FSU TEFL 120 Certificate Course_Summer, 2023

           This was my last session with Maria :(. This session was over zoom since Maria was out of town. It was very nice of her to do the session with me this way! We started off by chatting for a while and then moved into some random stuff. We did a bunch of pronunciation work in this session, and even some tongue twisters! This was a pretty casual session, so we just cad a conversation and I made some minor corrections as we went along! 

         This was another hour and a half session with Maria! To start off we chatted for a while and I corrected her as she told me stories. Next Maria said she wanted to work on prepositions, so we did a few preposition worksheets and talked about when to use which preposition. Maria struggles a lot with prepositions, because there are not always set rules on which preposition to use. 

             This was my first time meeting with Maria in a while because she was busy studying for the realtor test. To start the session, we caught up for a while and she told me about the test. After this we did a quick refresher on the passive voice (at the request of Maria). We covered when to use to passive voice in a sentence (weather or not the action is being done to the subject or by the subject). This took us a bit and we went through a few worksheets. After this we did some practice in quick conversation and then she had it! To finish up we did some practice with simple past verbs (irregulars).

            Since this was our last session together, we decided to do something fun, so I took Youngjune and his family to the rock climbing gym here in Tallahassee! This was an amazing time. Me and Youngjune were able to talk and hang out and I taught him some climbing and movement based vocabulary. It was also nice to meet his wife and her son! I will miss Youngjune alot, it was very nice to get to meet him and I hope he has a good time in Tallahassee :) 

     This session was an hour and a half and we focused on pragmatics and sayings. We started the session off with some conversation, then we read a few simple poems. During this session I tried to correct Youngjune more than I had before because he is becoming more fluent by the day and I knew he could handle more correction. I would have him tell me a story and then write down all the mistakes me made, and we would go over them after he was finished. 

       For this tutoring session, youngjune and I again mostly just talked for the first part. We walked around campus together and I showed him some of my favorite spots. For the second part of the session we sat down and focused on word choice. We did a work choice exercise and also a preposition exercise. Youngjune struggles with identifying the correct preposition to use in certain circumstances.  

              During this session me and Youngjune mostly just talked about various things. We also read some poems for vocab and pragmatics practice. Other than that we discussed music alot and showed eachother some fun stuff!

 I reviewed when to use have vs have got with Do-Jun and then discussed when to use have got vs I got. To help Do-Jun solidify the concept I made up practice scenarios to have him practice forming sentences and responding accordingly. After discussing those concepts we reviewed the Present Perfect Tense and then I taught Do-Jun about the Past Perfect tense. Lastly we ended the class by discussing American culture specifically the concept of "Personal Bubbles" and why Americans like their space. 

 I met with Aaron Choi yesterday. We reviewed the present perfect tense for the majority of the class. The formula of has/have + past participle was helpful for reviewing the content. Additionally being able to reference my old slides made the review process a lot easier because I could see what Aaron struggled with in our prior sessions. Aaron found covering the past perfect tense challenging which in turn taught me that for low intermediate/B1 English learners concepts such as the present perfect tense and past perfect tense need to be stretched out across multiple lessons. 

Last afternoon, I met with Khushi for an hour to do our last session together. We just met at the Union for conversation practice. The other day, Khushi returned from Tampa for her sister's wedding. I was asking her about the wedding, and she was describing how elaborate Hindu weddings are with a series of rituals which span over a whole week. These include some kind of ritual involving turmeric powder and henna stenciling on the hands. To provide for some schema-building, I asked Khushi whether she was a bridesmaid. She told me that that tradition carries over into Indian culture as well. She comes from a big family, so her sister had many bridesmaids including Khushi herself.  Khushi asked me some questions about what my role as a tutor included, and I told her about these blogs which we write for all of our sessions. I let her scroll through some of our more recent meetings, and she was amused by some of the comments I left about her performance in class. Overall, Khushi was ver...

 On June 26th, at the beginning of my final tutoring session with Dojun Kim, he discussed how the past weekend he went to a shopping mall with his nephew. I was surprised to learn that some malls in South Korea have the same food court businesses as those in the United States such as Auntie Anne's. For the rest of the session, I taught him informal American contractions. I would first state the contraction and then have him state the original words and then make a sentence with them. He was quickly able to understand the patterns of the contractions and correctly create sentences with them. I explained how the contraction c'mon can also be used as an expression of exasperation. I told him about how some contractions are used as catchphrases such as "I oughta slug you" from Charlie Brown and "whatcha doin" from Phineas and Ferb . I also introduced him to the food s'mores and came up with a phrase for him to remember a contraction with the phrase "I ...

On June 20th, Dojun Kim told me about what he had done the past weekend. He had socialized with his friends and found out that they would need to wait until the end of the year to extend their housing contract. He also told me that now there is Costco in South Korea and he described how it is similar and different to the one he went to in the United States years before. We had a discussion about how American businesses in foreign countries compare to those in the United States. He was surprised to learn that most of the menu items and ingredients for the Burger King and Mcdonald's in South Korea are different from those in the United States. At the end of the session, I taught him common American hand expressions. He was already familiar with most such as the thumbs up but laughed when I taught him about the Star Trek hand gesture that is commonly referenced in American films and TV shows. 

On June 14th, the first part of the session with Dojun Kim was spent as conversation practice. He described how he and his wife were going to try to extend their housing contract. He explained how in South Korea it is difficult to sell a house, and that when people rent a house they pay it yearly instead of monthly. He explained to me how the renting process in South Korea is similar and different from the renting process in the United States. I then asked him about the one trip he took to Seattle, Washington in the United States for two weeks and the places he had visited. As I used to live there I recommended to him popular places to visit and famous foods in Seattle such as clam chowder. After we finished the listening exercise that we had started yesterday I tested him on advanced prepositions and prepositional phrases. He understood most but I had to explain to him the words "besides" and "though" as well as the various ways they can be used as prepositions and...

 On June 13, I tested Dojun Kim's pronunciation skills. I tested him on the common words and sounds that people from South Korea make mistakes with. I was impressed to find that he successfully pronounced every word and phrase with ease. I then did a listening exercise with Dojun Kim. I had him read the first chapter of The Little Prince . I would read it to him paragraph by paragraph without providing him with the reading material. After every paragraph, I would stop to ask for any questions. In order to check his comprehension I would repeat an advanced word or phrase and define it. If he was unable to correctly define it I would explain it to him in more detail. Before moving on to the next paragraph, I would ask him comprehension questions. Before giving him the answers to the comprehension questions I would first refer back to parts of the text that contained the answer within it. He mostly struggled with words about animals such as "boa constrictor," as well as ...

