Ryan CIES5 (TP#7)

Had a pretty weird tutoring session this time. I was waiting all day at the library and gettin' work done until my tutoring session with the cies folk. Unfortunately, everyone but Husain texted a cancellation about thirty minutes prior. When Husain showed up, he told me he just came to get info for a party from one of the other tutee's. Ouch, lol.

I told him he might as well stay for a bit and get tutored since we were both here, and he was nice enough to oblige for half an hour. He had just taken his (uk toefl i forgot the name) so he wasn't interested in grammar or reading or anything--so we just had a conversation, which I think is exactly what he needed. So we just talked about his plans for the future, and I was sure to give him a lot of practice by asking him like, long questions so that he'd have to articulate more complex responses. I think it was helpful.

Jodie – TP Adult #10

This was our last session, so I planned this session for teaching my tutees how to teach themselves.  I told them that they can learn even when there is not a teacher available.  I began by showing them the different websites that have great materials for grammar, reading, listening, and speaking.  These several areas will affect their writing skill.  I reminded them that they need to work more on listening since they are in group 1 on listening. 

For each website that I showed Marco and Carlos, we went over the materials some and made sure that they knew how to navigate on the websites.  I had asked them to bring their own computer to class today.  There are so many materials for each subject.  We did the usual correcting as needed as we went from website to website and subject by subject.

Our discussion went towards college education in America.  I explained to them how a high school graduate makes his decision to go for higher learning.  The tests and the process of applying to different colleges/universities are mostly for young adults and a few older folks.  Then, I also showed them a free and simple personality test that I know of.  They both were very interested in this.  Since I guessed their personality types correctly, we were able to see their strengths and weaknesses right away among the wonderful resources.  Both Carlos and Marco were so glad to know of such a test.  During the whole time, they learned to keep our discussion going faster by not needing to understand every word that I said.  They learned to guess faster.

I have seen improvement in both of them during these last 6 weeks.  With time and much diligence on their part, they both will do very well and move on to their studies in electrical engineering and physics.  I pray for their successes in their studies.

***Marco had a critical incident last week.  He answered the door when he didn’t know who was at the door.  There were 2 girls who tried to sell him some children’s books.  He told them that he didn’t want them, but they insisted that he should buy them.  It went back and forth for a while; he didn’t know what to say exactly to get them to leave.  So, finally, he had to close the door on them.  He felt terrible, but didn’t know what else to do.

Jodie – TP Adult #9

Carlos and Marco met with me for our tutoring session today.  Serap couldn’t come.  Her husband went back to Turkey because his father had heart surgery.  She had to take care of their son.  I asked both of them about their level and group at CIES.  When I put them on the board, we found that Marco and Carlos were very similar in their level of English in writing, grammar, reading, listening, and speaking.  They both are 28 and 29, and it seems that they have so much in common.  One is from Peru and the other one is from Brazil.  By looking at the group numbers that they are in for various subjects, it is obvious that they both need to work a lot more on listening.  The others are 2’s or 3’s and listening is 1’s.  Since out text states that listening is 45% of all language learning and that listening ability can hinder speaking, I told them of the importance of listening skill development.  I encouraged them to be quicker in their thinking and guessing.  By now, I already had an idea of the type of personalities that they both have.  Their temperaments are calm.  I think this keeps them from being “quick” or “aggressive” in their learning.

We spent time in this session on listening and speaking.  I shared with them some stories I chose from the internet.  I encouraged them to be very alert and quick to make guesses to fill in gaps while I shared, and that they did not have to understand every word in my stories.  They just needed the gist of what is said.  I stopped from time to time to see if they understood.  We had some discussions afterward.  During the discussion time, I helped them to correct themselves as much as possible with verb tenses, prepositions, pronunciation, etc…

Jodie - CP #10

Carlos and I walked around the campus during his lunch break.  I let him tell me how his week went.  He planned to leave the next day with a lot of his Brazilian friends for Miami to see a soccer match.  He was very excited because he has not traveled around that much since being at CIES.  He told me where he stayed near the campus and that he sometimes got together with friends from Brazil. 

He then told me that when he called his family back home, they asked him about Obama Care and about a certain U.S. government policy.  He told me that he didn’t know anything about what his family was talking about.  He said that it was because he didn’t watch the news.  I told him that I would help him by emailing him several news websites.  We talked about politics in Brazil and in the U.S.

