Alexandra CP 3

CONVERSATION PARTNER 3 – Conversation Club at the Globe, Meeting 7

Since had been one previous session of the Globe’s conversation club which occurred some time ago and which I had forgotten to record, I will use this more recent event to count as my 3rd Conversation Partner meeting.
Yesterday’s Conversation Club was quite entertaining. I arrived to find Dongsoek, Lulu and a new member already engrossed in conversation. The new member was Vildan, a bright young girl from Turkey working on her dissertation in the intersection of Information technology and cognitive functions. Vildan arrived only recently to the US, at most about a week ago. Having already worked with Lulu and Dongsoek several times before, despite some small issues, I have full confidence in their communicative abilities so while it remained important as ever to keep them involved and maintain an appropriate level of complexity for them, the mission of the day was to try and evaluate what Vildan’s hopes for the group were as well as what errors might be evident in her speaking. At first I think I underestimated Vildan’s English abilities, because though I could understand the general gist of her statements, her enunciation of syllables was fairly cloudy and therefore confusing. After our Conversation Partner session in the Globe, during which we all conversed about zodiac symbols, geography, and the nature of alphabet characters in each person’s language, I took Dongsoek and Vildan home to Alumni Village since the busses had already stopped running for the day. When it came to her turn, Vildan asked me to come join her for some Turkish coffee. We spoke on her porch for several hours until her very nice, but blunt and humorous roommate came home.
In retrospect, I can see that the clarity of Vildan’s speaking had dramatically improved from when I was first introduced to her, likely due to having overcome her shyness with me. It was really a very remarkable transition though, and showed me just how much impact shyness can have on one’s perception of another’s ability. Vildan has a very unique ability to be able to talk around her significant deficiencies in vocabulary, because though I would very often have to help her find words, her grammar showed no overt errors and her meaning on some very complex topics was almost always perfectly clear. There are one or two consistent errors I will point out to her next time we meet.
Vildan is great conversation and a lot of fun, so I hope to help her make the most of the short time she will be here, which will be about six months. I also hope to be able to more fluidly integrate her into the Conversation table more seamlessly next time now that I know abilities. I’m glad that Lulu, Dongsoek, and some of the other regulars are so open and friendly that I can count on the fact that they will be great assets in this process.

Alexandra TP 11

TUTORING PARTNER 11 – Ahmed, Meeting 3

Our second consultation on Ahmed’s writing preparation for the TOEFL was a two-hour lesson to intended to expand upon some of the concepts we have talked about before as well as introducing him to a few other key ideas. Fortunately, Ahmed already has a fairly good understanding of varied English sentence structure, which he definitely exhibits in his speaking, and to a lesser extent, demonstrates in his writing. Even when he makes mistakes, it is good to see that he is actively taking risks, though today we tried to play it close to the vest for the TOEFL. The most pronounced weaknesses in his writing appear to be lack of control over transitional devices as well as a lack of control over the use of the definite article. The former was easy to fix by providing him with lists and examples of appropriate and inappropriate transitions, but given the huge disparity between the English and Arabic uses of the definite, this will take much more time to fix, a reality which frustrates Ahmed, a quick learner, greatly. He tended to put “the” before generalized concepts and in places where it was not needed, and by pointing out these instances, I think he has at least a slightly better grasp of at least when to not use “the”.
Ahmed also tended to use the word “you” in his essays, which given the formality of what will be demanded from him on the test, is not entirely appropriate. We worked together to the concept of “one”. I had a slightly awkward time explaining to him how “one” works in conjugation, particularly since I had never heard a formal explanation of how to use it myself, but we soon discovered that it conjugates much like “he”, and within a few minutes he was capably writing sentences substituting the word “you” for “one”. Though Ahmed is always eager to learn and accept changes, I believe that this is one of the most serious errors I found in his writing since it detracted from his otherwise good ideas.
Ahmed needs to be as specific as possible in his writing, and should try to use “he or she” structures to avoid potentially offending any female graders, (which, though I realize might seem somewhat silly at times, he fully understood). We also began finding alternatives to avoiding using the word “stuff” and the importance of avoiding vagueness. Ahmed grasped this right away and began replacing them in real-time as we reread his essays together. Given his work ethic, I’m confident that with reinforcement and with continued work on the definite vs. the indefinite, Ahmed’s writing, which shows good promise, will become stronger rather quickly.

Alexandra TP 10

TUTORING PARTNER 10 – Ahmed, Meeting 2

Today I worked with Ahmed (who has been preparing for his TOEFL for the past few days). Although Ahmed knows he will have further opportunities to take the exam, he is currently being very diligent on improving his writing (the skill that he requested help from me with today) and has spent the last few days in the library. In preparation, Ahmed sent me four separate essays which he wrote in a timed fashion, and given the time constraints, though the samples had many errors, conceptually at least, they were quite well developed. I reviewed his essays ahead of time for grammar as well as for stylistic problems, focusing mainly on those which could be improved in a short amount of time. Since it would have been difficult to make any tremendous change in his writing abilities in the space of three days, I scanned for repeated errors.

Once the writings had been proofed, we met at the Strozier library café and set upon fixing a few of the most critical errors found throughout the four pieces. One of main goals today was ensuring proper numerical agreement. Given Ahmed’s overall ability, I’m not exactly sure why this essentially basic concept is still an issue for him and am curious to find out. Though he is certainly capable of fixing these problems when pointed in the direction of a mistake, I hope to continue to work with Ahmed to see if I can find any trends, and therefore clues, as to the logic that is causing this problem. I also hope that we’ll be able to root out any other basic grammatical issues that may still be lingering and weakening his otherwise positive progress.

Ahmed and I also discussed the possibility of tightening up his introductions and conclusions, as well as how critical being as direct and deliberate as possible in both of these areas is for creating the impression of a clear, and well-managed piece of timed writing. I suggested that Ahmed spend the first few minutes composing, proofing, and then tightening his introductory statement as well as his concluding remarks on scratch paper, even if at the slight expense of a few other lines in the body. Ahmed seemed to agree that this was probably a good idea. At the end of this session, we agreed to meet again and go over some of the other issues we had uncovered in his work.