 The first part of the session with Dojun Kim was conversation practice. After I asked him about what he would be doing that weekend he explained what his family would do to celebrate his daughter's birthday. He was going to buy bread and a cake from the Paris Baguette bakery. Only his wife, his daughter, and he were going to celebrate the birthday at home. However, at sc,hool they would be giving goodie bags to the other students. He had said that they would also sing her "Happy Birthday" and buy decorations for the house including a sign that said "Happy Birthday." I was surprised to learn about how similar modern celebrations of birthdays are to those in the United States. As we discussed the celebration of holidays in the United States and South Korea he told me that at weddings in South Korea, it is common for the guests to give money at a table before they enter. If people did not give a certain amount of money they are generally considered "stingy...

At the beginning of the meeting with Dojun Kim, he asked me about the tipping culture in the United States. I explained to him about tipping culture, why people tip, and what are the general customs when tipping. He explained to me how it does not occur in South Korea and that many find it confusing. During my explanation of tipping, I also explained to him new vocabulary words that I had used such as "tact" and "taboo." For the rest of the session, I tested his pronunciation and reading comprehension skills by having him read the first few pages of the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone . I would read every other paragraph. After every paragraph, I would check for any questions and then correct his pronunciation mistakes and define new vocabulary words before asking him comprehension questions. I realize that his conversation skills are very advanced despite his hesitations. I enjoy these conversations because I myself learn about a differen...

 I began the session with free conversation practice. I had noticed that in past sessions he would sometimes misplace adverbs so I explained to him the irregular forms of adverbs. I then created fill-in-the-blank exercises with complex adverbs. He understood most of the adverb explanations and exercises with very few exceptions. I then had him do a free-write exercise on what his favorite holiday in South Korea is. I gave him ten minutes to write as much as he could. At the end of the ten minutes, he had written a few sentences describing how the South Korean celebration of the New Year was his favorite holiday. Because his writing did not have many details I asked him to describe to me further why it was his favorite holiday and how he celebrated it with his family. In the writing he had misused the past tenses a few times so I explained the four past tenses to him again with examples and then gave him fill-in-the-blank exercises to complete. 

 On this day I decided to test Dojun Kim's skills on using the past and future tenses in conversation. I first tested his use of the past tense by asking him what he had done the past weekend. He demonstrated skilled use of the past simple and the past continuous as well as limited use of the past perfect and past perfect continuous. I then tested his conversational use of future tenses by asking him what he would do the next weekend. He was able to use the future simple and future continuous with ease. I tested his use of the conditional tense by asking him where he would like to travel. He was also able to use the continuous tense with ease. The last part of the session was spent as more free conversation practice as he talked about how he would like to travel to Guam. He was surprised to learn that I knew of Guam and had lived there. He then told me about how while most Americans do not know of it, it is a very popular vacation destination for people in Asia.

 On June 20th I met with Anh Tuan Le and helped him to complete the short-answer comprehension questions from the same reading we had gone over the day before. Whenever he struggled to understand what the questions were asking him I would rephrase it and refer to aspects of the text that it discussed until he understood what the question was asking him to do. One of the questions he struggled with asked him to use a real-world example that connected with a certain part of the text. I would have him to look at what aspects of the text the question referred to and what the real-world example connected with. I would also explain and define keywords that he did not understand or explain the keyword in the context of the text. Throughout the session, I would ask him to give me examples or explain the question to me in order to check his comprehension before I explained it to him. At the end of the session, I taught him common American hand gestures such as air quotes. 

 On June 19th, I met with Anh Tuan Le. I asked him for an update on his classes at TCC and if he was having any difficulties but he had said no. I also asked what he had done the past weekend. He asked me to guide him as he answered questions from a reading comprehension CIES assignment. He had already answered the multiple-choice questions and asked me to look over them. Whenever I saw an answer that looked incorrect I would ask him to refer back to the text instead of giving him the answer. I realized that he had struggled to understand the text while reading it. To help him further understand it I would ask him to look for keywords in the question and answer choices and to look at what parts of the passage included and discussed those keykeywords words. If he still had difficulty in understanding the text, I would explain to him the definition of certain kew words and explain in simpler terms what the passage was saying by breaking down key sentences for him. At the end of the l...

On June 14th, I met with Anh Tuan Le. I began the session by asking him about what he had done that past weekend and how he enjoyed his new class. He did not have anything specific that he wanted to work on or that he had been struggling with in his classes so I tested him on his listening comprehension skills. Without giving him the reading material, I myself read the first chapter of the novel The Little Prince . Every paragraph I stopped and would ask him for the definition of the keywords I had read. If he did not understand some of the words I would explain their textbook definition and how they were used in the context of the sentence. I would then read the paragraph again and then ask him some reading comprehension questions. I had begun by speaking at a slower-than-normal pace, but because he was able to understand most of the vocabulary and correctly answer most of the comprehension questions I gradually began to speak at a normal and slightly above-normal pace. He was still a...

             On June 7th I met with Anh Tuan Le in person. As usual, I started the session with conversation practice as I asked him about his future plans for the weekend and corrected his use of the future tense. Anh Tuan Le wanted me to guide him as he completed a homework assignment that tested his writing skills. The assignment asked him to write a short story and specified that he needed to use a certain amount of specific compare and contrast, as well as cause-and-effect, transition words. First, I ensured that he understood the instructions then had him write the sentences. He was frequently confused about how to use the transition words. I would reassure him whenever he could not think of any sentences with the words. I would explain to him how to use the transition words with an in-depth explanation, and then ask him to create his own examples in order to check his comprehension. If he was incorrect I would explain the definition of the trans...

              On June 6th I tested Anh Tuan Le about irregular plural forms, irregular preposition placement, types of formal and informal transition words and patterns, and the differences between irregular plural and singular forms. These were all aspects of grammar that he had most commonly made errors in an essay's first draft. I would list the common words and phrases and ask if he was familiar with them and understood them. If he did not I would explain it to him. I then created fill-in-the-blank sentences with a word bank that he would complete if he had said that he did not understand the grammar rule or words. If he had said that he did understand it, I would ask him to create his own example sentence with the word or phrase. If he struggled or gave an incorrect example I would explain it in more detail and give him another example. I realized that he understood most of the rules and concepts but struggled with creating his own sentences ...

          On June 5th I met with Anh Tuan Le through zoom. I did exercises with him on prepositions and preposition placement through fill-in-the blank sentences that I gave him with a preposition word bank. For the most part all of his answers were correct. He then told me that there were some writing assignments that he wanted me to help him with. The writing assignments tested his use of past tenses such as the past progressive and the past simple. If he was confused about what he was supposed to do or how he was supposed to complete the assignment I would ask him for more details about what the teacher had instructed, and then help him to understand it more. If he made a mistake I would remind him about the rules for the past simple and past progressive. At the end of class, he had to make the corrections recommended by his teacher to his first draft essay that was due that night.  If he was confused about what the teacher wanted him to do I would expla...