At times, he was still having trouble pronouncing the letter “r” correctly.  The “th” sound sometimes is still a problem.  He did improve a lot in these past weeks.  He is very motivated to learn and to improve his English.  He has an intrinsic motivation to improve himself.

Jodie - TP Adult #8

Marco was the only one who could come today.  One tutee’s child was sick and the other one was on his way to Miami to watch a soccer match between his own country and another country in South America.  Today we worked on pronunciation.  I explained to him that for words that have 2 syllables, we generally place the accent on the 1st syllable if it were a noun, and place the accent on the 2^nd syllable if it were a verb.  We went over a list of the words.  Then, we worked on a list of words that are both noun and verb with the same spelling.  He learned to place the accent on the 1st syllable for a noun and to place the accent on the 2^nd syllable for a verb, as in “a present” and “to present”.

We read an article about the City of Charleston, South Carolina.  Marco would do fine if he only needed to read silently, because the article I chose was appropriate for his level.  However, he was to read out loud for pronunciation and intonation.  He almost read it word by word, so I encouraged him to read in phrases.  We went on some websites that provide ESL students the materials to improve reading and listening.  I encouraged him to practice at least several times a day on that website.  We practiced for about 10 minutes with the material on the website during our session.

Jodie - TP Adult # 7

Marcos was the only tutee who could come today.  The others were sick and couldn’t make it.  Since it was the last official tutoring session, I spent some time showing him different websites where he could find materials to study on his own.  I told him that the computer via different websites is a very good teacher for him because his teachers and I will not always be there to teach him.  I suggested that, during the 5-day Thanksgiving break and Christmas and New Year breaks, he will still be able to improve his English by learning on his own.  He was glad to have the websites on ESL English.

We worked on various grammar problems that he had, such as prepositions and verb tenses.  We worked on some common phrases that he needed to know, because those phrases come up with everyday conversations.  For example: “What is the matter?” and “I am sorry to hear that.”  He already knew some phrases well, but some were brand new to him.

He told me that he will have a test on the terms for all the clothing and would like to review them with me.  He also said that men’s clothing are much simpler and women’s are so “complicated”.  I told him that I totally agree.  We worked on pronunciation as he read aloud the names for each item.  He had trouble with some words, like “blouse”, so I reminded him that it should sound like “house”.  We worked on the differences in pronunciation between “sleeper” and “slippers”. 

Marcos has improved a lot.  I am very proud of him because he has been very diligent and very faithful in attending all the tutoring sessions.  He will eventually speak English very well.

Jodie – TP Adult #6

I met my tutees.  One student couldn’t come.  We went over the materials that Xiao-Wei and Marcos learned in the last two days.  They needed help with pronunciation.  We spent some time reading out loud.  Xiao-Wei still had trouble with the “th” sound, so we practiced several times on words that begin with the “th” sound.

We worked on the worksheet that I prepared for Marcos and Xiao-Wei.  They already learned about “making the bed, making dinner…”  I had a list where they had to choose the word “make” or “do” for different activities, such as “do the laundry, make a phone call, do the dishes, make coffee, do business…”

We also worked on some phrases for clearer pronunciation, such as “I’ll be right back; I am busy right now; and Do you think you can call me back?”  Both tutees wanted to learn how to respond in everyday conversations.  They both had experiences in the past where they didn’t know what to say when they were spoken to.  For example, Marcos said that someone bumped into him and said, “Excuse me!”  He wasn’t sure what to say because he always thought that “Excuse me” was supposed to be used in front of a sentence when asking a question or making a statement.  We worked on speaking and listening comprehension in this session.

Don_M_CP-#9

I met with my three Kuwaiti CP's and three other CIES students.  One is from Kuwait and two from China.  The holidays are on everyone's mind.  Two of my CP's had planned to go home to Kuwait for the holiday break, but now they have decided to visit relatives in San Diego.  As I lived in San Diego for 18 years, I asked if they were going to La Jolla which has a significant and varied Muslim community.  One of the two breeds Arabian horses, so I told him about the horse races at Del Mar and the polo grounds at Via  De La Valle.  And of course, I told them about the sea park at La Jolla cove near where I used to live.  My other CP has decided to return to Kuwait.  He has been considering becoming engaged.  Unfortunately, he has been sick for over a week.  Evidently, he went to a clinic last week.