Brittany CP 5

For my fifth CP meeting I saw Gyusang and persuaded him to meet with me outside rather than the student lounge, which gets pretty noisy during teatime. He speaks English pretty well most of the time, but with some of the pronunciation issues, I wanted the quiet to avoid asking him to repeat himself over and over, since that seems discouraging. This Tuesday was just days after Gyusang had taken the TOEFL exam, and, unfortunately, he didn’t feel too great about it. I asked him what had given him problems, and he explained that each section has presented its own challenge: with reading, he ran out of time in the end, but found it fairly easy; in writing, he explained the topic wasn’t difficult and he thinks his essay was ok. We discussed the topic (“Should you judge a person based on who they’re friends with?”) and the points he wrote about make me think his essay was on track, but the sections he really struggled with were speaking and listening. For those of you aren’t familiar with the exam, the speaking and listening sections both involve listening to a variety of recordings, some conversational, some academic discussions and lectures, and students have to respond and/or answer questions to show comprehension. I’ve gone through some practice sections with my tutee, and these sections are pretty difficult for ESL learners mainly because they can only hear each recording once, and the terms, especially in the academic ones, are not very common. Overall it’s test anxiety and pressure to do well that all of us have faced, so I tried to reassure him, based on what I’ve seen, that he has no reason to worry that he did poorly, and the best thing is you can take it again! I even got him to laugh when I said I took the SAT 3 times!

Gyusang and I spent the rest of our time talking about trips we’ve taken after he mentioned going to Orlando and New York recently. I told him I’m going to California to visit a friend this summer, and he told me about his time there, especially in Koreatown, which he said was great since he got to eat authentic foods you can’t get in Tallahassee.

Ganem TP-6

I met with Dongsoek again on Monday, June 13^th. He had written the essay about whether the death penalty is right or wrong. His argument was that it was wrong. It was a standard five paragraph essay. I went over organization, grammar, and structure.

The introduction was good. He stated that the death penalty was wrong and then went into supporting sentences he wanted to use as main points for the body paragraphs. I looked at the body paragraphs and there were some problems with the organization and structure but they were pretty good.

The first point was that the justice system doesn’t have a right to take away the life the life a human being. He started by saying that the criminal should just be jailed for life if the crime is murder and that is enough of a punishment. This was a good sentence. He continued with this line of thinking by getting into the details o the execution process, using the example of lethal injections. He tried to relate lethal injections to euthanasia. He wrote that humans don’t have a right to kill themselves and euthanasia was wrong. I understood what he was trying to get at; humans shouldn’t kill themselves with the state’s authority so it’s just as wrong for the state to kill criminals. The problem with this was twofold. The paragraph ended abruptly with him simply saying euthanasia was wrong; and it was tangential to the original argument. I explained that even though it may seem related, he can’t use the euthanasia example because his argument is specifically about the death penalty.

His second point was that the death penalty didn’t deter crime. This paragraph made a lot of logical sense. He stated that the death penalty didn’t decrease rape and murder. The only things wrong were grammatical and mechanical errors. He used present tense verbs when he should have used past tense verbs. Some words that were supposed to be plural were singular. Some articles were missing. These were small details that are easily fixed.

The third paragraph was that innocent people have been wrongly sentenced to death and will continue to be wrongly sentenced to death because of the death penalty. He argued that this was unacceptable. Once a mistake like this is made, it can’t be reversed. The possibility for this made the death penalty unjust. This was really a good paragraph but there were mistakes. He meant to use the word “possible” when describing the situation of innocent people being wrongly executed, but he used impossible. Similar grammatical mistakes to the ones in the second body paragraph occurred.

The conclusion restated his thesis and summarized the points from the body. It didn’t need to be fixed. We went over the mistakes that were made. We wrote out sentences that were grammatically and mechanically correct and attempted to reorganize some of the structure from the first body paragraph.

After this, Dongsoek wanted to practice writing something else. I asked him what he was interested in. He told me he was interested in traveling. I told him do a journal activity. He would write about different places he wants to travel to and why he wants to visit them. Dongsoek liked this idea and said he’d have it done before the next time we meet. We then finished our tutoring session and Dongsoek left Strozier to catch his bus.

Pat WW-CP 2

I had a family emergency and had to leave for Baltimore to take care of my Mom (she’s 94!). I still need to finish my conversation requirements. I’m surprised that it’s hard to find ESL classes in this town.

However, I think it was Andy Warhol who said that everyone and everything is just 6 phone calls away. But which 6 are the correct calls? In any event, I’m meeting with Ronnie tomorrow at the English Language Learning Center at Baltimore City Community College. I’m hoping to partner tomorrow. If not, The Johns Hopkins English as a Second Language Program has my CV on file.

Ganem TP-5

On June 10^th I had a tutoring session with Dongsoek. We met at the Strozier library and checked out one of the group study rooms so we could write on the board. He had recently taken the TOEFL writing exam. He brought his TOEFL book with him and we looked for different prompts he would be interested in outlining. We found one prompt on whether it was better for a person to take a job far away from his or her friends and family to make more money, or it was better to take a job that keeps the person near friends and family but pays less.

I asked Dongsoek which side he liked. He liked the side advocating getting a job far away from home. I wrote on the dry erase wall that this was his thesis statement. I then asked him to give me three major reasons why this was good. The first reason was that it allowed the worker to travel. The second reason was that money would allow the worker to do and buy more things. The final reason was that it was unnecessary to be in the same location as family to stay in contact with them, thanks to modern communication technology.

I then told him he needed to come up with three other supporting details for each of the main points of his argument. This at first seemed a little daunting to Dongsoek, but he didn’t give up. I told him not to worry too much and just think of things off the top of his head. He was able to come up with supporting details for each of his body paragraphs.

I then asked him how he would start the introduction. He told me he didn’t know what would be the best way. I told him the best way would be to restate the prompt for the essay in his own words. After that he will make the argument his thesis statement. Then the main points that make up the body would be introduced. He understood this and we practiced writing it out on the board.

