was again very engaging and animated with the students, which assisted in their learning as it kept them entertained and engaged. The song lyric use was a good idea, as it helped put the phrase in use while also being a fun activity for students to engage in. Further, at the end of the class period we discussed how students would use a ...

 This past Tuesday I observed one of Dr. Kim's listening classes. This was the largest class which I have observed so far, which changed the dynamic a little. This meant that some students got off topic and could not follow along, and so Dr. Kim had to reign in the class and bring everyone back on-track a few times. She began the class with a lecture about neuro-marketing. She would pause the video at points to ask comprehension questions. She also had to remind the students to take notes, since some students weren't able to answer the questions from memory. She also asked for students' opinions to keep their interest in the material. The second half of the class focused on some short clips from the film "Father of the Bride". The clips were about hiring a wedding co ö rdinator for their daughter's upcoming wedding. In order to provide schema-building, Dr. Kim asked the class if the students had wedding co ördinators in their home countries. Students completed...

This past Monday I observed a reading class with Dr. Rios. He began the session with some grammar practice with pronoun usage. He employed a scaffolding technique by providing the sentences with blanks for the correct pronouns for students to fill in. He also gave the class a brief overview of the semantic difference between the verbs "lend" and "borrow". During a previous class, he had his students read an article about weather and answered reading comprehension questions later. To help answer the questions, which included a written summary, Dr. Rios used a KWL chart (what I know, what I want to learn and what I learned). Students already filled in the first two columns, and were asked if they wanted to add more facts or questions into the chart. Dr. Rios also asked the class if the questions within the what I learned could be answered by the text (some of which could not). To write the summary, Dr. Rios developed his own six-step process for students to follow. Th...

 Today was mine and Ashwaq's 4th tutoring session and we went over prepositions. We started off by going over all of the different prepositions and what they are used for. I noticed that she was having some trouble with the actual meaning of some of the words so I helped work out some of the definitions with her. After that, I went over the prepositions of time (in, at, on) and we did a few practice worksheets. At the end, I had her explain the difference between in, at, and on so I could see how well she understood the subject. Overall, I feel like Ashwaq is definitley starting to make progress and her grammar and use skills are continuing to improve. 

 Today I observed Dr. Rios working with a student one on one from group one. The student was practicing asking questions using the future and past tense while the more advanced student practiced responding. Dr. Rios made sure to give the student plenty of time to think through their replies and encouraged the student when he saw them trying. When mistakes were made Dr. Rios would offer feedback after letting the student express their idea. Dr. Rios was using the scaffolding technique, providing the student with as much support as possible, making sure to slow down his explanations and even speaking a little bit in the student's native language to help the student make connections.  Activities witnessed:  1) The speaking activity about the past and the future 2) Dr. Rios recorded speaking samples, played them back for the student to hear, transcribed them, and corrected the grammar slowly.  What I learned: It's important to make students feel comfortable making mistak...

 Date: May 15 Topic/skill: Thesis statements and persuasive writing Classroom management: Mostly lecture based with encouraged class participation. Lots of questions asked in terms of how persuasive writing is formatted as to reinforce the structure.  Material: Handout including sample essay, a worksheet for the students to write out the thesis statement and outline of the sample essay, a brainstorm worksheet with a mind map, and a final outline for their own essay. Feedback: Correction and guidance as to where to find the thesis statement and supporting details of the essay.  Lesson on teaching learned: While Professor James had some trouble getting students to be engaged (it was a 9:00am class and everyone seemed pretty tired), she maintained a consistent energy throughout the class and asked lots of questions to ensure that her students were paying attention to the lecture. From this lesson, I understand the importance of keeping your students engaged, even if they are...

On May 15th I met with Le Dinh Anh Tuan through zoom. Because it was our first session, I spent most of the hour getting to know him, his goals, and his previous and current experiences with learning English. He is from Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam and has been living with family members in the United States for a few months. He had been studying English for one to two years and will take classes at Tallahassee Community College so he wants to be able to take the class and understand what the instructor says. Currently he says that he studies and understands the grammar but when someone is speaking fast or in the academic setting, he struggles to understand them. I noticed that he struggles with some pronunciation, word order in sentences, vocabulary, and certain verb tenses, specifically past verb tenses. For the future activities I will focus on activities that are interactive and will involve improving his speaking and listening skills. 

Today I met with my tutee Aaron Choi at the Black Dog Cafe. I saw Sienna while I was there I believe. Aaron wants to get more practice speaking and to get more comfortable with casual English conversation more than anything. I'd say he's at a lower intermediate level presently. I'm going to have him send me writing samples to see what he's struggling with grammatically. Additionally, I'm sending him some level-appropriate readings in order to teach him some new vocab and expressions. 

