FSU TEFL 120

  Tutoring Session #14 Date/Time: Thursday, February 29 th   3-4:30pm Location: Student Union Topic/Skill: Speaking/Writing Feedback provided to tutee: We discussed using prepositions in front of adjectives and searching vs looking. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: I learned about Korean memes and differences in how English words are used in Korea.

Date/Time: February 28th, 12:00pm Location: CIES building Topic/Skill: Research paper Feedback provided to tutee: I reviewed Sultan's lengthy research paper. It was very well written, so my comments were mostly questions about APA format citation rules and a few small things. My only critique on the work as a whole was the repetitive nature of a few sentences/expressions ("this is why _ is so important in the study of _") but regardless it still read like a well done academic publication.  Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Length limits on written assignments are a must!! Apparently Sultan initially wrote something like 8 pages, and I read what he had cut down to about 4. The instructor was very surprised at his initial submission length!

Date/Time: February 27th, 12:00pm Location: CIES building Topic/Skill: Grammar Feedback provided to tutee: Sultan and I went over various parts of a sentence and discussed their use as well as sequence patterns they tend to fall into. He struggled a bit with a grammar assignment recently so I thought this would be useful to go over. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: My expectation from learning about how English is typically taught led me to believe most people would be better at grammar and worse at speaking, but Sultan is quite the opposite. Speaking is his strong suit, and grammar is something he struggles with, almost like a native, and quite similar to myself. In a way, it's quite impressive!

  Tutoring Session #13 Date/Time: Tuesday, February 27th  3-4:30pm Location: Student Union Topic/Skill: Culture, Speaking, Listening Feedback provided to tutee: We discussed uncountable nouns and naming conventions. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: I learned a lot about Korean culture and idol groups. I also learned how to write my name in Hangul.

Date & Time: 2/27/24, 7:00-8:30pm Location: Zoom Topic/Skill: Speaking and application processes. After being denied from the first few programs they pursued, they needed to regroup and organize their thoughts Feedback provided to the tutee: Over Zoom, we discussed some of the hardships Wei has been facing since beginning the lengthy process of applying to grad programs. We came up with some goals and discussed Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C in a time of stress.  Lessons Learned: After editing and reviewing her application materials for several weeks now, I am seeing how stressful this process can be for non-native speakers. Mental health support is a key responsibility of teachers in maintaining positivity and optimism among students.

Date & Time: 2/19/24, 5:35-6:25pm Location: the tutee’s home  Topic/Skill: reading and speaking Feedback provided to the tutee: In our second session, we finished reading “The Grumpy Old Ox,” and checked comprehension by drawing up a before/after chart. In the story, the grumpy ox went through major moments of character development, so we spelled out the differing characteristics, recalling the plot.  Lessons Learned: She enjoyed drawing this chart with me and was able to visualize how much the ox had changed, even though these differences might or have been explicit page by page

Date & Time: 2/19/24, 4:30-5:15pm Location: the tutee’s home  Topic/Skill: reading and speaking Feedback provided to the tutee: While reading “Merry Christmas Peppa,” I asked Ye-won comprehension checks throughout to make sure she was understanding the story. We tried to relate ourselves to the character by talking about our experiences during the holidays and the bones we have broken. We also tried to imagine hypotheticals like how would the story have been different if it didn’t take place during Christmas.  Lessons Learned: I think that helping the student relate to the character, made it easier for her to recall the plot, and gave her some incentive to pay closer attention after a relationship had been built.

Date/Time: February 26th, 3:00 pm  Location: CIES Building Topic/skill: I had Salem practice filling in a worksheet with the correct verb tense as well as reading a short passage and rearranging sentences that were put out of order. Next, I focused on asking him questions so that he could practice speaking again. Feedback: We went over why the answer was correct as well as other ways to be able to format the sentence. While he was speaking I would correct his words or help him fix his conjugations if they were incorrect.