It was almost time for him to catch his bus but he wanted to practice writing a persuasive essay at home. We looked through the TEFL practice book and Dongsoek found a prompt he thought was interesting. It was about whether the death penalty was a good or bad thing. He said he practice outlining and writing the essay at home and would bring it back for me to correct. I said it was a good idea and I looked forward to meeting again at Strozier next Monday.

Ganem CP-5

On June 2^nd was the Thursday I met up with Mustafa. He had just gotten out of class and it was an hour before my TEFL class. We met at the Circle K and greeted each other. I asked him how he had been. He replied he was doing well, but was busy running errands for his aunt and uncle, who he was staying with for the summer in Tallahassee. We then walked up to the balcony connecting the Eppes and Kellog building. There were other students from the CIES hanging out there as well.

We started talking about music. I asked him what kind of music he liked. He told me he liked a lot of rock and heavy metal music. I was into the same kind of music as well. We talked about different bands and got on the subject of concerts we’ve seen live. I told him I saw Slayer, Alice Cooper, and Gwar live so far and he recognized these names. He saw shows in Turkey, but he did see the heavy metal band Accept when visiting Orlando. I asked him what concerts were like in Turkey and he started talk about concerts in the southern coastal cities.

I had my laptop with me, and he went on Google images to show me a concert that he went to on the beach. It was part of a music festival and people were attending the concert on the beach; the stage itself was near the water so people were swimming and listening to the music. He said it was a lot of fun and missed being back home.

I asked what he was doing this weekend. He replied he had to help his aunt and uncle move into a new house. They were moving from the neighborhood he was staying with them in into the opposite part of town. It was already 4:00PM and I had to go to class. He said he wouldn’t be able to meet the next week because he and some Turkish students were having a social gathering and he was going to the beach at Saint George Islands with the CIES students. We then concluded our conversation session.

Brittany CP 4

For my fourth conversation meeting, I met with a new partner, Ali, from Saudi Arabia. Ali is an unusual student at CIES, since he was actually born in Tallahassee Memorial Hospital and has duel-citizenship. We mostly spent the hour exchanging information and getting to know each other. I found out Ali's mother is Kuwaiti and after his father, whose Saudi, finished grad school at FSU, they all went to Kuwaiti for several years until finally settling in Saudi Arabia. Though Ali adheres to the expectations of his own culture, for instance he doesn't drink alcohol, one of the first things he told me, with confidence, was, "I am very familiar with American culture, and I like it here a lot." Just from walking around the center with him for a few minutes, I saw how popular Ali is with the students and faculty there, and I found out it's not only because of his charming smile and personality, but also because he is about to complete his 3rd session at CIES. His English is nearly perfect at this point, to which he credits to a lot of personal study time, and having passed the TOEFL, he is waiting to hear back from universities he applied to. Ali explained that several universities also want him to take the SAT, but he's hoping to get into one that won't require that.

After hearing several students, including Ali, mention seeing each other at Cafe Sheesha, we made a plan to meet there next time. I'm excited because I haven't been there in almost 4 years- and I get to go now with a new Saudi friend!

Kasper- CP 6

On my last meeting with my conversation partner we spoke about Walmart since he likes to go shopping there. I sent him an email with some information about Walmart mostly about how people think that its a bad company because smaller places can't compete. He said that his wife shops there but only for cosmetics and small things since they are cheaper but they also buy frozen dinners like "Lean Cuisine", apparently they dont cook very much. He said that there are places in his country like Walmart but there are no Walmarts. Its different because people don't have money and they are looking to buy things that can feed their families. I found difficult to explain to him how Walmart is bad and good at the same time, they give people jobs but they are so big that small stores cant compete. There are Walmarts in Nicaragua but they have a different name since they dont want to be known as an American company.

Kasper- TP 7

Last week, I met with Andrea and went over "a, an and the" articles. She is very good at writing but just like many she needed a quick review. The first thing we did was go over the rules of when and how to use a, an and the. It was definitely a review since she knew when to use them but there were the "h" exception she forgot. After reviewing, we a short exercise that I had prepared earlier, I took out all the a, an and the from a short paragraph from a short story and asked her to complete it. She got most of them right, the one she got wrong were the ones that didnt need an article. Unfortunately, she had to go because she doesn't drive yet but she is going to take the test soon. Im also not going to be in town but I told her I would continue to help her via email.

Ganem CO-3

On June 8^th I went to my final classroom observation. I was in Anisa Radman’s listening class. She announced I was observing their class and introduced me to her students .She then went straight into her lesson. Her teaching style is teacher centered; she stood in the front and center of the class and maintained a sense of authority.

The students were going to listen to a broadcast from the NPR show “This American Life.” The subject of this broadcast was the perception of money. Before making the students listen to the broadcast she wrote down vocabulary they would have to listen for. She also asked the students what people use money for. Different students replied money is used for buying food, buying shelter, buying clothes, and also for leisure. She then asked the class where the concept of money came from. Different students answered with different values. Some students said money was based on gold; others said it was based on oil. She explained that these values were based on how much people wanted or needed these resources. This allowed her to segue into one of the points of the broadcast; the value of money is fictional and based on people’s perception.

She then played the broadcast for them. The students were writing a dictocomp for the broadcast. They were quiet and listened attentively as the host, Ira Glass, spoke. The broadcast covered the history of money and how it’s valued today. The broadcast mentioned how gold used to be the normal standard for money but then it was changed to credit. She stopped the broadcast after the end of the first half and asked the students questions. She asked students what money was described as and students reiterated that money was fiction, numbers, information. She then went further and asked the class what concrete and abstract meant. They had a hard time answering. She helped them out; she explained that concrete meant things were tangible, things like gold, oil, and abstract meant things were virtual or imaginary.

She then started the second half of the broadcast. This part was about an economic crisis that affected Brazil in the 1970s. It was about how a team of economists sponsored by the Brazilian government helped bring the nation out of this tense economic situation. After this half of the broadcast, she asked questions about what the broadcast was about, who it involved, where and when the event happened. The students answered from their listening.

This was a very well organized, well thought-out lesson. The subject matter was interesting. She maintained both classroom management and student participation. Her explanations for the lesson were very natural and didn’t feel forced.