 This morning I sat in on Dr. McHarek's grammar course. She reviewed the simple past, with just one student, so the class conducted itself as more of an individual tutoring session than a true class. The class began with a review of a previous classroom assignment. She then proceeded to a brief overview of the simple past, including the phonemic pronunciation of the "-ed" forms of verbs as well as a chart containing the most common irregular simple past forms. The student already knew and could accurately pronounce many of them. She then played a simple board game with dice with the student. When he landed on a tile, it contained a question which he had to answer. The student had difficulty understanding the questions and expressing himself. Dr. McHarek asked the student a few questions about his recent trip to Wakulla Springs, to which he was able to express himself a little better. The last activity of the class was a writing activity. This included two scenarios which ...

I had my first tutoring session with Ye-won last Friday, May 12th! I spent the first part of our session getting to know her a little bit. For this session, I brought "Goodnight Moon", which was a book I remember reading when I was around Ye-won's age. While going through the book, I noticed that while there were some challenging sentences, the book was on the lower end of the "level-appropriate" category. Whenever she had an issue with one of the words or sentences, I would guide her through sounding out or identifying the word by asking her to analyze the illustrations. One thing I did like about this book is that the second half of the book repeats some of the same sentence structures from the beginning. This allowed us to reinforce some of the corrections and gave me insight into what corrections she actually understood and acquired, and which ones she was still struggling with. Once we finished reading, we turned out attention to some of the illustrations. ...

I met with Abraheem for our second tutoring session on Thursday, May 12th. In order to incorporate both speaking and writing, I planned to spend the first half of our session on speaking practice. Using my own experience with language learning, I thought the best way to practice speaking with Abraheem was to simply have a conversation. If there were ever any errors, I made an effort to incorporate what he had said in my response but changed the phrasing in order to show him the correct grammatical structure. At times, he gave rather short responses, so I tried to encourage him to expand on his responses by asking for more details. Overall, this first half of our session gave me a better understanding of what methods for correction helped him best. I then turned our attention to writing. In our first session, he mentioned that writing was the most difficult linguistic skill for him. I wanted to use this session to conduct a sort of diagnostic and figure out what aspects of writing he ne...

 Date/Time: May 11th/1-1:50pm Topic Skill: Speaking Instructor: Sana McHarek During this class, the students focused on group discussion and the types of phrases that can be used during these discussions. Observing this class gave me a better understanding of how an instructor is supposed to monitor and evaluate a speaking course. I was able to learn about the different techniques a teacher can use to correct students' mistakes. This class was particularly helpful in terms of helping me feel more comfortable conducting my tutoring sessions. I now have a better grasp of how to go about correcting my tutee's mistakes, which I was able to put into practice during our second session. As mentioned before, this particular class was focused on group discussions and the instructor used this class as an evaluation. She conducted the evaluation by recording the conversation and taking notes during the student's conversation. Watching how the instructor went about evaluating the stude...

 Date/Time: Wednesday, May 10th Location: CIES building Topic/ Skill: Speaking(Something that frustrates you), Writing(Paragraph Writing) Feedback provided to tutee: I corrected my tutee’s grammatical errors in her speech and taught her new words and expressions such as same as usual, a foreigner, a used car, frustrated, selling a car, etc. I helped her write a paragraph, the title of which is The special event in your county. I assisted her in building sentences and checked her gramm ar errors. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: ESL student has limited knowledge of English words. She has trouble making sentences with new words. However, she is making progress little by little.

 Date/Time: May 10th, 2023 / Sana McHarek Topic/Skill: Speaking(important global issues and others) Teacher Presentation: The teacher started the class by introducing an English expression it’s not rocket science that can be commonly used in a casual conversation. The teacher showed motivational quotes about life and asked the students' thoughts about them. Then, the teacher introduced the main topic for group discussion. Classroom Management: The teacher timed the discussion. The teacher took notes while the students gave a speech about the topic. Materials: Worksheets, Powerpoint Students participation: Students brainstormed the topic and discussed their ideas about it with the group. Feedback Provided: After the discussion, the teacher provided grammatical error corrections. The teacher responded to the student’s speech with compliments and positive feedback. Also, the teacher provided error corrections for words. Lesson on teaching you learned: The way EFL teachers prov...

 Friday I had my first session with Do-Jun Kim, I did an assessment to gauge his English proficiency level. He has an upper-intermediate understanding presently. He stated that he needs more help with speaking and listening, so I recommended an app called HelloTalk to help him gain more conversational practice opportunities. He took English classes from middle to high school and a specialized course for his career field during college. He finds it difficult to consistently study due to his job and because he has other responsibilities.  Before our next session, I intend on having Do-Jun send a writing sample for me to assess and then go over any major mistakes with him during our session. Additionally, I'm going to have him pick a couple English articles to read and then go over troubling vocab or expressions. 