Date/Time: February 24th, 11:30 pm  Location: CIES Building Topic/skill: We practiced speaking. This was done by examining pictures and having Ye-Won point out the differences between the two pictures. Feedback: She was able to practice explaining the differences between photos. Sometimes she needed more linguistic support to allow for a more specific description of the differences in the pictures.

Date/Time: February 24th, 10:30 am  Location: CIES Building Topic/skill: We practiced being able to identify what style different essays were. First, we went over the different explanations and small examples of them. Then Ye-won read 4 different passages and identified what type of essay they were.  Feedback: She had a much easier time identifying different essay styles and being able to connect what two styles were similar to each other. In addition, she was able to see the relation between certain essay styles while also identifying what separates them from each other.

Date/Time: February 22nd, 12:00pm Location: CIES building Topic/Skill: Idioms Feedback provided to tutee: I went over a list of idioms with Sultan to see which ones he knew and which ones he didn't. We discussed patterns and cultural references imbedded within them and how to go about understanding them contextually even if one doesn't "know" what they mean. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Idioms are often nonsensical and their obvious meaning is taken for granted by native speakers, while quite the opposite is felt by non-natives who want to know why we say them, where they come from, etc.

  Tutoring Session #12 Date/Time: Wednesday, Feb 21 st   3-4:30pm Location: Student Union Topic/Skill: Speaking Practice Feedback provided to tutee: Provided feedback on speaking, student self-corrected superlatives  Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: I learned about Geena's aunt and Korean customs in greetings and addressing people.

Date/Time: February 17th, 12:00 pm  Location: CIES Building Topic/skill: Examining different essay styles and correctly identifying them. Feedback: I started the session by continuing to have her examine different styles of essays. This time when she read the 4 sample essays I had for her she was able to correctly identify all the essays. After this, we started to read her Sonic book to practice more reading. During this time I corrected any mispronounced words or words where she may not know the meaning. 

Date/Time: February 17th, 11:00 am  Location: CIES Building Topic/skill: We were looking at different types of essays. I first went through the different types of essays and what their function was. Next, I went over words that might be in different types of essays so that later she could identify them more easily. Finally, I had her read 4 different sample essays to see if she could identify what style of essay it was.  Feedback: While this wasn't the most fun lesson, Ye-won was able to see what the purpose of different essays was. In addition, she was able to understand what an expository, argumentative, narrative, and descriptive essay were and why they were different from each other. She was able to identify almost all the essays correctly but struggled a little with expository so I helped her understand what made that one different from an argumentative and the words that demonstrated this.

  Tutoring Session #11 Date/Time: Monday, Feb 19 th 1-2:30pm Location: Student Union Topic/Skill: Speaking/Listening Feedback provided to tutee: Theatre jargon and US cooking measurements Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Identity - means unique in Korea

Date & Time: 2/19/24, 3:00-4:00pm Location: Strozier Library  Topic/Skill: R eading and speaking Feedback provided to the tutee: We went over another script of preparatory questions that an interviewer might ask. We spoke to brainstorm answers and for her to fill me in on her background, then we basically tried to condense an entire personal statement into a couple minutes of spoken word.  Lessons Learned: It was fun to be taught a crash course of her discourse, niche, and discipline. She gets a lot of substance out of me listening to her spill ideas and absorbing them, then helping her organize them into an answer to such a complex question like “Why apply to our grad program?” in an interview.

Date/Time: February 18th, 8pm Location: Online (Zoom) Topic/Skill: I introduced determiners and reviewed adjectives and prepositions. I continued using a song Jewon Lee was familiar with, "Believer" by Imagine Dragons, to help him build on his comprehension of these aspects of English. Feedback provided to tutee: As I went through the different types of determiners, I gave as clear of definitions and explanations as possible as well as some examples. Then, I challanged Jewon Lee to find specific types of determiners within the verses of the song. If he picked out a wrong word, I corrected him and explained why he was wrong and what the word he picked out actually was. I refered back to lists of the parts of speech I created to help him find it easier. Then, when the answer was revealed, I asked some comprehension questions to help him understand the word in the context of the song. I tried to use visuals as much as possible to help him better understand the English. Lesson(s)...