Ganem TP-4

I met Tugba Batuhhan for Tutoring at the CIES building on June 8^th. She is from Ankara Turkey and is an art history major. I just found out Tugba was assigned as my tutee. I was assigned to be her tutor a week or so earlier and she tried e-mailing me. I was late to respond because she was given the wrong e-mail address and had just gotten the correct one.

I asked Tugba what she wanted to practice for her TOEFL exam. She told me she wanted to practice for the writing portion of the exam. She wanted to practice persuasive writing. She had brought her TOEFL exam book with her. We looked through some writing prompts in her book and she found one she liked. It was a prompt asking the writer whether or not physical education should be a mandatory requirement for students to take in school.

She believed that physical education should be mandatory. I asked her why it should be mandatory. The reasons she gave me were that it teaches skills and values, it gives kids a chance to release energy and have fun, and they also get the chance to celebrate. These responses interested me and I asked her to give examples for each point. For the point about how physical education gives kids a chance to celebrate she used examples from her culture. In Turkey they celebrate Victory Day, Kids/Youth Day. Victory Day celebrates the day Turkey became a free country after its war for independence from 1918 to 1923. To celebrate, the students practice dances in gym class for parades and pageants for the various holidays.

After brainstorming, I showed her how to make an outline for her essay. I asked her if she did this before. She told me she’s never planned an outline for an essay before. I explained that her argument, physical education should be mandatory, was her thesis statement and the three reasons she gave me were her supporting points for each body paragraph. Then she had to give three details for each body. At first she was confused so I had to clarify it for her. I explained that the main supporting argument for each body paragraph was like a smaller thesis statement for that paragraph and the details were support for that paragraph. The conclusion paragraph was a restatement of the thesis statement with summaries for the support from the body.

She told me this made sense and made writing essays seem easier. It had been an hour and we both had to go home. She said she would go home,write the essay and bring it back so I could go over it the next time we meet. We then said goodbye and I left campus.

Ganem TP-3

On Monday June 6^th, I met Dongsoek in the Globe Café at the International Center. Many of my appointments for tutoring had been canceled because my past two tutees were too busy to meet for them. It was a really good opportunity to have run into Dongsoek. He is from Korea majoring in mathematics. I asked him what he wanted to practice for the TOEFL. He replied that he wanted to work on writing. He was looking for a tutor to focus on helping him improve his writing.

I asked him if he ever had to practice writing essays in Korea. He said they did but it’s different than how he is being taught in America. There was less focus on individual critical thinking and more focus on restating what their instructors lectured. I asked if they ever wrote persuasive essays in Korea. He replied they didn’t and he was struggling with this aspect of writing.

I asked about how he learned other aspects of English, such as reading, listening and speaking. He showed me two notepads that he carried with him. He used one notepad for writing down phrases he heard from people; idioms and expressions that were unfamiliar to him. He used another notepad for writing down sentences and paragraphs he read in class, books, newspapers, magazines, advertisements, etc. This was how he practiced his reading and listening skills. He also told me he had another tutoring partner, Alexandra, who was helping him with speaking and grammar. He was glad to have two tutors because he felt it gave him more practice speaking English.

I asked him what days he would be free to meet for tutoring. He told me he is able to meet twice a week, Mondays and Fridays. We agreed to meet at Strozier Library the coming Friday. Dongsoek then said goodbye because he had to catch the bus to get back to his home.

Jessica CP7

So this week I met up with Cloris at the mall, I told her earlier in the week about all the great sales that are going on and she couldn't resist checking them out :-) She got dropped off there and I met up with her after I got off work. You don't think about it until you go shopping and need to ask for something, but there are a ton of vocab words needed to describe a dress or ask for a certain style. This one's too long, I want something more casual, do you have anything less sparkly, haha. It's an adventure to go shopping in another language. I helped her out with some of the vocab for clothes at Wet Seal and she taught me most of the same words in Spanish.
We headed to Foot Locker to check out sneakers next. (Which prompted more vocab 'These are too tight' what's the 'final price after the sale.') She's a super quick shoe shopper, I spend weeks buying sneaker so I was quite impressed. She's definitely gotten more confident in usuing English, I was expecting to have to help her out a bit more with checking out and asking for different sizes, but she had it covered. I told here about my first experience shopping in Spain...my friend wanted to know what the return policy was, and I rattled off a question about the 'Policia de regreso' which equals  'return police' more or less, no dice, haha. She told me about the stores they have in Panama, mostly selling the same brands, but they're different chains. However they don't have a Coach store there and apparently Tallahassee does (who knew?) so she's excited about checking that out eventually.

Jessica CP6

So before my conversation partner headed to New Orleans to celebrate here 21st birthday, she had a 'dinner party' at her house. I showed up dressed kinda fancy expecting a more sit down type deal, but it turned out to be a more dancing drinking type of affair, and all the better, it was a blast. I got there a bit early to hang out and chat and we talked about music selections and how the rice dish she was making wasn't looking perfect (the appearance was irrelevant, it was delicious!) I wanted to get her something really neat for her birthday, but I wasn't sure what she would like. I ended up going with a bottle of wine and Apples to Apples, haha, a great and necessary combination in my mind. We had talked about the game before and Cloris and her sister seemed interested. It's also a great thing to use to lean new vocab words in English, it's got synonyms for each adjective card and its hilarious. We looked over some of the cards and I explained the game, but with the crowd that ended up there we didn't get the chance to play. Cloris seemed a little skeptical at first, it's an odd game to just explain you really have to play it to see how it works out. The party kicked up pretty soon and I got the chance to meet a ton of kids from CIES and past students from the TEFL course too. There was a great mix of Spanish, Arabic, and mostly English going on at the party, a great success of a birthday I think!

Lori CP-5

Yesterday Jae and I went to Fuzions to get yogurt (none of this Yogurt Mountain yogurt impostor business). We stopped through Fuzions, got a few cups of their far superior frozen yogurt, and went to Lake Ella to hang out and walk. I wasn't sure if she had been to Lake Ella, but I know it is one of my favorite places to spend an afternoon outdoors without traveling too far. She said she really liked the place, and Black Dog Cafe as well (mission accomplished). We talked about the pros and cons of moving far away from home; the difficulties that a person faces and what they stand to gain. We laughed at awkward dogs and awkward ducks. I'm really glad we got to go to another one of my favorite places. Sometimes I feel like I'm just leading to her to only places that I enjoy, but she hasn't seemed disappointed yet, so maybe the choices aren't so bad.