 Earlier today I met with Ye-won for the first time! We read a book called Dragon Dancing, with conversation throughout the lesson. She's a very strong reader, I think the book I chose was a good level for her, it had a good mix of words she may not have seen before on top of some that she already knew. I tried to have her look at the pictures and guess what the students were doing, and then I went through and read the sentences with her, and then had her try again by herself and tell me how the text connected to the images. Her reading comprehension is a bit shaky, she had some trouble telling me what the book was about at the end of the session, so I think I am going to focus more on reinforcing the story as we go through the book for the next session. 

 5/11/23 Hours: 2 For this tutoring session, we met for two hours. For the first hour, we talked extensively about the culture of learning English in Korea and why exactly English teachers are in such high demand. She explained to me that Koreans place a lot of value on a person who speaks English, as your ability to speak English is regarded as high-class. I explained to her that it is the same in my country, the Philippines, as well, and you can almost tell how much wealth a person has by how well they speak English and their accent when speaking English. We both lamented over the sadness of having English be placed above your native language, as I told her how a lot of higher-class Filipinos don't even really know how to speak or write Tagalog.  For the second hour, she gave me a presentation on her work at Samsung. I found it fascinating that one family can hold so much economic and political power. She gave me a rundown of what her job entailed and told me some very inter...

 5/9/23 Hours: 1 Since Sujin wants to work mostly on her conversational skills, I let her lead our discussion for the session. She told me about her passion for traveling, she has been to many different countries and cities and loves to experience the local culture and learn about its local history. She told me that her favorite places are Bangkok, Thailand, and Tokyo, Japan. She was giving me advice on what to do when traveling, especially which accommodations and amenities are especially crucial. In talking about Japan, we started discussing the tumultuous history between Japan and Korea, and how it affects Koreans until today. We discussed Japanese indoctrination, like how Koreans were forced to give up their names and switch to Japanese names. In the 90s, Korea banned all Japanese culture in Korea, especially pop culture, and as someone who loved Japanese culture, she had to acquire it in illegal ways, which I found very interesting. 

 5/11/23 Hours: 1 This was my second session with Kangjin Lee. Before he came to our session, he had prepared a short article about what we had discussed in our last session (his reasons for moving to Tallahassee and why he enjoys living in Tallahassee, an explanation of the politics of Korea and its relations with Japan, China, and the US). We went through the writing piece together and I gave him feedback on some grammatical mistakes as well as how he can better word some phrases or sentences. Then, we went through the piece and corrected his mistakes together, highlighting the modifications in yellow, then I sent the new document with the corrections over to him. After we edited the piece together, he presented me with a news article that he read out loud to me. I explained how to pronounce unknown words as well as explain its meaning, and tried to help him with his pronunciation of Rs and Zs.

 On May 8th at 9am I observed the composition course of Dr. Rios. He reviewed with the class the topic of their second written drafts. He also gave more detailed instructions on the expectations for how the essay should be completed. He went over any questions from students regarding the second draft as well as the common mistakes from students which he explained the corrections of in further detail. During the class the students worked on their third drafts. The class was self-paced as the students were allowed to write at their own pace. During the class as students worked further on their essays he would call students to his desk and go over with them their mistakes and gave advice on how they should correct the errors. He always made sure to also address the aspects of their essay that were correct or well-written. He would use a code as commented on their papers with acronyms such as DEL for delete.  Towards the end of class he asked students to submit their corrections....

 5/9/23 Hours: 1 This was an introductory meeting with Kangjin Lee. He is also an older student, he is 47 years old and used to work as a journalist and broadcast producer in Korea for a news organization. He graduated from Yonsei University, which is Korea's #2 university. Like my other tutee, Sujin, he wants to better improve his conversational skills, focusing on intonation and pronunciation in English. We discussed his reasons for moving to Tallahassee, and he explained that the natural environment of Korea is very toxic. Because of its close proximity to China, a country with very poor air quality, as it contributes to half of the world's CO2 emissions, it was very harmful to his and his daughters' health. He talked about how his daughters had respiratory issues in Korea, which disappeared after only three days in Tallahassee. We also discussed the toxic educational expectations of Korea, as students do not have time to live life for anything other than academics and t...

