Alexandra CO3

CLASSROOM OBSERVATION 3- Speaking with Anisa.

Anisa introduced today’s task, the preparation of an oral class presentation/research project, by asking students if they understood the concept of a thesis statement. Most of the students appeared confident in their understanding, but judging by facial reactions there appeared to be at least some confusion or lack of clarity about the concept. Anisa then began by first describing a statement as being an idea or argument, a discussion which she used as a springboard into a review of five paragraph essays. Anisa stated that she would like the students to model their topic and subsequent points in the same manner one would organize this kind of essay. She went through the prescribed structure of the five paragraph format, a concept which was very useful to have a refresher on, since it has been a long time since I have had to write such a strictly structured piece of writing.
In terms of the student body, what I most noted was the division of students of the class. I sat more or less between the middle and the corner of the room. The table on the opposite end of the room was occupied primarily several middle aged Middle Eastern women of various national origins. In the middle table, there were a few Korean males, a Chinese girl and a girl from Panama. The table closest to me was made up of a group of Middle eastern youths, most of them speaking Arabic, only one girl, and one very vocal Turkish man. There was one outlying student who seemed rather despondent, who not seated t any table, but leaned his chair back against the wall between the tables.
The students were rather chatty on this day, so Anisa gracefully curbed this excitement by channeling it into the day’s activities. Today, Anisa helped them to identify thesis statements that they would like to develop into a later class presentation. The proficiency levels and verbal bravery levels in the room seemed rather varied, which became apparent as she went around the room asking student to volunteer their initial ideas. Some students spoke only in word clusters, while other readily expounded on their topics, if perhaps a bit too vaguely. Anisa took time with each person to help them refine their subjects, and after having gone through each student, she allowed them time to sit and work on their topics silently, and then after a few minutes, allowed them to turn to each other for peer critiques.
This predictably got somewhat out of hand, as the table nearest to me got into a fairly heated, but friendly debate about the origins and best qualities of baklava. Sensing that the noise was growing distracting to the other students, Anisa curtailed this tangent by seamlessly inserting herself into the conversation, engaging them briefly by acknowledging their opinions, and ultimately taking control of it the conversation in order to steer it to a close. This was a very useful strategy that impressed me with its subtlety, but effectiveness.

Alexandra TP 12

TUTORING PARTNER 12 – Geonae

On Wednesday, Geonae and I finally experienced a breakthrough, and I couldn’t be more thrilled. The victory was small but significant. Given some of the work we had been doing to this point, I felt that Geonae should at least have sufficient grasp of basic sentence structures to at least begin experimenting with verbalizing sentences. Being a diligent student, though I knew she was making progress in terms of her grammatical learning, I had been making virtually zero progress in coaxing her to speak, despite my best efforts to take baby steps towards this goal. Even after eight or so meetings, she had barely ever verbally joined more than three words together of her own volition, perhaps out of fear of making mistakes. Thus, in preparation for this session, I drafted two whole pages with the beginnings of sentences so that would make her have to work with me verbally in order to find logical consequents to the antecedents, however simple the final outcome.
Though at first it would take us about five minutes per sentence (I tried to be patient with her so she could feel she was generating sentences based on her own ideas), she began to work a bit more quickly. Although this was promising in itself, what made me happiest was when she would look up and mumble possible English sentences to herself. Some made only minimal sense, and others were surprisingly sophisticated compared to her other work, but it gave us great ground to begin discussing grammatical issues in the way she thinks through sentences. By the end of the session, we had only made it through the first page, but both she and I were pleased with the progress, and she seemed visibly proud of what she had done, which gave her courage to initiate an occasional direct question or comment to me unprovoked. As we were photocopying some of the work, I took advantage of both of our relieved moods, to tell her in earnest how glad it made me to hear her speak, and how I wished she would trust me enough to feel free to continue in this way, even if it meant making mistakes. I think she understood and I look forward to future progress and seeing what she does with the second sheet, which I left her for homework.