On May 22nd, I met with Anh Tuan Le. I began the class by asking him about his weekend. We both talked about our weekend plans and I corrected him on his use of the past progressive. While he discussed his past and future weekend plans I corrected his pronunciation. After correcting his pronunciation I realized that he sometimes struggles with making the "r" sound among other pronunciation struggles. I then asked if there was anything he wanted to focus on that day. He said that for his CIES class, he wrote an outline for an essay. He asked me to help him determine if his outline made sense. I had planned an activity where he would read out loud a chapter of  The Little Prince but decided to focus on his assignment and then do my planned activity if there was time in the end. I needed to read and reread his outline a few times in order to understand what his points were in the outline and then after noting the errors in grammar and word order, I helped him to connect his idea...

We began today's session by playing a few word games. We played Pictionary and then I asked her to pick a word that begins with each letter of the alphabet. I was continuously asking her questions and facilitating conversation throughout the process. She seemed to really enjoy the activity. Afterward, we continued reading "Stellaluna". It has been a few weeks since we last read so I asked Ye-won to recall as much as she could by only using the illustrations. While reading, it seems that she is beginning to read the text at a faster pace. Also, based on her review of the book and her responses to the comprehension questions I asked throughout the session, her reading comprehension seems to be improving. 

 Today I discussed the present-perfect tense with Do-Jun. I had a presentation prepared and from what I could tell he had a good grasp of the content at the start of the lesson so what I was teaching was mainly review. My main takeaway from today's lesson was the importance of recognizing students' background knowledge and making level-appropriate lessons/pacing your presentation accordingly. I can only imagine what it'd be like working with a class of 10-plus students who all have different knowledge levels so it's important to start practicing this skill now.

 In my fourth tutoring session with Susana we went over modal verbs. One thing that has been really great about out tutoring sessions is that Susana always comes prepared with questions and tells me a day or two before what she wants to practice. Because of that, I have been able to continue making the presentations for her which she says is really helpful. After i gathered some notes and exmaples of modal verbs, i started the session with seeing how much she knew. After some general questions and practice, I gave Susana a more in depth lesson and then we were able to do more practice. I definitely say improvement from the beginning of the session so I am glad that the work we are doing is continuing to improve her english. Another thing I so love about these sessions with Susana is that she always tells me how she used what we practiced in her everyday life and how much more comfortable and confident she is with her speaking. This is definitley one of the things I was looking fowa...

 In my third tutoring session with Susana, she wanted to continue working on gerunds. I noticed in the previous session that Susana was getting confused with the gerund, infinitive, and the past continuous tense. After noticing that, I made a presentation and shared it to her email so that she had the notes. After doing so, I did my best to explain the difference in the three but it was honeslty more hard to explain than I expected. However, after doing a lot of different practice sheets, Susana was able to see the difference between the infinitive and the gerunds. Another thing I was able to help her with eas explaining when to use the infinitive with the 'to' infant and when to use it without. I think after doing this, Susana was more confident in her ability to speak in everyday conversation. 

 I met with Susana for the second time and she asked if we could review gerunds. To do this, I wanted to get a better understanding of what she already knew so she shared what information she learned from the teachers at CIES. After that, we did some conversation back and forth and I explained the general rules and uses of the gerunds. After I explained a majority of the gerund rules, we continued with the conversation and I could tell that the grammar aspect of it really started clicking which was honestly very exciting!

 06/20/23 Hours: 1 For this session, Kangjin wrote a piece on his time serving in the Korean Army. He told a story of how an employee at his golf club had given him a veteran's discount even though he did not serve in the US Army, and he expressed his surprise at how Americans hold veterans in high regard. 

 06/13/23 Hours: 1 Kangjin and I met at his golf club as he has expressed numerous times throughout our sessions that he really likes to play golf. He practiced his English by teaching me the fundamentals of golf and giving me a tour of the place and explaining the different parts of a golf course and how you would normally play since we only did the practice range. 

Yesterday I met with Maryna for two hours. We spent the entire time in conversational practice. Most of our conversation focused on our experiences living in Tallahassee and travels to other parts of the country and abroad. Maryna told me that she was coming to the tutoring session with only two hours of sleep from the previous night, but even so she performed very well. She lost her train of thought several times, but could always recollect her thoughts within ten seconds except for one or two times. It seems based on our conversation, that her listening skills are very good, although she told me that she has difficulty listening to podcasts in the car or during chores. She expressed an inability to concentrate on listening skills while multitasking, although she told me that this difficulty is present both with English listening comprehension and her native Ukrainian as well. One difficulty she expressed to me was the semantic difference between the phrases "in school" and ...

 Today Aaron and I discussed the present perfect tense. Predominantly class time was spent helping Aaron to solidify his understanding of could have, should have, and would have. We also discussed the formula for present perfect which is subject have/has plus past participle. In one of my earlier sessions when I tried explaining this concept it was a challenge because I didn't have enough rapport with Aaron to understand his learning needs, this time what helped was giving plenty of examples and then having Aaron try to make examples. 

 Yesterday I met with Susana for the first time and she asked me to teach her the Present Perfect tense. This was the first time I had completley taught someone a grammar tense so I was nervous at first but I thought the lesson went well. I made a powerpoint explaining the uses of the tense and how it is put together. Then I provided two practice work sheets. For our first meeting I think it went well and Susana seemed to have a good understanding of the Present Perfect by the end of our session. 

Date/Time: June 14, 12:30-2:30 PM  Topic/Skill: Reading/Comprehension What we did: This was my last tutoring session and I met with Fatimah. We first started by talking about how her presentations went and then worked for a while on various worksheets I brought. Some were matching vocab words to definitions, some were reading short passages and answering questions, and others had to do with grammar. After this we read a couple books I brought as Fatimah enjoys this activity. a lot it targets multiple skills at once.  What I learned: This tutoring experience was very valuable in helping me figure out what kind of methods work for me and for tutees of different levels. Initially I was anxious to tutor but I quickly realized that I'm simply relaying my knowledge to my tutees the best I can and practice will make me even better. All my tutees were great and I learned something from each one of them. I am grateful for the experience and hope to continue as an English tutor/teacher....

Date/Time: June 8, 3-4 PM  Topic/Skill: Reading/Vocabulary & Comprehension  What we did: Tidiane and I worked on some vocabulary words and questions that use the aforementioned words in context. We practiced pronunciation and also some ways to decipher certain words. For example, I told him that bio as a prefix indicates that the word has to do with a living organism such as: biology study of living things, biography a book about a person, etc. What I learned: I learned that when teaching English it is good to try to incorporate some strategies that YOU used when learning English like knowing that certain prefixes such as bio are a hint to what the word may mean. 

 Aaron and I discussed my presentation on making predictions about the future and idioms about candy. Aaron struggled most with making the predictions as it used new vocab that he wasn't familiar with. He was already familiar with a lot of the idioms about candy which is interesting because Do-Jun had the opposite reaction. What this session taught me is that advanced language learning international students will likely struggle with idioms more so than content/grammar points.

Date/Time: June 7th, 1-2PM  Lesson: Reading/Speaking  What we did: Fatimah and I read books that I got from the library as accurate pronunciation and building her vocabulary is a priority for her. Fatimah also went over her final presentation with me and she wanted to practice before class.  What I learned: Reading out loud is a great way to practice many skills such as pronunciation, intonation, speech rate, vocabulary and comprehension. 