We talked about the difficulty of being far away from home. How it has been working out for her, and how it may be for me if I so decide to teach abroad. She misses home, but seems to be happy here as well, and plans to stay for quite awhile longer. At the same time, she seems like she really wanted to go home for Christmastime, but it doesn't seem to be looking like she will get to this year. This made me sad. I've never been away from my family for an extended time yet. I'm not sure if I would be brave enough to do it if there was no option to return home for a holiday or desperate visit if the homesickness gets bad enough. She did give me hope that it is do-able, the hardest part is stepping out your front door.

Jae invited me to have dinner with her aunt and uncle, who live in town. I'm excited!

Lori CO-3

My third and final class observation went very well. For my last class I observed a speaking class, and the students were continuing a lesson from the day before on "speech acts." When I first heard this term, I was unfamiliar by what was meant by it. I quickly caught on after the teacher gave several examples and asked the students to begin practicing various speech acts with a partner. Because the class had an odd number of students present that day, I was assigned a partner as well. I was ready! Funny how you can go into a situation fairly confident, to quickly realize that there is always room for growth. This lesson helped me to step back and further analyze the structure of English and language itself.
I had a fun time working with my partner, as well as learning the format of an average lesson in a Group 2 Speaking class. After the first activity, the teacher asked volunteers to read different parts of a pre-written story with character. After each short story, the class would identify the different speech acts that were used in the story.
I liked how the teacher politely kept control of the classroom. Whenever students would start to drift from the discussion, she would casually add their names into the lesson to pull them back in, without directly confronting them for talking during a lecture. She was very flexible and capable of keeping the students attentive without seeming overbearing.
The more classes I observe, the more the big picture of teaching English begins to click for me. If I finally decide to teach abroad for awhile, I will definitely plan on observing more teaching settings as a way to familiarize myself with various teaching methods.

FranciscoTP-12

My little brother and I looked over some of his English homework for the weekend this morning. The little guy likes to get up early and I could not go back to sleep at 9:00 am so we decided to have our last tutoring session before I fly back to the states tomorrow afternoon. We first began by looking at a short English quiz in which he performed fairly well on but did not understand his mistakes. The mistakes deal with some of the irregular verbs that he did not know. Mariano asked me if there is any way to easily remember the irregular forms of "make" or "leave" and I laughed, telling him that sadly, there isn't, its just something he has to memorize. We went over the fill-in-the-blanks that he missed and I made sure that my little brother knew his mistakes. We then started going over some of the vocabulary words he has to learn that deals with American holidays and festivals. Some of the events covered included: "Halloween" "Mother's Day" "The fourth of July" and "Easter." While I was explaining some of the vocabulary words to my brother, I quickly noticed how easy it was for him to understand these words when I used some examples in his native language. It was a lot easier to teach my little brother some of these English vocabulary words since I knew Spanish and was able to use it towards our benefit. I quickly realized how beneficial this skill can become if I were to teach in a country that also has Spanish as their native language. I now plan on looking extensively for a TEFL gig where the native language is Spanish.

Pat WW TP4

I had a forth tutoring session with Cyriaque today at the library. I have learned to structure my lessons around whatever questions Cyriaque has generated during the week. So, before I start my lesson I always ask how his week was, which usually leads us into his pending questions.

Today question was about deciphering a letter from a firm in Miami Beach that specializes in translating and assessing degrees earned outside the US. Their prices were really, I thought, outrageous! They wanted $350 per document and had many extra charges as well. They wanted every detail of a person’s life as well as their financial history and social security number. We looked up the company on the net and they looked legit. Then I showed Cyriaque how to access the Better Business Bureau and he was pleased that such an organization existed. We didn’t find any negative information on the company but I lectured Cyriaque on the absolute need to keep his SS# private. I emphasized this and I think I scared him a little (good!). This company, I concluded, was in the business of researching and making the assessment as to the quality of a foreign degree. They would consider the differences between a degree from Oxford as compared to one from Brighton Community College. In any case, what he was looking for was a simple translation of the French on his various certificates.

I saw that Cyriaque had bought a smaller notebook for is vocabulary study but still had not made flashcards. I tested his vocabulary knowledge from his book, and then from some hastily made flash cards. He did better with the flashcards but I sense he’s still resistant. Perhaps the third time will be a charm.

Pat WW-CO3

I had my third classroom observation today. I observed Olga’s class. The teaching was somewhat uneventful as a student was giving a PP presentation. The topic of his presentation was something discussed in class the weeks before: “Can you use religious texts in academic papers?”

In my opinion, the class strayed a little off topic but there were a lot of nodding heads during the presentation.

I was mindful of the lecture we had been given in class just that week reminding us that as observers we were to behave as an invisible fly on the wall. I gritted my teeth and was silent.

The discussion after the PP did not conclude the question. This (Religion) is surely the most culturally sensitive subject you can debate. But I wondered, as I did when I observed the gender segregation during my last Classroom observation. Is there some middle ground to take? I can see that there are some compromises that can be made in some cases. If students insist on the division of the men and women in class, I can honor that viewpoint by putting the women students in a place where they can more easily participate. I think that would work for everyone.

But the question of religious texts in academic papers is a bit more problematic. It seems easy and proper to use an item from a religious text and to cite it in the proper academic way. But can that text be used as evidence to prove a scientific point? Deep waters here.