 Group 4 Listening with Olivia James 5/11/23 This class focuses on the students' ability to listen and understand English in conversation/lecture. Prior to this class, they had a guest speaker, Joshua Morgan, who deals with issues regarding plagiarism at the university. After his presentation, the students compiled a list of questions for him to answer, they included questions on the cultural differences of plagiarism and how one can avoid being flagged for plagiarism as sometimes students truly don't believe or know that what they're doing is considered plagiarism. One of the big questions they had was how AI, especially ChatGPT, influences how students get flagged for plagiarism. During this class, the professor had them finish the documentary AlphaGo, which is about the number 1 Go player who had to play against AI and only won 1/4 games. Afterward, they discussed key phrases from the movie, especially how the people in the documentary use human expressions and idioms to...

 I met with Ashwaq again today and we prepared for her quiz she has in reaidng class tomorrow. First, she asked me to help her do a fill in the blank vocabulary activity. At first, I noticed a lot of the grammar was wrong but she said that since the quiz is just on vocabulary, we didn't have to worry about grammar. After that, she asked me to help her write a summary for an article that they read in class. First, I explained what a typical summary is in American writing and then we made an outline together so that she was able to turn that into a summary with complete sentences. 

 Group 3 Composition with Olivia James 5/9/23 For this lesson, the focus was on the proper use of commas and quotation marks. In the beginning of the class, the professor presented students with a PowerPoint explaining how to properly use commas, and explained the four core comma rules. The professor then explained how to use quotation marks, focusing specifically on when to put commas in quotation marks and where. This class was very group-work oriented, and she paired students up and gave them a narrative essay to revise. The piece did not have any commas in them and the students had to figure out where the commas went and which rule it applies to.  Students work mostly on narrative writing in this class. The professor currently has them working on a narrative essay on a trip that was memorable for them and has them submit their work in drafts.

 For my last class observation, I observed Dr. Ciappetta's reading group 4 class. In class, they were going over a reading assignment for an article about international students. Being that this is the first group 4 class I have observed, I noticed the different level of language between the instructor and the students. Even just in regualr conversation I saw how the pace of speaking was similar to how we speak in day to day conversation. The class for the most part was just the students reading a lengthy article. Students were told to markdown the vocabulary they didn't understand and were not encouraged to look the words up online. Instead, they would use context clues of the other vocabulary that they knew and were able to look up words they still did not understand at the end. 

 Yesterday I met with Wonyoung for our second session. Based on his interests and what he wants to work on, I decided to go over some American idioms in order to help encourage conversation and explain an aspect of American English that he wanted to learn more about. I started with a conversation about his week for about ten minutes, and I noticed again he mixes up when it is appropriate to use the infinitive vs. gerund, so I might go over this with him in future sessions. Otherwise, for the rest of the session, we discussed popular idioms American English speakers use. After explaining and providing an example, I would have him try to use the idiom himself. It was both challenging and very entertaining for both of us, as Wonyoung and I ended up comparing some aspects of American and Korean culture throughout the session. Ultimately, he was able to practice his grammar in use while also learning about American idioms, and I was able to better understand more aspects of the language...

Date: May 10th  Topic/Skill: Reading Teacher Presentation: Professor McHarek went over vocabulary words and explained how they were used, as well as had a group reading activity prepared for class.  Classroom management: Encouraged active participation by asking questions about the vocabulary and having the students tell her what the readings they covered were about, as well as defining the vocabulary words based on context clues.  Materials: Reading passage online, Frindle books and audio recording Feedback: correction and guidance through emphasizing context clues Lesson on teaching learned: By emphasizing context clues the students are able to draw their own conclusions as to what words mean, which will ultimately make it much easier when reading in the future because they do not have to rely on looking up meanings whenever they come across a word they do not understand. 

Date/Time: May 4th 2023  Topic/Skill: Listening  Teacher Presentation: Professor Kim showed a video clip and broke down idioms and word usage from the clip. E.g. explained the difference in believe & trust, explained "settle down", independent vs. dependent etc.  Classroom management: Encouraged students to ask her questions directly and in English. Encouraged students to talk as much as possible by calling on them and opening up a dialogue about cultural differences from country to country.  Materials: Handout with dialogue from the video, video clip from movie scene, projector, and whiteboard.  Student Participation: Had students make example sentences with concepts being explained.  Feedback provided: Corrections were made when needed.  Lesson(s) on teaching you learned: It's important to call on students in order to have them practice their English. Additionally, having students talk about themselves is a good technique to get them to practice ...

 Today I observed the group 3 grammar class today. The students were doing a writing activity using common gerunds. To do this, they did the same thing as the other class I observed where they wrote each sentence on a different powerpoint slide. The instructor having full access to these slides, went in and made corrections where necessary. I noticed that she sometimes gave the direct correction, but when students made mistakes on gerunds or grammar specfically, she just gave feedback. I think this is a good method because it focuses the students on the purpose of the writing activity. The homework assignment for this lesson was to complete the feedback and corrections that the students had on their powerpoint.