Date & Time: 2/12/24, 3:00-4:00pm Location: CIES classroom Topic/Skill: Today she wanted to practice interviewing with me to help her prep for an upcoming Zoom call with the university’s grad programs.  Feedback provided to the tutee: Some nitpicks I made to her script included drawing attention to the line “ I would like to excited…” and she corrected herself to “I would be excited to…”, she pronounced “fail” as “feel”, and we learned the word sacrifice when she was trying to express the hours, weekends, and holidays she gave up to focus on school and writing her book. With her recent download of the app, Instagram, she had been struggling to pronounce the word and its blended sounds. I helped her break it into prefixes and suffixes, to see that “insta-” means quickly (she responded back with the example “instant noodles!”) and the suffix “-gram” means “to record” (via posting pictures).  Lessons Learned: I enjoyed this lesson because it was very similar to my daily j...

Date/Time: February 15th, 12:00pm Location: CIES building Topic/Skill: Conversation Feedback provided to tutee: Sultan and I talked about his upcoming exams, plans to travel in the US, and how his father wants him to visit home. Speaking is his strong suit so we had no trouble communicating for the most part. I gave corrections and asked questions as necessary; particularly at the end of the lesson I had to remind him "its 'good to see you' not 'good to meet you'!" Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Sultan is quite ambitious and driven, I'm always impressed when I remember he's only 19 and not closer to my age.

  Tutoring Session #10 Date/Time: Wednesday, Feb 14 th  3-4:30pm Location: Student Union Topic/Skill: Additional Speaking Preparation for Exam Feedback provided to tutee: I provided feedback on speaking practice. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Sometimes in tutoring, you need relaxed lessons to continue studying English during exam time.

Date/Time: February 14th, 8 pm Location: Zoom Topic/Skill: During this session, Jeah and I started off with a recap of everything we learned on Monday- daily routines. I had her start the session out by writing a little bit about her daily routine. I modeled this by providing a sample so that she knew what to do. After she did this, I had her read it so that she could work on her speaking and pronunciation. The last bit of class I wanted it to be a bit more fun for her so I chose to do a listening activity. I played a song and provided the transcript and had her look out for nouns, verbs and adjectives. I had her write them down and then state what the song was about. We did this for two songs and discussed it. Feedback provided to tutee: The feedback I gave today was more so just working on her pronunciation with words. I modeled how to say it and pronounced it clearly and she repeated. I encouraged her for a good job on her listening skills and applying the knowledge she had. I still...

Date/Time: February 14th, 4 pm Location: Hecht House  Topic/Skill: During this second part of the session, Aras and I finished watching the movie. He continued to take notes and understand the movie. Once the movie finished, I had him discuss it a little with me and summarize it. Then we ended the session with a movie critique. I made him write half a page stating his rating of the movie, a short summary, and his thoughts and feelings about the movie. Then we finished our discussion and ended with a brief conversation.  Feedback provided to tutee: There wasn’t too much to give feedback to this session, I did ask him to speak a bit slower and I also helped fix a few errors in the writing. But I congratulated him on a great movie report, where he used some transition words and really expressed himself well.    Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Aras was one of my favorite students and although I cannot take credit for his really advanced English, I ...

Date/Time: February 14th, 3 pm Location: Hecht House  Topic/Skill: During this session, Aras and I watched a movie of his choosing, Lego Batman. I know that it does not correlate with classroom material or a normal classroom scene, but I wanted him to pick something he would be interested in. This was also our last session together so I wanted it to be a bit more fun.The first hour of our two hour session he watched the movie and I had him take notes of any vocabulary he didn't know and important events.    Feedback provided to tutee: There wasn’t too much to give feedback to this session, since he was just watching. I did however pause and ask him a few comprehension questions from time to time to make sure he had a good understanding.    Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: I learned that he is really into watching movies, tv shows, videos. He said that he has gained a lot of knowledge by watching videos in English. I did notice that he ...