Francisco TP-11

Today I accompanied my little brother to his spelling on Friday morning that was held in the cafeteria during his English class. He was currently in second place and it was a showdown between the last remainding four students. Several words were spelled correctly by the four remaining parties until the the fourth place kid was asked to spell the word "delicious." He got it wrong so the next kid was able to spell it correctly and the previous student was disqualified. The kid currently in third place was then asked to spell the word "business" which he did not do so because he forgot the letter "i." It was now my little brothers turn try and spell it correctly. He said the word several times in his head and pronounced it as "bu-sy-ness" but knew that the letter "y" is replaced with an "i" instead. He spelled the word correctly and I became extremely proud of his quick wits. Some more words were spelled correctly by both the leader and my little brother until the word "whole" was said. My little brother spelled the words as "hole" even though it was used in a sentence in order to clarify its meaning. The leader of the spelling bee was able to use my little brothers mistake towards his advantage and won the competition. Despite my brother losing the competition, our family was extremely proud of his efforts and he took pride in wearing his red "Second place," red ribbon. As an award to him, we asked where he would like to eat and he said he wanted to get some "tacos al pastor," a type of food that is a favorite dish to every Mexican, especially my little brother and I.

Francisco TP-10

My little brother and I went over some more of his vocabulary words yesterday before his spelling bee on Friday. He seems to understand the majority of the vocabulary words but I can tell he stumbles on words that have two letter such as the word "blossom." He asked me if there are any pointers I can give him in order to succesfully spell the word correctly. It took me a while a to come up with one but I told him that the word sounds as if the word s is stressed a little more than usual. I asked him to repeat the word and pronounce it as blo-sssss-om. I told him since that the s's seem to stress out more than usual, this would mean that he should include a double s while spelling the word. I mentioned that words that the majority of English words that use a word more that two times in the word so I assumed this would be a safe tip to give him. We went over some other words such as "delicious" and "eraser" before I asked him to spell the word "blossom" once again. It was actually pretty funny how the tackled on the task. He began by saying bloh-sssssssooom. Since the word seemed to prolong the letter "s" he decided to include two s's this time and spelled it correctly. I was not sure if this was the best way to tackle on this word but it seemed to work well with him and he nailed its spelling every time I repeated the word. For the remanding time of our tutoring session I asked him to use some of the vocabulary words in a sentences such as "parking" and "eraser." Once again, he took a while to formulate a valid sentence but over time, he was able to say simple sentences such as "I am parking my bicycle" and "I don't like erasers." The spelling bee is to be held on Friday at 8:00 am and I am plan on being among the spectators to encourage my little brother and see how well my tutoring sessions helped my little brother.

Jules CP-10

After our tutoring session at What Café, Jae and I went to pick up Stéphane and his Burkinabé friend Kevin for some dinner. Although I was pretty tired and not feeling like cooking after tutoring Jae, Stéphane would not hear of my suggestion to go to Monk's... he had heard about my mad skills in the kitchen ;) So, we ventured to Publix and I got all the makings for a quintessential Oklahoma meal: chicken fajitas. I already had tomatoes and bell pepper from the community garden, so all we lacked was chicken, avocado, tortillas, and cheese. Jae and I made a little chant about chicken--avocado--tortillas--cheese as we skipped down the aisles. She's fun.

We had a great time cooking and getting our grub on at my house -- everyone helped out or contributed something, be it Jae with chopping veggies, Stéphane with making some amazing fried plantains, or Kevin with providing these yummy chocolate wafers that I thought were only sold in France (I should probably try to forget that those cookies AND Nutella are now easily accessible at any Walmart or Publix!). My roommate Kyle entertained the kids while I whipped up the meal, which gave them another opportunity to interact with an American who speaks quickly and uses a liberal amount of slang. After somewhat gorging ourselves (the fajitas were a big hit!) and learning the Caribbean dance le Zouk, Jae had to get going so we decided to call it a night. I hope to continue hanging out with my "conversation partners" long after our time at CIES comes to a close.

Jules TP-9

Yesterday Jae and I got some tutoring done at the lovely What Café. I wanted to reward her for all her hard work on article adjectives, so we talked about some of the most commonly used English idioms. She really enjoyed the comparison of "It's as easy as pie" with "It's a piece of cake". I had a worksheet printed out wherein each phrase was introduced, defined, and then an example was given. After learning each phrase, she filled in a blank with an example in her own words. She truly learned some phrases that were useful to her experience ("I'm sick and tired of my aunt running my life!", for instance). Even during our break she learned the phrase "My lips are sealed", which came up following a little girl talk we had :) The list of idioms was pretty exhaustive (over 100 in total), so we are going to revisit it at our next session.

Jules TP-8

I met with Jae earlier this week for some more English practice. She tends to hang out a lot with her Korean friends (speaking Korean of course), so she said just spending time with me is very helpful. We spent nearly the entire hour talking about article adjectives (a, an, and the), which are completely absent from a number of languages like Korean and Arabic.

I had prepared several worksheets to go over, including some notes on usage and a couple of quizzes. How did you all go about teaching these pesky little words? I'm not sure about you, but I had a pretty hard time coming up with general rules except for a few like "Rivers require an article but lakes do not", and "Usually when the verb is "to like", there is no article because the object is a general concept". We spent most of the time going over each question on the quizzes so that she'd be exposed to a variety of examples. In many cases she knew the right answer but didn't really know why it was true. For example, "I don't go to theatre/the theatre very often". The theatre is a general place, which would usually indicate that no article is needed, but here, we use one. Any tips you all could give me on teaching articles would be greatly appreciated!

Ganem TP-2

On Saturday, May 28th, I met with Bikir Bircan, Caglar’s roommate for some speaking practice. Bikir explained to me he wanted help learning about common idioms used in American English. He told me about the time he tried to watch a movie on TV but couldn’t understand much of the dialogue because the idioms didn’t make sense to him.

I pulled out my laptop and we searched for idioms online. We found idioms that were new to me as well. One was an expression describing something as “long in the tooth.” This means something is old. It came from the time when people raised horses and they would check their age by measuring how long their teeth had grown. Other idioms we looked at included “piece of cake”, “time flies”, and “burning the midnight oil.”

Bikir felt he learned enough about idioms and wanted to move on to another topic. He wanted help for a practical problem. He explained to me that he and his friends stopped at McDonalds the night before to eat there. At midnight they had finished eating and they went outside only to find that the car they came in got towed. Bikir’s friend had his car towed and they all had to walk home. They were going to meet at the office of towing company to deal with this. When Bikir desrcribed this, he needed to expand his vocabulary. When he described the tow truck, he called it “the car with the hook pulling other cars.”