Date/Time: June 7, 3-4PM Location: CIES  Topic/Skill: Speaking/Vocabulary   Feedback provided: I worked with Tidiane on his speaking and pronunciation skills as he had a presentation coming up and wanted to practice. I also helped him with some new vocabulary words from class he was struggling with. Lesson about tutoring: I have found that utilizing classwork should be encouraged in order to meet tutee's specific needs

Discussed the Harry Potter Houses and adjectives/traits used to describe each house. I provided the word and then encouraged Do-Jun to make an example sentence using the words. Discussing the words and when to use them took up most of the class time. At the end of class, I assisted Do-Jun in taking a sorting hat quiz to discover his Hogwarts house. One lesson I learned today was the importance of time management when lesson planning because I had too many slides for class today so I need to either cut down my slide counts or move at a faster pace. 

During our last tutoring session, I introduced Abraheem to Mad Libs, which is a story/word game that was popular when I was younger. I told him about how they were popular when I went to school and explained how they worked. We completed two different Mad Libs. For the first one, I went about it a little bit differently. I had him read the story and then fill in the blanks with words that fit the story. During the first Mad Lib, I noticed that he was having trouble with present participles and we took a break to go over how present participles are both used and formed. I also noticed that he sometimes has a hard time differentiating between adjectives and nouns. Once we finished the first Mad Lib, I had him complete a second one; but this time, we played the game how it was intended. I asked him to give me various words and when we had finished, I read the story to him. During the second Mad Lib, he did a better job properly using present participles.

 Earlier this Wednesday I met up with Khushi. Unlike earlier sessions where we focused on grammar and reading preparation for the SAT test, this session we focused more on conversational practice. Khushi was telling me about her recent trip to Tampa, as well as future trips there. We also talked about weather in Tallahassee, and I asked her some questions about how it compares to India. For part of the session, Khushi asked me to help her out with her application to TCC. She wanted me to look over the documents which she needed to submit as a second pair of eyes to make sure that she was uploading everything okay. Even though she requested my help, she was still able to figure out the basic details on her own without my aid. Although I'm sure that it is still difficult for her to navigate all of this paperwork, her abilities overall to function in day-to-day life appear to be very advanced. Perhaps the added pressure of applying to college has provided the necessary motivation to p...

 Do-Jun and I discussed making predictions, English expressions about sweets/candy, and then did a listening activity using a Willy Wonka clip. During my mini review of making predictions I introduced relevant vocab to build Do-Jun's schema, I then had him practice making predictions with some photos I had on a slideshow. After making predictions I had Do-Jun talk about what he saw in the photos to ensure he had the vocab he needed. We then discussed how Halloween is celebrated in the U.S. and I introduced sweet-themed expressions/terms.  What I learned: My preferred pedagogical technique is to have slide shows ready with lots of pictures so that I can reference them during my lessons. I think the visuals also help students to make connections more easily. 

 Yesterday I met with Aaron at Dirac Library, we used a friends episode to practice understanding pragmatics. I showed Aaron the video and then had a transcript ready for him so that we could review the information line by line and he could ask questions about different segments of the show scene. After explaining the scene we then discussed the future tense in terms of when to use WILL and BE GOING TO. One thing that I struggled to explain was the phrase BASED ON. I tried giving example sentences which didn't fully work but by the end of the session I think he understood it, I just had to keep giving examples. Repetition and providing examples is important for learning.

 I met with Do-Jun Tuesday, we reviewed past tense irregulars again and we worked through the activity that I prepped on giving directions, baseball expressions/idioms, and the listening activity. What went well was having a structured lesson and repeating/reviewing material from the last lesson as it helped Do-Jun to solidify his knowledge about past tense irregulars.

I had my final tutoring session with Ruth and it made me sad that it was our last time together! We talked a lot about our dreams for the future - as she and I are both moving to new places (Louisiana and Nashville). She told me that while moving is a new experience, she’s not particularly “excited” about it. Louisiana is a very different culture than that of Tallahassee, so I can see how the change would be nerve-wracking and cause some anxiety. I told her all about my trip to New Orleans, and how much fun I had with my friends. I told her that it was some of the best food I’ve had and we had tons of fun - because Ruth is a foodie, I’m hoping this eased some of her anxiety, even if only a little bit. She was very interested in my move to Nashville so I told her all about it, and she asked tons of questions along the way! Our last session was spent having a good time chatting with each other and learning more about each other's futures and aspirations! I told her that when I (hopef...

Yesterday Wonyoung and I covered minimal pairs to help with his /r/ and /l/ pronunciations. I used a list I found online, which was fun because he did not know some of the words so we were able learn some new vocabulary as well. He did very well! Especially after I gave him the tip to put the tip of his tongue behind his front teeth when pronouncing the /l/ sounds. We also talked a bit about Puerto Rican culture for some speaking practice. I left him with a homework assignment because I am going to be gone for the next two weeks, which is listen to an American DnD podcast that I thought he might enjoy, and tell me about it when I get back. DnD being an American game, and his interest in the fantasy genre, I figured he might enjoy it on top of using native speaker material as part of listening practice given that he is moving into group 4 classes. 

 Date/Time: Monday, June 12th/ 2:30pm~3:30pm Location: FSU Student Union Topic/ Skill: Speaking(Let’s talk about your family and future plan) Vocabulary (new words and phrases) Feedback provided to the tutee: I provided her with new vocabulary and phrases such as literature, son-in-law, mother-in-law, daughter-in-law, father-in-law, open-minded, allow my mom to get higher education, get married to, two years older than me, right after she graduated from her high school, etc. I corrected her grammatical errors in the past tense, irregular verbs and passive voice. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: She has a younger brother and an older sister. Her brother is working at a Hilton hotel as a manager. She is very close to her brother. Her older sister is a high school teacher in Turkey. She has been teaching Turkish literature for nearly 20 years. She misses her family a lot and is looking forward to seeing her family soon. It was such a blessing to have he...

 Date/Time: Monday, June 12th/ 1:30pm~2:30pm Location: FSU Student Union Topic/ Skill: Speaking(what did you do last weekend? Let’s talk about the tutoring session) Vocabulary (new words and phrases) Feedback provided to the tutee: I provided her with linguistic support such as blessing, taking a walk, going shopping, it’s worth it, how I feel, having different perspectives on life, curiosity, purpose, dialect, district, appearance, grumpy, etc. I corrected her grammatical errors in the past tense, the countable nouns and the subject and verb agreement. Lesson(s) about tutoring and or the tutee you learned: She had a relaxing weekend because she finished her final exams. She went shopping and took a walk with her husband. We talked about her last semester at CIES and the tutoring session. She said she did enjoy each session and appreciated my efforts and time. She is a sweet and genuine person.