The two Chinese CP's are also leaving town for the holidays.  One is going to Orlando, and the other is going to La Angeles.  She pronounced the name correctly, but carefully.  It's a bit of a tongue twister for her.  I used to work in LA, so we talked about things to do in the city.  She was surprised to learn that California has a large Asian population, and the largest segment is Chinese.  I told her to expect to have people assume she is an American, because of the amount of Asians living there. She had heard of LA's China town but not of San Francisco's much larger one.  FYI:  Los Angeles also has a "Little Saigon".  Lots to do there.  She mentioned running into someone from her home town, so I think she might be a little homesick.  I wish I have the money to go back to California.

Greg - TP Adult #6 - Multilevel Culture Class Self-Review

Final Class Recording – Feedback

Greg and Jodie Robinson

Things to Work on (i.e. what you should do differently)

Things to Continue (i.e. what you feel you did well)

We could figure out a better way to divide the group into pairs that have a higher and lower level student in each pair.  Of course, if this were our regular class, we would know our students’ strengths and weaknesses.  Even if they measured at the same level, we would know whose speech is stronger and who is or isn’t verbal.  This would help us divide things up more quickly and efficiently. We could call on the one or two quiet ones who didn’t speak up in whole class communication (although all of them participated in the pair speaking). We could shave off 3 to 5 minutes of the black hole in space segment.  As well, if this were our regular class, we wouldn’t have to introduce ourselves, thus saving time. More time could be spent using new vocabulary in sentences made by the students. See additional comment about time usage.

Good use of the white board and visual aids. Both of us had clear and appropriate speaking speed most of the time. Good energy level, animation with body language, and full use of the room as we got involved with the students. Student involvement was natural and not forced, and there were many ways in which they were encouraged to participate (calling on them, using them in illustrations, getting their help in coming up with vocabulary definitions and sentences, activities from whole class to pair to individual work) Atmosphere was fun and sweet (chocolate during class, peanut butter crackers given as a thank you for coming gift). Rationale and agenda were clear and rationale was repeated at the end. Corrections were given appropriate to the level and goals (fluency, then accuracy.  The film was really appropriate and stimulating for the discussion.

Additional Comments: If this were our regular, daily speech class, we would have used two days for the lesson.  There would have been more time for modeling what we wanted them to do with the summary of the film.  In other words, a summary would point out the clear progression of the theme by “scenes,” including the discovery of the black hole, uses of the black hole, the results of each usage, and the overall, concluding impression the film seeks to leave with the viewer.  We would also have had more individual preparation time for the opinion-sharing portion.  This would have been followed up with each student coming forward to share his or her opinion.  Feedback or grading would be made on pronunciation, grammar, and content using a speech rubric.

It was a very encouraging experience.  The students were great!

Jodie - TP Adult #5 - MultiLevel Culture Class Self-Review

Final Class Recording – Feedback

Greg and Jodie Robinson

Things to Work on (i.e. what you should do differently)

Things to Continue (i.e. what you feel you did well)

We could figure out a better way to divide the group into pairs that have a higher and lower level student in each pair.  Of course, if this were our regular class, we would know our students’ strengths and weaknesses.  Even if they measured at the same level, we would know whose speech is stronger and who is or isn’t verbal.  This would help us divide things up more quickly and efficiently. We could call on the one or two quiet ones who didn’t speak up in whole class communication (although all of them participated in the pair speaking). We could shave off 3 to 5 minutes of the black hole in space segment.  As well, if this were our regular class, we wouldn’t have to introduce ourselves, thus saving time. More time could be spent using new vocabulary in sentences made by the students. See additional comment about time usage.

Good use of the white board and visual aids. Both of us had clear and appropriate speaking speed most of the time. Good energy level, animation with body language, and full use of the room as we got involved with the students. Student involvement was natural and not forced, and there were many ways in which they were encouraged to participate (calling on them, using them in illustrations, getting their help in coming up with vocabulary definitions and sentences, activities from whole class to pair to individual work) Atmosphere was fun and sweet (chocolate during class, peanut butter crackers given as a thank you for coming gift). Rationale and agenda were clear and rationale was repeated at the end. Corrections were given appropriate to the level and goals (fluency, then accuracy.  The film was really appropriate and stimulating for the discussion.

Additional Comments: If this were our regular, daily speech class, we would have used two days for the lesson.  There would have been more time for modeling what we wanted them to do with the summary of the film.  In other words, a summary would point out the clear progression of the theme by “scenes,” including the discovery of the black hole, uses of the black hole, the results of each usage, and the overall, concluding impression the film seeks to leave with the viewer.  We would also have had more individual preparation time for the opinion-sharing portion.  This would have been followed up with each student coming forward to share his or her opinion.  Feedback or grading would be made on pronunciation, grammar, and content using a speech rubric.