He asked me to help him explain their situation to the towing company. I coached Bikir to tell the towing company what he told me. They had parked in a part of the lot where there were no handicapped parking signs or signs saying “no parking here.” It wasn’t right for the towing company to tow his friend’s car. I helped him with vocabulary and pronunciation when he phrased the sentences. We then ended the tutoring session and I went home.

Francisco TP-9

Yesterday in Tequisquiapan, Mexico, my half-brother (Mariano) and I went over some the vocabulary words he needs to study in order to perform well on his English spelling bee. My little half-brother is currently in second place. I helped my little brother go over some of the vocabulary words which include: "apartment" "library" "business" "beautiful" and "parking." I had forgotten how rigorous the course work is for Mexican students who are learning English in Mexico. My little brother is barely in the first grade and the students are already required to formulate simple English sentences. I remembered that I also learned great deal of English by the time I moved to the U.S. at age seven from Mexico. I quizzed my little brother for about fifty minutes on these words. He seemed to understand most of them words but stumbled on the word "beautiful" many times. I gave them the pointer to pronounce the word in his head as "be-a-u-ti-ful" before he began to spell it. This seemed to help him and he was able to spell the word correctly when I asked it to him again. For some of the words, I asked my little brother to use them in simple sentences in order to further have him practice his English. I could tell this was a little hard at first but over time he was able to formulate short, but simple English sentences. I am very impressed by the knowledge of English that my little brother knows.

Alexandra TP 10

TUTORING PARTNER 10 – Dongsoek- Meeting 10

Today Dongsoek and I worked on speech patterns, an aspect which he said he was to be tackling, particularly in formal speech since it poses so many questions for him. Dongsoek had watched most of the various Youtube videos I had sent him two weeks ago, but happened to miss one, which presented a great opportunity to do a cold-transcription. We picked out a particularly fruitful piece from one of the videos and transcribed a small speech together. I gave him some time to rehearse how he would articulate the sentence in order to figure out what his tendencies are. Dongsoek has a tendency to read in a rather monotone manner, so we worked on accentuation worked together to find appropriate places to pause. He has good instincts, but needs a little bit more experimentation with speech patterns in order to attain the more natural sounding accent which he’s hoping for. By the end we had greatly improved his conceptualization of the piece, which now sounded more natural. His assignment for next week is to do the same on his own, which we will evaluate for overall coherence.

Alexandra CP 10

CONVERSATION PARTNER 10 - Conv Club at the Globe. Meeting 6


Today there was a very good and diverse attendance at the Conversation Club. Two of the ladies present I already knew, Luz and Lulu. There was another Chinese woman present Jinxua, a professor in the department of Information technology working on the prospectus to her dissertation. Given her position and experience, she was quite fluent and turned out to be very helpful in reaching out to a new Japanese postdoc student, whose English was very elementary. He seemed rather scared of speaking, and seemed not to understand direct questions, but he was happy to listen and seemed entertained by the conversation. Every once in a while, I would make an attempt to turn it back to him, to give him an opportunity to try and speak if he wished. Sometimes he would deflect, but at times he would attempt to answer, but not have the verbal tools to fully answer the question. Fortunately, if there was any difficulty, Jinxua knew just enough Japanese that between us we were able to coax him out of his shell just enough for him to be able to answer some questions about himself or add a comment or two to the conversation. Today the conversation centered around organic foods as well as discussing Luz’s family which was in for a visit, from Colombia, and some really fascinating interface technologies which Jinxua’s department is currently using.

Alexandra CP 9

CONVERSATION PARTNER 9 – Latifah, Meeting 1

My conversation partner is Latifah, very lovely Saudi lady in her perhaps her mid-fifties who has been sponsored by her government to learn English as part of a larger national drive to keep the country’s school systems competitive with other modernizing gulf states. Latifah is a professor of Art education and design at one of the largest Universities in her home country. Having met her and sensing her nervousness, I eased into the session by asking her how she felt about the CIES experience overall, and what her own personal reasons for wanting to learn English were. Within a few minutes of greeting each other, a young girl walked in the door and excused herself, and spoke to Latifah in Arabic.
Given the resemblance between them, I had correctly guessed that she was her daughter, and invited her to join us if she had nothing else to do. The three of us soon found ourselves discussing Middle Eastern curricula, the concept of dialects, and the differences between British and American English (they seem to find British English and British habits very amusing).

Though she is very cheerful and meek mannered, at times I questioned whether I had done the right thing by inviting the daughter to join in the session since Latifah would sometimes turn to her for translation of what I had just said, or to help her find the English word she was searching for. I did my best to try and innocuously prevent this interdependence by maintaining closely related, yet distinct lines of conversations with each of them, turning to one or the other at a time to add her own insight into the topic at hand. This was very difficult to sustain for a full hour, but to my surprise worked out very well. In the end, once I had found an effective way to manage this situation, I think it was a very positive experience for several reasons.

First of all, having her daughter there helped Latifah to feel more comfortable, at which point, her self-reliance would slowly increase especially if the conversation. It seemed to also be very practical for the daughter, allowing her to work out ways of expressing more complex ideas. She proved to be not only a solid communicator with me, but a very quick translator. With regards to my own experience, it was also beneficial to me to hear them speak between themselves since it allowed me to practice my aural skills in Arabic, even if briefly. Assessing Latifah’s verbal skills, she has a fair vocabulary overall, but needs to work on confidence first and foremost, and then verbs and adjectives. Because of her specialization in art education, she was familiar with some very advanced field-related vocabulary, but seemed to be lacking knowledge of verbs that would help her to produce and link sentences together, something which stunted her fluency substantially. I can also see that she will need to improve her listening skills, which are less developed than her speaking skills, but I also found out that I will have to learn how to speak even slower.

Nevertheless, I see potential for quick advancement (at least in conversation) if we continue to work together, mostly since I noticed that at times that when she would forget herself, she would become many degrees more coherent and expressive. She would self-correct her grammar and repeatedly expressed an interest in more intensive, in depth tutoring which I am working to arrange in addition to our conversation sessions. I am very much looking forward to working with her and her daughter if she should choose to join. The main problem with working with Latifah, though, is that she seems to be unreliable in terms of scheduling. I am concerned that her family obligations may make it difficult for her to maintain a schedule. I need to find a respectful way to make my own expectations clearer because I have already lost several hours due to her aversion to using the phone and resultant miscommunication.