Date/Time: February 14th, 3pm Location: Hecht House basement Topic/Skill: Fatimah and I worked on her research paper some more and went through the introduction she had created a rough draft for. We also went through potential articles for her to use and worked on her ability to understand and summarize the abstracts so that she could use them for her research paper.  Feedback provided to tutee: When we were revising her introduction paragraph, I made recommendations for alterations to sentences to fix the grammar and flow of the paragraph. I gave her tips for finding sources such as what kind of keywords to use when looking for sources, filtering the searches to include the full text, and how to skim to look for keywords and points the articles make. I recommended that she look for more of the facts and statistics to use for evidence to support her thesis rather than people's opinions. When she was reading the abstracts aloud, I corrected her pronunciation and explained what the m...

Date/Time: February 13th, 8pm Location: Online (Zoom) Topic/Skill: During this session, I introduced adjectives and worked toward bettering his understanding of them through analyzing one of his favorite songs, "Believer" by Imagine Dragons. I also challenged Jewon Lee to find adjectives, prepositions, nouns, and verbs throughout the verses of the song to strengthen his comprehension of those parts of speech and how they function in English sentences. Feedback provided to tutee: As Jewon Lee struggled to find adjectives, I encouraged him to think about the different things adjectives help describe by giving him categories such as age, emotional state, appearance, color, size, etc. along with the Korean translation of those different words in case they were new to him. When he mistook an article as a preposition, I corrected him and clarified what an article is and how it was different from a preposition. I did my best to explain what certain prepositions mean and gave alterna...

Date/Time: February 12th, 8 pm Location: Zoom Topic/Skill: During this session, Jeah and I started off with a recap of everything we have learned, I had her give a few examples and explanations. Today's goal was learning about daily routines. I started off with an open discussion to see where her knowledge was on this topic, she had heard the word before but wasn’t too familiar. I then played a video with tons of vocabulary words. We went over definitions and other examples. I provided examples in sentences and different situations. I then led a discussion to get her to explain parts of her daily routine at school. We ended with an interactive and comprehension video where it showed a cartoon's daily routine and ended with comprehension questions.  Feedback provided to tutee: I designed this lesson for her to have her practice more speaking. I did not want her writing as much today or simply listening to my voice the whole hour. I encouraged her to take the time to think instea...

  Date/Time: February 12th, 4 pm Location: Hecht House  Topic/Skill: During this session Aras and spent the half working on speaking and conversational skills. It was highly interactive and interesting, but also rewarding because we could talk about whatever we wanted. We talked a lot about cultures and also Europe. I got to talk a lot about my time living and Europe and also going there again and he gave me tons of questions. It was a very informal, yet highly productive conversation. We then concluded the class with an episode of “How I Met Your Mother” I let him pick and that's what he chose. I had him write a paragraph at the end of the session for a comprehension check.  Feedback provided to tutee: I honestly did not have to give too much feedback. I helped him with pronunciation a few times and speech rate as well as pitch. He corrected himself a few times when using the “th” sound and a few other words as well. I was very surprised by his self-correction and improv...

Date/Time: February 12th, 3 pm Location: Hecht House  Topic/Skill: During this session, Yara and I spent the whole hour going over the future tense. We looked at all the different types of future tense (simple, perfect, continuous, etc). We focused on this to prepare her for her test. We focused on the differences between will be and going to as well as asking different questions in the future. We created sentences, looked at the differences, brainstormed examples, and we also watched a youtube video that explained everything.  Feedback provided to tutee: Yara had a bit of a hard time grasping the differences in the future when creating sentences, I created several examples for her and we worked through it step by step. I had to help with spelling and sentence structure, but she did a really good job by the end of class at identifying the different parts of the future tense.  Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: I used different approaches where I had he...