 This past Friday I met with Maryna for almost three hours. We spent the whole time in conversation, which is the main skill which she wants to develop right now. She was explaining to me her experiences with travel, her daily routines and her interactions with her husband and relatives-in-law. I taught her some new phrases and colloquialisms, like the phrase "four-letter word". Apparently, this phrase is more uncommon than I had previously thought, since I had to teach this expression to my friends over the past week anyways! Maryna was telling me the cultural differences between Ukrainians and Americans when a car accident occurs. In Ukraine, both parties will yell curse words to one another, but then will calm down, exchange cash and move on like gentlemen. Maryna was telling me that here in the States, people will act nice at the scene and pretend that everything is okay, but then call a lawyer to litigate against you weeks after the fact. Maryna's experience in Ameri...

During last week's session with Abraheem, we spent an hour practicing for a presentation in his speaking class. We began with him practicing giving his presentation to me and then again with me timing him. The first time I timed his speech, he focused too much on the timer and let that interfere with his presentation. After practicing a few times, we broke down his speech and focused on using transitional phrases to indicate when he was moving on from one point to the next. I explained that, as an audience member, I struggled to understand when he was transitioning between ideas. We went through each slide together and talked about different ways to transition between topics and phrases he could use to make his speech more clear to his audience. I also emphasized that there were certain phrases in his speech that were a bit redundant or repetitive. For example, he did not have to repeat that they gave their survey to 9 people every time he introduce a new question on the survey. I ...

Yesterday, Ye-won and I finished Katie Woo Saves the Earth! We learned some new vocabulary words, like terrific and brought, as well as reviews what words like I'll and I've stands for. For our discussion, we talked about Earth Day and why it is important to take care of the Earth. Ye-won really likes these Katie Woo books! I am going to try to bring more in for her to choose from for our next session. We also started a new book, Maya Makes a Mess, which is in a comic book style so she gets some more exposure to different kinds of literary formats. She really likes it, but we have some trouble understanding who is talking at what time. We will likely finish this book in our next session, as well as talk about what the book is about. 

 In today's session, I discussed giving directions, American baseball idioms, American sitcoms, and satire, then discussed a video clip from The Office with Do-Jun. One thing that made the tutoring session successful was that I had a presentation prepared before class which made it very easy to know what to follow. I also had an outline at the beginning of my presentation which enabled me to be more organized. In sum this session solidified the benefit of having comprehensive lesson plans.

Yesterday Ye-won and I read Katie Woo Saves the Earth! Ye-won has mentioned that she loves the Katie Woo books since I brought her Katie Woo and Pedro and the Mystery of the Snow Puppy, so I brought in a number of books for her to choose from. What is great about these is that they are a bit above her reading level, but she has her own intrinsic motivation to push through the more difficult words because she likes the character so much! We talked about the difference between "use" and "reuse," as well as what "I'll" stood for as we went. Today we will finish the third chapter of Katie Woo Saves the Earth, and maybe even start a new Katie Woo book!

 Date/Time: Friday, June 9th/ 11:00am~12:00pm Location: Starbucks near my tutee’s house Topic/ Skill: Speaking(The education system, personal relationships and raising kids in Turkey) Vocabulary (new words and phrases) Feedback provided to the tutee: I provided her with new vocabulary and phrases such as urban areas, rural areas, conscious, aware, care about, the lowest birth rate, humble, modest, proud, individualism, collectivism, getting married, etc. I taught her the difference between singular nouns and plural nouns such as each, every, all, people, person, etc. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Turkish parents in urban areas are very interested in their children’s education and want to send kids to private schools for better education. Turkey is a family-oriented country, so sons and daughters who are not married usually live with their parents. The bond between parents and children is very strong. The city where she used to stay is the third big...

 Date/Time: Friday, June 9th/ 10:00am~11:00am Location: Starbucks near my tutee’s house Topic/ Skill: Speaking(How her English study is going, Her plans for the next summer section) Vocabulary (new words and phrases) Feedback provided to the tutee: I provided her with linguistic support such as barrier, uptight, affect, left her page empty, expose yourself to, fail, pass, tense, based on, etc. I corrected her grammatical errors in the past tense, the subject and verb agreement and adverbs and adjectives. Lesson(s) about tutoring and or the tutee you learned: She is going to take the reading class at CIES for the next summer section because she thinks speaking and listening classes are not enough for her to improve her English. She is trying to read an easy chapter book everyday. She talked about the problems she had when she worked with one partner who was not actively participating a pairwork during her listening class.

 Date/Time: Wednesday, June 7th/ 12:00pm~1:00pm Location: Starbucks near CIES Topic/ Skill: Speaking( Let’s talk about traditional games in your country) Vocabulary (new words and phrases) Feedback provided to the tutee: I provided her with linguistic support when she hesitated to mention something because she lacked vocabulary. I corrected her grammatical errors in the irregular verbs, uncountable nouns, infinitives, and gerunds. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: She talked about traditional games in her country. When she was little, she used to play a game named nine stones. She described how to play the game. She sometimes had difficulty choosing the right words for her sentences, but she is gaining confidence in speaking English.

 Date/Time: Wednesday, June 7th/ 11:00am~12:00pm Location: Starbucks near CIES Topic/ Skill: Speaking(Final exams and classes), Grammar(verbs Vs nouns) Vocabulary (new words and phrases) Feedback provided to the tutee: I provided her with linguistic support such as drained, genre, capture, plot, cruel, parallel, wore, summary, summarize, verbally, etc. I corrected her grammatical errors in the past tense, double negatives and subject and verb agreement. Lesson(s) about tutoring and or the tutee you learned: My tutee has three final exams left. She needs to give a presentation in her speaking class. She is getting more confident talking in English. She plans to take speaking, listening and reading classes at CIES for the next summer session. She has had ups and downs about learning English but now she is more motivated.

In the session yesterday, Wonyoung and I covered the four different types of conditional statements. I had an article on Grammarly that I used as a reference, and we discussed the differences between the four different types. I then had him give me examples of each, and at the end of the session I had him repeat back the explicit grammar structure of each statement. He did really well! On Monday I plan to review these different conditional statements, as well as the interrogative statements we went over a couple of weeks ago. I think I will also cover pronunciation with him, as I have been picking up more and more mispronunciation of the /r/ sounds during out lessons. 

 I had another tutoring session with Do-Jun today and I think it was one of my best to date. What helped me with the lesson was preparing a video before class in order to discuss pragmatics, I also made a transcript of the video so I could break it down line by line. I was really happy with my results because I felt like I did a good job of explaining something very concise being expressions/idioms which in turn was a more effective teaching method.  Takeaway: The more concise an exercise is the more effective it is for tutoring sessions. 

 Today I met with Ebru and we used the session to work on her listening skills. At the start of the session, Ebru wanted to practice the speech she was giving in her speaking class. The first time she gave the speech I listened for structural mistakes and then the second time around I corrected any grammar and pronunciation errors that she had. After we practiced the speech, we spent the rest of the session doing listening activities. I used reading prompts from grammarbank.com and read each short reading aloud 2 times. The first time, I told Ebru to just listen and then ask me any vocab/content-related questions. The second time around, Ebru wrote down the main ideas and concepts and then I asked her comprehension questions.