It was a very encouraging experience.  The students were great!

Greg - TP Child #6

My last session with P.J. was the best one.  He was happy and smiley.  He was also more verbal than he sometimes has been at the end of a long day.  So, with his yogurt drink (I think) and apples in front of him and hot tea in front of me (that's why I'm a TEAcher), we struck out on our adventure.  Today was "Thumbalina." I told him a little about the story for schema building and to focus his attention, but, honestly, this is one of those stories that I didn't read as a kid.  I can remember the song about the story, but that's it.

We dealt with several vocabulary words, practicing each one in sentences that often included his name and fun gestures where they applied.  For example, we talked about Fruit Loops, roller coasters, and airplanes as we learned the word "loop."  The bird in the story was flying in loops.  So I asked P.J. if he had seen roller coasters with loops in them, if he eaten fruit loops, etc.  Then we made sentences that included him and the vocab word and object:  "Do you like to eat fruit loops?  Draw the shape of a fruit loop in the air.  Yep, that's a loop." We did this with "gnaw." I gnawed a slice of apple, making him laugh. Then we compared that with taking a bit of apple.  Thus, he could see how the fish in the story had to gnaw the tough stem of a lily pad so Thumbalina could get away from the mean mother frog.

When we stumbled on the word "past," I discovered that he didn't get it.  This is one of those things he knows in Korean, but not in English.  We spent at least 5 minutes on "past, present, and future."  I tried to link these words to "yesterday, today, and tomorrow," but "past" and "present" where continually being confused with each other.  When P.J. got them right, we celebrated.  After a few successes, I told him to glue them in his brain because we were going to review them again at the end of the hour.  We did, and they didn't roll out of his mouth.  He got the answers right, but he had to think hard.  I gave him a high 5.  I left the words on his white board for him to practice.

Our last 15 minutes dealt with some quiz or homework papers he had gotten back.  He was to make a sentence for both uses of  3 words that each had two uses (watch, can, and ????).  We went over his mistakes and wrote new sentences.  I think his mistakes were related both to word usage as well as to not reading the instructions carefully.

P.J. is a great kid.  He is well on his way to being bi-lingual.  He is in the hard period where the L2 has to face slow but steady progress while his classmates use it as their L1 and fly.  Eventually he will know the blessing of the L2 being automatic while still having the advantage of speaking Korean at the drop of a hat.

Hang in there, Ms. Kim.  Keep up the good work with P.J.

Nicole CP#8 -(Isa)

   I got to meet up with my conversation partner this weekend, which was great because she had been so sick that we hadn't had a chance to catch up in awhile. Isa took her TOEFL and will be staying for more classes another semester. Originally she told me she was dissappointed that her parents would be upset, but upon realizing they were not she felt much better. If anything Isa is excited to have more time at FSU because she loves it here. We grabbed a quick lunch before we went our seperate ways to tailgate. I am so glad to see her feeling better and enjoying her time here. I promised to get her soem free FSU sporting tickets for baseball season, as CIES students are not given these the way regular FSU students are.

Nicole CO#2- (grammar)

   This morning I woke up to the chilliest morning of the season thus far. Although it was a sturggle to get out of bed I made my way to Vicky Ledbetter's 2A grammar lesson in the Kellog building. Everyone in the class seemed a bit groggy and chilly, but Vicky had the students up and running in no time. The first activity was a review of present participle, where the students got in a circle, and conjugated the correct form of verbs by passing a ball at random. This was a fun interactive way for the students to wake up and "turn on their brains." The class then moved on to an interactive lecture disscussing passive voice. Ms. Ledbetter was so efficient in her explanation, made things very clear, kept teh students extremely engaged, provided an upbeat comfortable environment, and I hope to be this concise in my teaching methods someday. Once the passive and active voice were thoroughly examined as a group everyone was split into pairs to do a worksheet.I sat with Isabela and Abdulrahman while they did their work, watching Ms. Ledbetter go from group to group listening for "beautiful mistakes," and correcting them. Once one side of the handout was done, it was reviewed aloud with students being called upon to give their answers. The second side was done the same way, but was not finished due to time. Overall a great experiance taht got me excited for my own classroom setting.