Date/Time: February 12th, 12:00pm Location: CIES building Topic/Skill: Grammar: noun clauses and sentence writing Feedback provided to tutee: I went over Sultan's grammar homework from Dr. Ciappetta's class, helping him to correct beautiful mistakes as well as finish another assignment. His sentences were largely comprehensible and good; correction mostly came in the form of fixing awkward phrasing or description, and the occasional changing of an article. For the noun clause identification assignment, I helped him to understand and find noun clauses within full sentences, starting first with the subject and then the verb, trying to find the "thing" being described by a clause. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Sultan is stronger with writing sentences than he is identifying abstract components of grammar. Given that I am similar as a native, I suppose this is not a bad place for an English learner to be. He  struggled more (as did I) with identif...

Date/Time: February 13th, 8:30am Location: Online (Zoom) Topic/Skill: During this session, I used prompts for potential conversation points to help Dojun Kim practice and review grammar use and strengthen his understanding of what verb tense to use for what situation/context. Feedback provided to tutee: As we went through the conversation prompts, I corrected his grammar mistakes and explained what verb tense one would use in particular situations. I also gave examples and went over other aspects of grammar such as first/second/third person for the simple present tense. Overall, he was quite good at using proper grammar. However, I explained that it's always helpful to practice these tenses to help him speak English more efficiently. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: It was difficult to tell which verb tenses Dojun Kim needed help with as he was quite skilled in speaking English already. However, by going through a variety of examples that prompted him to use a...

Date/Time: February 12th, 4pm Location: Hecht House basement Topic/Skill: Fatimah and I continued working through preparing her for the research paper she has to write. We focused on and discussed writing body paragraphs, the conclusion, general formatting concerns, and organization. Feedback provided to tutee: We talked about how the body paragraphs are meant to include evidence and sources that support the thesis of the paper. I gave her my favorite formula for writing body paragraphs in research papers; ICE (I = introduce a point, C = cite a source, E = elaborate on how the point and source work together to support the thesis). I explained to her how she might use this in her paper when discussing foreign and second language learning, depending on what specifically about that topic she is trying to prove. We worked through the details of the guidelines to make sure she understood what they were asking her to do in this specific assignment. I reviewed what a literary review was with ...

  Tutoring Session #9 Date/Time: Monday, February 12 th   3-4:30pm Location: Student Union/Moore Auditorium Topic/Skill: Speaking Exam Practice Feedback provided to tutee: I provided feedback on speaking practice for the exam Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Recording and listening to samples is a powerful tool for improving language skills

Date/Time: February 12th, 3pm Location: Hecht House basement Topic/Skill: Fatimah and I worked together to get her started on a research paper she has to write. We specifically looked at how to construct an introduction paragraph. Feedback provided to tutee: We looked over the guidelines her teacher provided in order to work out what would be necessary for the paper. I gave her tips on writing a paper such as what outline to follow and to keep things as objective and formal as possible. I also told her what I found to be helpful when working on research papers such as starting by finding sources and using them as a foundation for the paper. I helped her work through different sources to pick out main points to address in the paper. She had some good ideas for transitions and I gave her suggestions for other ways to go into a new aspect of the topic. We created sample sentences together and I clarified any misunderstandings that came up in our discussion on writing research papers. Less...

Date/Time: February 11th, 8pm Location: Online (Zoom) Topic/Skill: During this session, I reviewed vocabulary with Jewon Lee and had him read through a story to work towards bettering his reading and pronunciation. As we went through the story, I challenged him to pick out nouns, prepositions, and verbs. At the end of the reading, I asked him some questions to test his comprehension.  Feedback provided to tutee: As I reviewed the vocabulary, I challenged him to some matching using word banks and pictures to test his learning. When he got things right, I said things like "good job" to validate his response. When he didn't pronounce something correctly, I repeated what he said--speaking clearly--and prompted him to try saying it again. When I prompted him to find and pick out nouns, verbs, and prepositions throughout the story, he gave some correct answers and was struggling with others so I helped guide him to the correct answer and explained why the answer was what I shar...