6/6/23 Hours: 2 Sujin and I met in the Union and reflected on our tutoring sessions. She said that it was very beneficial for her in terms of practicing her speaking skills as she doesn't have a lot of opportunity to speak English, she was also able to learn some low-frequency words and learned how to pronounce words that she had previously only ever written not spoken (some words we covered was agnostic, legitimate, competitive). We then talked a lot about the fashion industry, as her major was fashion and retailing. We talked a lot about "trends" and how consumers don't really know that what is trendy in the present was actually decided three years ago. Roughly, the industry decides on a trend, the World Color Union for example decides on a color, and three years later the trend hits the market. Basically, what's gonna be trendy in 2026 is already in the works now, and what's gonna be trendy in the next year was decided two years ago. This cycle is to ensure...

 Yesterday I met with Ashwaq again and we worked on another summary. Last week, we went over an activity she had to do about the different branches of the American government. This week,  Ashwaq's assignment was to summarize the previous week's reading activity. I gave her another summary outline and then we went through and talked about the main ideas from each paragraph of the article.  Once we wrote the first draft of the summary, I helped Ashwaq with some of the grammar/ spelling mistakes. In the second review we did I helped her increase the vocabulary level so the summary was more level appropiate. 

 6/8/23 Hours: 1 Kangjin brought a Korean children's alphabet book that we went through today. I practiced reading Korean out loud and learning simple vocabulary words. Learning the Korean alphabet made me more aware of how Koreans might learn English, it was difficult to train my brain to read smoothly in Korean and I had to work really hard to orient my brain in that way. This will help me in my own language teaching as I can understand the difficulties with learning English especially if their native language employs a different alphabet.

 6/6/23 Hours: 1 For this session, Kangjin taught me the Korean alphabet, Hangul. It was helpful for him to assume the role as a teacher as being able to explain Hangul and instruct in English is a valuable skill. We went through each character and sound and at the end he "quizzed" me on what I knew. It also gave us the opportunity to go over aspects of the English alphabet, like the fact that we have 5 vowels and 21 consonants, and some consonants are pronounced as vowels. 

During my session with Khushi today, we worked on one of her quizzes (the one I believe for composition class). Looking over Khushi's shoulder, she singled out the ones which she was confident that she could do on her own to work on her own time. This left about half of the questions which we did together. Most of my feedback concerned grammatical corrections. One constant mistake which I needed to correct was the addition of an -s for third-person verbs in the simple present tense. I also needed to remind Khushi to capitalize proper nouns and some common irregular simple past  and past participle forms (including "given" and "forgot"). To some questions Khushi already knew the correct answer, but I had to coax it out of her. Whenever Khushi protested that she didn't know how to answer, I would continue asking questions until she could phrase the complete sentence herself. A few times though, I needed to model a sentence for her. Khushi did understand what I...

On May 8th I observed Dr. Rios's Reading class. He had students read an excerpt from a textbook to the students and then asked students to identify the topic and the controlling idea. As the students would read he would explain the words he had highlighted and phrases in parentheses during the reading. He reviewed the grammar in Chapter 2 and related it to the reading. He then explained and defined prefixes and suffixes and called on students to create examples. He would then identify exemptions to the rules and would switch from identifying prefixes and suffixes in the examples they had gone through to those in the text. He asked students how they identify words using context clues, and which context clues they used and are using. Whenever he asked the students questions he would ask them to elaborate on their reasoning. Some advice he gave me for engaging with students includes reassuring them nonverbally that you are there and ready to help them by sitting next to them, putting ...

 Date/Time: June 6, 12-1 PM Location: CIES  Topic/Skill: Speaking/Pronunciation Feedback provided: I brought some books from the library for Fatimah and I to read to work on her pronunciation and expand her vocabulary. We read about dinosaur fossils and a book about the first cross country roadtrip in America. We also worked on her final presentation I helped her make a graph.    Lesson about tutoring: I have found that reading out loud is an excellent way to build schema, work on speaking/pronunciation and be exposed to lower frequency vocabulary. I also find that graphic novels are useful because the pictures can help the reader decipher what is going on in case they are stuck. 

Date/Time: June 5, 12-1 PM Location: CIES  Topic/Skill: Speaking/Pronunciation Feedback provided: I brought some books from the library for Fatimah and I to read to work on her pronunciation and expand her vocabulary. We read about how and why birds migrate.  Lesson about tutoring: I have found that reading out loud is an excellent way to build schema, work on speaking/pronunciation and be exposed to lower frequency vocabulary. 

 Today was my last in-person tutoring session with Fatima, so I wanted to make it a fun one! To start, Fatima and her presentation partner practiced their final presentation on social media, with me as their audience. They ran through the PowerPoint while I paused them for corrections on pronunciation and word choice, along with a few grammar corrections on their slides. They took a survey for their presentation, and one of the slides talked about the demographic of the survey, so I explained what this word meant, which was a little comical because we went back and forth a few times before it clicked! After working on their presentation for a while, her partner left and Fatima and I started our individual session. I had explained to her what a "gas station order" is (your go-to snacks and drinks when you're on a road trip and stop at the gas station), which is a very niche part of American culture that I figured she wouldn't know about. She initially thought I was tal...

  I had one of my final few tutoring sessions with Fatima yesterday. She always makes me excited to come to tutoring because of how positive and goofy she is! We started the session by going over what she learned in class and clarifying some points of grammar. She has a grammar exam this week, so we made sure to iron out everything she was confused about - one being the future perfect continuous tense. I had us practice a few example sentences, then she wrote her own. She also has a speaking presentation coming up, so we ran through that as well, with her practicing her parts to me as if it was the real thing! As she presented, I wrote down corrections and we reviewed these at the end. It was mainly small tweaks like forgetting an s at the end of a word or using present tense instead of past, etc. In the end, I asked her some questions relating to her topic, so she could practice answering potential questions from her peers on the day of. I ran through a few different questions/way...

Today Wonyoung and I took a trip to the Fine Arts museum. I thought it would be fun to try and engage him in conversation through an experience, so we saw a bit of the new show Southern Futurisms that was just put up. He was a bit intimidated, he mentioned he had never really gone to art museums (he prefers science museums), but we were able to walk through the initial wall text together and talk about the artworks. His grammar in use was very good! I only had to correct him minimally, and he was able to communicate with me what he thought the show was about. Afterwards, we played a game of Guess Who to practice his interrogative sentences.