Bobby - TP_child 6

Jun and I had out last session on Friday. His mother told him that he had to be especially attentive this time, and that's exactly how he was for the whole tutoring session. As usual, Jun had a book that he had to read for school. We deviated from the "Magic Tree House" series in favor of a chapter book called "Miss Mary is Scary," about a 2nd grade class whose substitute teacher is apparently a vampire. We read through the book, pausing here and there to talk about vocabulary. We also talked a bit about American slang and British slang (Miss Mary was from England). I explained words such as "y'know" and "bloody" and "sup." These were all foreign to Jun. I'd also like to take a moment and talk about how the book was written...in my opinion, the writing style did not seem appropriate for children. The author had characters blatantly insulting other characters (the main character kept saying that people "looked weird" and retorted with "so is your face!" at times) and one character even described a microscope falling on a teacher's head. Very odd. I also taught Jun the importance of italics while reading, and how it can change the meaning of a sentence. One thing that Jun had trouble with was pronunciation of "z". There was a character named Zack, but Jun kept calling him "Jack". I think this problem could be easily solved with an exercise in minimal pairs. Overall, I think I have learned a lot working with Jun. I think I like working with kids more than adults just because I love to see how their abilities grow. Jun tried to give me one of his toys at the end of our session, I think to thank me for working with him. I respectfully declined because I didn't want to take one of his precious toys, but I appreciated the gesture! :)

Greg - student's critical incident

Since I finished my CP's before the assignment was given to gather a critical incident with language, I found someone I often talk to in the CIES breakroom.  Having promised not to use her name in the blog, I will only say that she is a student from China.

My friend told me that one day she was talking with a female friend about make-up, lotions, and serums. She wanted to ask her friend what serum she recommended for her face.  She told me that she couldn't quite remember the word "serum."  She had a blurry image of the word in her mind.  She could remember the "s," "r," and "m."  Instead of thinking first, she went with what she could remember, asking her friend what kind of sperm she used on her face.

I hope she practices safe speech in the future!

Emily_TP (Child)_5

When I arrived at Jun’s house, he was pretty excited to see me. He showed me his chapter book that he needed to read for an AR test the next day. He told me that he had already read 26 pages out of about 100, but he wanted to start from the beginning to refresh his memory. He informed me that it was a weird book, and I would have to agree a little bit. I don’t think he knew that he was not making a good selection in choosing this book, but we talked about that while reading.  The book was kind of rude and used words that weren’t really words, like “vomitorium” (a combination of the words ‘vomit’ and ‘auditorium’) to describe the place that the kids ate lunch. I had to explain that as well of other things that I did not really want to explain to Jun. Another example would be that the narrator called the one of his peers ‘the nude kid’ instead of ‘new kid.’ Jun knew that ‘nude’ meant ‘naked’ and was confused. They also used ‘shut up’ in the book, but Jun knew that it was not a nice thing to say, so we didn’t read that part. I think it was all meant to be funny, and some parts were funny, but Jun mostly thought it was weird. I stopped to ask him comprehension questions periodically. He understood most of it, but his focus seemed to be broken at some parts. The book dragged on, so we took turns reading. We had read about 60 pages when our session ended. I think this helped. I had to tell Jun to show down while reading and pause at punctuation, so when we started taking turns reading, I hoped that this would serve as modeling for him. He began to do better when it was his turn, so I guess it was working. I also think that this helped him focus because he began doing better on comprehension checks. I only have one more session with Jun. He and his mom are so nice and make me feel appreciated.

Emily_CP_9

On Wednesday after tutoring, I met up with Neto at Starbucks.  I asked him how his presentation on me went. He used the interview questions from our last meeting to make a PowerPoint presentation, and he showed it to me. It was really well done! Neto told me about his trip to Miami to see a soccer game over the weekend. He told me that there are so many Portuguese speakers there as well as Spanish speakers, and I wasn’t aware of that. Maybe it was because a lot of Brazilians were there to see the game. Next, he pulled out a sheet with pronunciation exercises on it. The directions were for the students to practice different tongue twisters with their conversation partners. Neto needed to work on the “r” and “h” section the most because Portuguese speakers have the most trouble with that. The ‘r’ is pronounced as an ‘h’ for them. We took turns. He had to go really slowly at first on some of them, but when I modeled how to do it first he got the hang of it. Then, he gave me his journal and told me to write down some more English words that start with ‘r’ for him to practice. He made some contributions as well. Things like this show me that Neto is trying hard to get better everyday. Neto still seems a bit flustered while speaking, but I am patient and try to make him feel comfortable by giving him time to figure out how to communicate his thoughts to me. He asks me for clarification on how to say certain words or form verbs according to subject, so I’m glad he feel comfortable doing this.