Jessica TP12

For my final tutoring session with Alonso we went over a brief reading lesson. We had been looking up info ont the Blue Angels (in anticipation of the air show we saw yesterday…it was AWESOME!) So I thought that to catch his attention and to make a reading lesson really interesting we could use an article from an aviation magazine. I found one about a new jet that Cessna is releasing and came up with a brief worksheet asking comprehension questions about the article. Before he read it we went over some vocabulary and checked out the title and photos. Then he looked over the questions, skimmed the article and answered the first few. He got the gist of the article fairly easily, but there were a few words that I didn’t have in the vocabulary list that gave him some trouble so we spent some time on those. 

It was great to see when he solved some of his questions and came to understand the points of the article. He also really got excited to learn about how to use aviation terms in English. One if his main reasons for coming to the U.S. was to learn the language so that he could come back to the states in the future and work as a pilot, but also to communicate with his boss back in Panama. His boss is German, and knows a little Spanish, but having Alonso be able to communicate in English would be a great help. The lesson went well over all and he learned some good vocab that we put to good use for our Pensacola road trip.

Brittany CO 3

For my final class observation I sat in Maria Samuel's listening class to get some insight before my listening lesson plan. This particular day they were continuing watching "The Terminal" with Tom Hanks as a foreigner indefinitely stuck in a NY airport. I think the context is great given the 'stranger in a strange land' theme that students can clearly relate to. First, Maria asked the class to recap what had happened in the movie up to the point they were at today. A few students raised hands and answered. Maria told the class that she'd be stopping the movie every few minutes and asking for a summary so to pay attention, be ready, and enjoy!

It had been a long time since I'd see The Terminal and forgot how good the story is, and how funny Tom Hanks is, but soon I noticed much of the humor didn't really translate as Maria and I were the only ones laughing at several parts. After 15 minutes, Maria stopped the movie as promised and asked for someone to summarize what they'd just seen. While she called a different student than before, the same students were raising their hands to answer. I noticed the second time Maria stopped the video and asked again for a summary of the previous 15 minutes, she called on a girl in the corner who hadn't volunteered yet. I like this move by Maria, though anytime I was like that girl in past classes I would have hated it, but as a future teacher, I know it's the best way to be sure every student is paying attention and understanding the material.

Class ended before the movie was over, so Maria told the class to remember what happened for next time. Though it's not as student-centered and full of activity, watching movies is definitely a great way to practice some extensive listening.

Brittany CO 2

Observing Jerry’s grammar class was interesting, but very different from the speaking class I’d been to the previous week. First, it was 9am, so most of the students didn’t seem quite awake or nearly as lively for class participation in grammar as they were excited for speaking activities. Jerry also had the agenda posted for students to see and they started with a word of the day, assigned to a certain student. Surprisingly I saw both my conversation partners in that class, and Gyusang got up to present the word of the day, ‘dowdy.’ He wrote the part of speech, definition, synonym and antonym, as well as an example and other forms of the words, such as adverb and noun.

Next they moved on to the day’s grammar topic, infinitives and gerunds, which Jerry said would continue tomorrow as well. This was said to be and then was apparently to students, a review, and the rationale from Jerry being that students often miss the opportunity to use gerunds versus infinitives in their essays. Students had a worksheet in which they had to circle gerunds (2 minutes) then Jerry read through each sentence out loud and asked, “is there a gerund here?” prompting class response answers. With any wrong response or question that came up, Jerry would write on the board or overhead the question and an example, and how to used it properly or interchangeably in meaning.

While Jerry is a great teacher and very knowledgeable of the material and how to explain it, the students enthusiasm and participation were noticeably less than other classes, which I think is mainly reflective of the time of day and subject- grammar is never going to be as exciting as conversing, but I do think a more student-centered structure during activities could perhaps help students’ motivation.