 Date/Time: Tuesday, June 6th/ 12:00pm~1:00pm Location: Starbucks near CIES Topic/ Skill: Speaking(the cultural differences between Turkey and America) Grammar(simple past tense, singular and plural nouns, past continuous and adjectives) Vocabulary (new words and phrases) Feedback provided to the tutee: I corrected my tutee’s grammatical errors in simple past tense, singular and plural nouns, past continuous and adjectives. I provided her with new words and phrases such as get promoted, responsibility, janitor, greedy, burden, burdensome, sailing, get it off your chest, passion, fever, keep an eye on..., encounter and proper. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: My tutee still needs to work on vocabulary learning. It can be helpful for her vocabulary skills to memorize high-frequency words and distinguish between productive vocabulary and receptive vocabulary.

 Date/Time: Tuesday, June 6th/ 11:00am~12:00pm Location: Starbucks near CIES Topic/ Skill: Speaking(the advantages and disadvantages of your job) Grammar(irregular verbs and passive voice), Vocabulary (new words and phrases) Feedback provided to the tutee: I corrected my tutee’s grammatical errors in irregular verbs and passive voice. I provided her with linguistic support while she was lacking in vocabulary. I had her be exposed to new words and phrases such as when it comes to..., warning, warn someone to do something, dialect, decent, achieve, etc. Lesson(s) about tutoring and or the tutee you learned: My tutee sometimes had difficulty using verb conjugation. However, when she made mistakes, she tried to fix her errors. She is making progress little by little in her English learning.

 Date/Time: Monday, June 5th/ 12:00pm~1:00pm Location: Starbucks near CIES Topic/ Skill: Speaking(the Critical Incident in different cultures & the Difficulties that You Encountered in American) Vocabulary (new words and phrases) Feedback provided to the tutee: I explained to her that past continuous was considered more polite than simple past or simple present. I provided her with example sentences. I provided her with new vocabulary such as specific, disabled people, compassion, compare A with B, discrimination, insurance, deal with, etc. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: ESL student thinks that Americans are friendly to people on the street, like always saying hello to strangers, but when it comes to official work, they are very strict and not kind enough to tell every detail of necessary information. Memorizing high-frequency words would help her to improve her speaking skills.

 Date/Time: Monday, June 5th/ 11:00am~12:00pm Location: Starbucks near CIES Topic/ Skill: Speaking(How have you been?, Let’s talk about your classes at CIES) Vocabulary (new words and phrases) Feedback provided to the tutee: While my tutee was presenting her thoughts about the speaking topic, I provided her with new words and phrases such as all by myself, put off, slack, irresponsible, fill in the blanks, I have been..., overwhelming, etc and helped her use them in her speaking. Lesson(s) about tutoring and or the tutee you learned: My tutee has never heard of the expression, ‘How have you been?’, and she didn’t know how to answer to this question. The tasks which were given in her listening class were sometimes too overwhelming to her. To improve her English skills, she is trying to read a kid novel that I recommended.

During today's tutoring session, Ye-won continued reading "Stellaluna". Like the past few lessons, we began by reviewing the material. Today I noticed that Ye-won is beginning to pick up on context clues faster and use images more efficiently when trying to recall what we read about during our previous sessions. Ye-won was also reading at a faster pace today than she was when we started reading this book. Today we specifically focused on pronouncing words with the silent "gh". After we finished reading for the day we played a game to review some of the vocabulary from the book. I asked her to tell me the meaning of some of the new vocabulary words by acting them out. For example, I asked Ye-won to show me what "disappear" means and she showed me by doing a magic trick. This provided a fun and interactive way to review the vocabulary. 

 Today I met with Aaron and we discussed a reading on the Dark Web from Newsinlevels.com and then went over more irregulars of the simple past tense. Upon initial assessment of Aaron's English level, I thought he was a B1 but he might be an A2 given this new insight I've found that it's important to discuss content that is level appropriate. In our first few sessions, I might have been giving him material that was too complex for his level but since I've worked with him more and been able to identify what it is he is struggling with I've been better able to help him in his language learning progress. I've noticed that Aaron has a tendency to confuse the past particle with the past tense which is why I've been working on bettering his understanding of the simple past and then I hope to cover the past particle once he has a stronger grasp of the simple past. One technique I've found helpful for teaching vocab and verbs is the use of gestures to provide vis...

Date/Time: June 4, 2-4PM Location: CIES  Topic/Skill: Reading/Grammar  Feedback provided: Today I met with Ye-Won and we worked on a variety of skills such as the eight parts of speech specifically nouns, verbs and adverbs. We worked on our reading and vocabulary skills with various worksheets, videos (like Schoolhouse Rock) and educational online games.  Lesson about tutoring: This was a two hour session with a young tutee so I found that it was important to incorporate fun educational games into the session so she did not get bored. 

          During this session I shadowed Dr. Fleming's group 3 speaking session. To start the session off, Dr. Fleming had the class participate in a group discussion lead by one of the students. Apparently the role of who leads the discussion and what the discussion is about rotates between the students in the class. The class discussion I observed was lead by a very nice student (I forget her name but she was very cool), and it was about the ethics of capital punishment in schools. the discussion leader introduced the subject to the class and explained that it is common in her country. She then opened up the discussion for others to share their opinions, which they did for about 20 minutes in total. After the discussion was over, Dr. Fleming opened the class up to a more broad discussion of cultural differences in schooling and students gave their opinions. After this, the students were given time to work on a project th...

 This morning I had a long tutoring session with Ruth, further practicing the use of Future Perfect and Future Perfect Continuous. We started by reviewing each tense, and I had her explain the difference to me in her own words. Next, I wrote out a few examples and we dissected them together, picking apart each aspect of the grammar. I had her write out a few example sentences for both tenses, and we went over them afterward. I noticed that her grammatical structure was great, using each tense correctly, however, the content of the sentence was wrong. For example, she would say "I have been knowing", which is technically correct for future perfect continuous (have + been + ___ing), however, we native speakers would never say that. Instead, we would say "I have known", the future perfect tense. I found this extremely hard to explain to Ruth because it was one of those things that "we just don't say like that". I couldn't find the right words to expla...

 I observed Dr.Felicia's grammar class a while back, but forgot my blog post - oops! I always love going to Dr.Felicia's classes because I can tell how much thought and energy she puts into every lesson. She walks in the room with positive vibes and I can tell it makes her students so comfortable to be there and ready to learn whatever she has planned for the day. I asked Dr. Felicia what her typical format is for her lessons and she told me that she has a solid system down, accompanied by the textbook she uses. The format that we have been taught in TEFL is schema building (pre-lesson), activity (lesson), and evaluation (post-lesson) is very similar to the one she uses, almost identical actually! It was cool to see that the format we learned in class was being used in real time with real English teachers. The biggest takeaway from this class was the use of modeling. Whenever Dr Felicia would explain a concept, she would make sure to write it on the board and demonstrate the co...

      For this session, Youngjune said he just wanted to talk for the majority of the session, so that's what we did! We talked about Korean rap music and A merican country (it turns out that Younjune is a country music fan who would have guessed!) We also talked about a company him and his girlfriend stated and how he is managing it! We just talked for about an hour and a half and it was wonderful! Younjune is a very interesting fellow and it turns out we share a lot of interests. I also found out he is 44 years old which is crazy because I thought he was like 30.... but Koreans don't age so it makes sense. Throughout the session, I would correct Youngjunes mistakes when necessary, but I mostly tried to correct him as little as possible to work on his speech fluency. At the very end of the session, Youngjune had a few word choice questions, so I answered them! We also did a bit of work with the present perfect tense because Youngjune wanted to become more ...

          For this observation, I shadowed Dr. Rios's group one reading class. He started off the class by introducing the idea of a short vowel sound vs a long vowel sound. From what I could tell, they went over the rules last class, so this class was a bit of a review. After Dr. Rios went over the rules again, he wrote a few words on the board and had each student mark the vowels in the words as either short or long. After they were finished he correct their mistakes and they had a discussion about it. He repeated this activity once more, and then did the same thing on the projector with even more words. Next, he transitioned to some listening comprehension work. He put some high frequency one syllable words on the board, then spoke a word out loud and had the students circle which word he said. The students struggled with this a bit, so it was a very good exercise in my opinion. Since class was almost over at this point, Dr. Rios brie...

This week met with Abraheem for our 5th session. During our past sessions, I noticed that Abraheem had a tendency to forget or misuse articles in both speech and writing. I decided to use today's meeting to focus on reviewing articles and how they are used. Teaching articles provided me with good practice in teaching a grammar topics. Grammar is the topic that I am most apprehensive about teaching, but this tutoring session allowed me to get some experience in a very relaxed environment. After the lesson, I had Abraheem complete a worksheet that I made on articles. I organized the worksheet based on the scaffolding method, providing less support as he moved from one activity to another. For example, the first section provided him with choices, the second was fill in the blank, and the third asked him to write his own sentences. By the end of the lesson he seemed to have a better understanding of how and when to use articles. 

 Last Wednesday, I met with Khushi for two hours to do reading and grammar practice with her for her upcoming SAT exam. We did two timed fifty-minute exams: one with reading comprehension with four different passages and another with grammar practices which also contained four passages. For the reading comprehension, I encouraged Khushi to engage with top-down reading.  The strategy I shared, which I in turn was taught when I needed to take the SAT, was to read the first and last paragraphs first, then read only the first and last sentences of each body paragraph. Khushi was telling me that her main problem was reading too slow, and not understanding certain key vocabulary within the questions themselves. This is why I encouraged her not to read everything, and to skip over words that she understand completely.  For the grammar section, I was able to incorporate some of the strategies we learned from the TEFL course. For instance, whenever the word "but" appears, it is al...

 I always enjoy my tutoring sessions with Ruth because I can sense her eagerness to learn - she always wants to get down to business and immediately starts asking questions. With her final exams coming up, she had a few big concept grammar questions that we started working on. The future perfect and future perfect continuous tense gave her some issues because of how differently Spanish grammar is formatted. She was confused if the time clause before the comma, for example, the sentence " By next Friday , I will have finished my final exams", occurred before or after the second clause, after the comma. It helped a lot to be able to visualize the timeline of events, so I drew it out for her on a timeline. Once we ran through a few more example sentences, and I had her practice writing some out, and explaining the sentence to me, it all became clear. This was extremely rewarding for me, as a tutor, because I could see the " breakthrough" look of happiness on her face -...

 I met with Do-Jun today and corrected his writing sample per usual. As Do-Jun is a more advanced English speaker I tried to provide as many grammatical corrections as possible, I hope some of what I mentioned clicked. I didn't get around to creating the Old English film listening activity I wanted to do but I am going to do that today so I have it prepared for my next tutoring session. One thing I noticed is that it's really important to get students to talk as much as possible and to try and identify their own errors, I thought back to the saying "teach students how to fish" and I hope to implement that more in my remaining sessions. Additionally, after finishing about half of my sessions now, I've noticed that the more specific lessons are the better for both teachers and students so I'm going to integrate that knowledge into my session planning as well. 

 I met with Aaron Thursday, and we discussed the simple past tense with a focus on irregulars. I utilized the scaffolding technique by first providing Aaron with fill-in-the-blank style sentences with missing verbs and then had him construct his own sentences. I corrected Aaron's grammar as needed and tried to explain the verb tenses he was using to help him to understand the simple past more thoroughly. One thing I learned from this tutoring session is the importance of teaching level-appropriate content, additionally the importance of focusing your lessons, and being comfortable explaining grammar concepts. I spent a decent portion of the class trying to explain the past participle to Aaron which was ineffective and looking back I should have just reoriented my lesson on the simple past. 

 I met with Ashwaq again today and for the first few minutes we just practiced speaking skills with some conversation questions. After that I helped her do some of her homework. Ashwaq was preparing for an oral quiz where she would have to act like she was in a college interview. She already had some pratice questions written out but she did not know how to answer them. We went over some possible answers to the questions and did a short role-playing activity. Finally, I gave her some more common questions that could appear in a college interview and we reviewed and answered those together. 

 Today I had my second meeting with Ebru and we practiced listening skills. We started by doing a dictation activity where I read a passage about language confusion. I began by going over any vocabulary I thought would be difficult and then giving a brief summary of the passage. I read the passage once and Ebru only listened, then the next reading she copied down what she heard. After that, we went over it and made any corrections. We still had time left so we worked on basic conversation skills. I noticed that Ebru was having a hard time answering questions in complete sentences so I gave her some tips on how to do so. I wrote a question on the board and then showed her how to use the parts of the sentence from the question, to form a full sentence for her answer. 

 6/1/23 Hours: 1 Following our previous session, Kangjin sent me a writing sample summarizing his speech on golf from the session. I went through and highlighted where he made some errors and gave feedback on what he did well. After the session, I emailed him the document with the subsequent edits that were made. A lot of the mistakes he made were minor, like sentence fragments and omitting articles at times.

 6/1/23 Hours: 1 Today we talked about the LGBT community here in the United States versus in Korea. She explained that Koreans are very conservative and not a lot of people are openly gay/queer because they are ostracized and outcasted in society. She told me of a friend from high school who was part of a very small LGBT club at Seoul National University. It was interesting to me that the students of what is considered "the Harvard of Korea" would be so conservative, as a lot of college students at prestigious universities here tend to be more liberal and accepting. 

 5/30/23 Hours: 1 Sujin just returned from a short trip to Charleston, South Carolina with her family over the weekend. She relayed to me an incident that happened with one of the hotels she had booked and with Agoda, which is a third-party website similar to Expedia. Agoda promises a "price match" guarantee but only up to 72 hours from the check-in date. She noticed 2 days before her check-in that the price on Agoda had decreased by more than half what she paid for it, and she became understandably upset and she felt she was "ripped off." After being unsatisfied with the way that the staff of the hotel and Agoda handled it, and given that she has a Ph.D. in marketing and has published multiple research articles, she is going to write a research article based on her experience. She wants to investigate this "price match" marketing strategy and how companies manipulate the price.