Brittany CO 1

I observed a group 4 speaking class with Ryan Flemming. First, Ryan put the agenda on the overhead for the class to see and read through it: 1) We have a class observer, Brittany, and what’s the rule about class observation, he asked the students- “observing only teacher, not us,” said one student, to which Ryan said “only teacher?”- quickly self-correcting, the student replied “the teacher.” Immediately I see with this group, and in his style, Ryan uses the ‘what?’ approach, making a point that something was wrong and prompts students to fix it. Second on the agenda for class was to go over their presentation feedback in 2 sections, grammar and pronunciation. Ryan timed 3 minutes for students to review and correct their grammar errors (directions written on overhead). Ryan also explained that since transcribing all errors isn’t possible, that he’d capped it at 8 sentences for them all to rewrite. Then students were advised to work on pronunciation with a partner of a different native language to help with sounds some don’t normally hear or speak. After the 3 minutes of independent or group work, they were allowed to ask Ryan for help if needed, and I saw him move between tables helping both in groups, but also knowing which students need more individual attention, and giving it. One example of the kind of impromptu explaining Ryan thinks of is the word ‘climate,’ which gave a girl some trouble, and Ryan wrote on the board to say it like you would ‘climb it.’ I noticed he’s great at thinking on his toes and the students respond well to his friendly demeanor, but also respect his authority when he moves them into a new activity or needs them to focus on task.

The next class activity was 10-15 minutes of speech topics for 1 minute recordings by each student. The topics were familiar to the students from work earlier in the week, such as an in-class article about television, the positive and negative effects of judging people on physical appearance, or discussing the possible causes of why so many students could have gotten sick the previous week. Students had a few minutes to review any notes they had on a particular topic then left the room one at a time to record their response. During this time Ryan walked between tables and generally addressed any questions students had while preparing for their responses. It seems like this is a common class activity since students were organized in switching turns with the recorder and walking outside the room.

The last activity was speech acts: this week, basic complaints or requests written on cards and random chosen by pairs of students. One group had to act out a man knocking on his neighbor’s door to complain that his music was too loud, and could he please turn it down. This lead to a pretty funny cultural moment when after one attempt, Ryan said this student had taken too long getting to the main point on the request; to this the student replied that he had to be polite and talk to him before complaining because since he’s an American, he could get mad and have a gun and shoot him for being rude. We laughed and it was funny, but it made me hope that’s not truly the common perception these students have of Americans!

Overall Ryan seems very aware of his students’ needs and levels and is able to adjust personal attention to the level of class management he needs to be directing at any given time. Ryan seems to have the perfect balance of instructor and relatable friend on his side, and it seems the students really respond to him well.

Brittany TP 12

My last meeting with Ozan was a few days after he had started a new session at CIES, so he already had a new essay topic for composition class and an outline in progress. He asked me to review it and I told him the 3 supportive points were well chosen and that given what we’ve worked on in his writing, he knew how to get the details and examples strong and fully supportive of his thesis. I asked if he’d learned anything knew or if any topics thus far in the session had given him any problems which prompted him to flip through his grammar pages and ask me to clarify the difference between present simple and present continuous. After a few sample sentences and a practice quiz that has the student select between the two tenses, Ozan said he got it. Tired from a first week of classes, the motivation wasn’t as high as usual with my studious tutee, so I chose to leave him with a few resources to help his study after I leave Tallahassee. Knowing his plans to eventually take the GRE, in addition to the TOEFL, I showed him the Princeton Review site and mentioned their exam workbooks as a good practice. Also, since the TOEFL listening section is generally composed of academic lecture, I showed him academicearth.org and suggested he listen to some interesting lectures to practice that kind of listening, while also feeling like he’s in a real university classroom. I even showed him the MIT computer engineering and various related classes recorded and he was pretty excited about that. Ozan has been such a great tutee to work with. I can’t wait to see where he goes after CIES!