---Since our initial meeting, it seems as though Latifah has made every effort at avoiding me, either by cancelling our sessions as they are ready to start or being extremely slow about communications. It has been several weeks of this. I don’t take this personally since I have racked my brain and don’t think there was anything I could have done differently, but I am very curious as to her motivations for avoiding instead of merely saying she did not which to continue, whatever the reason. I really don’t understand what happened.

Alexandra CP 8

CONVERSATION PARTNER 8 – Shayan, Meeting 3

Today Shayan and I met in the lounge at the CIES, where there was a great bustle of activity. Through this I have discovered that I have a hard time maintaining a conversation when there are distracting noises, even though I prefer to study in the presence of white noise and conversation. Since this was bothering me so much, I asked him if he wanted to go the Circle K lounge instead where we sat outside. Mostly we talked about division of labor in the Afghan medical system as well as how the medical field is organized in his country, particularly with regard to examinations. He described to me a variety of medical procedures which he has done, and knowing a good amount about anatomy and medicine myself, Shayan was able to try out some medical and anatomical words in English, some of which I was able to help him find or refine in pronunciation, some of it new, which he taught to me, particularly about vascular surgery. He also described how his own brothers had been some of his strongest mentors while he was doing his rotations.

Alexandra CP 7

CONVERSATION PARTNER 7 – Shayan, Meeting 2

At times I feel quite intimidated by the fact that I am supposed to “mentor” this person who is not only older and far more experienced than me in many ways, but who presents with only the most occasional word-form problem or slightly mispronounced word.
I told him my concern, and asked him given his proficiency, in which way I could be of best service. He said that what he really wanted to work on was continuing to build his comfort in conversation, and also to begin learning colloquialisms and vernacular.

Strategy here will be very important. Normally I would like to invite Shayan to hang out with my friends, where I know for certain that he will be exposed to colloquialisms of all colors. I know that my friends would enjoy his conversation, and he theirs; however, since most of them are gone for the summer, I’m working on developing new strategies to integrate him into different groups of people, situations where he will get some practice in networking and hanging around in informal environments. I have also pulled for him a book from the local library about common American expressions.

Alexandra CP 6

CONVERSATION PARTNER 6 – Shayan, Meeting 1-

My first conversation partner’s name is Shayan. Shayan is a man in perhaps his late forties from Pakistan. Shayan speaks Dari, which he compares to strong dialect of Farsi, and given his geographic origins understands a number of other languages. Upon meeting him, I was immediately struck by his openness and eagerness to learn, but I was even more struck by his degree of fluency in the English language. Conversation with Shayan can reach great conceptual depths, particularly given an interesting background which has cultivated through experience in political, medical, and military affairs.

Shayan received his medical degree and for a while was a practicing doctor in Afghanistan, but after having served as a liaison to the US military forces there, is now considering a change in profession to public administration, and so would like to perfect his English; however, his English at a very high level, and due to the unavailability of higher course levels, has taken level 8 a few times over.

Alexandra CP 5

CONVERSATION PARTNER 5 - Conv club at the Globe. Meeting 5

This past session at the Globe was attended by Dongsoek, and two new students, Lulu (her English name) and Christina. Lulu is from China and appears to be about 26-28 years old, whereas Christina is a slightly older woman in her late 40’s from Rio di Janeiro. Interested in both of their histories, I asked them how it was that they had come here to FSU, and how they know of the conversation group, being that neither Lulu or Christina are CIES or FSU students. Coincidentally both Lulu’s and Christina’s husbands are post-doc fellows working here at FSU. This was a good group to work with because all of them had a fairly high level of verbal and aural comprehension skills, but still showed some areas that needed improvement, which allowed of plenty of opportunity for subtle recasting or modeling. In terms of subject matter we spoke about airport conditions n the student’s various countries, hobbies, cooking habits, and Christina’s children, one of whom was born here in Tallahassee.

Alexandra CP 4

CONVERSATION PARTNER 4 - Conv club at the Globe. Meeting 4
There most recent conversation session at the globe was attended by the now regular Dongsoek, and a new lady, approximately in her mid-fifties, from Colombia named Luz. Luz is very sympathetic and very gentle in her communication. Give our common Latin backgrounds, I felt very comfortable in her presence and tried to prevent her and my conversation from dominating the session. In this session we talked about each countries’ respective recycling strategies, given that Luz’s husband is here working on a PhD in waste management.

Luz struggles with a lack of vocabulary, but has a good sense of how to use words once they are supplied to her. She uses a lot of filler and often relies on hand motions to link ideas, but once she settles in, she becomes a bit more natural in her speech. It was interesting to see Dongsoek and Luz try and negotiate the meanings of particular words, especially since they come from such disparate cultures and are at fairly different stages in their English development. I really enjoy the conversation groups. For me honestly, the toughest part is gauging people’s interest in a subject and shifting it if necessary so as to keep everyone engaged and involved. I also have a hard time finding ideal seating so that everyone can see each other comfortably as they talk.

Alexandra CP 2

CONVERSATION PARTNER 2 - Conv club at the Globe. Meeting 2

Fortunately, this next week we had three individuals, Shayan (my conversation partner) Dongsoek (my tutee) and another young man from Libya. Dongsoek and Shayan are capable conversation partners, but the man from Libya was clearly just a beginner, but fortunately seemed quite at ease with putting forth his best effort. It was really great to see these three people with completely different fluidity levels and ways of approaching English learning navigating conversations on their own. It also proved quite a challenge (but a very enjoyable one nonetheless) to try and moderate the conversation, trying to inconspicuously pass the baton so as to give each person enough time to talk, especially the Libyan gentleman who needed the most time to articulate his ideas.

I don’t remember what the original nucleus of conversation was, but eventually we settled into nearly an hour long discussion of their respective countries’ military defense strategies, compulsory military enrollment (or not), and the debate over gun control in various countries and their respective opinions on these policies. This session proved quite informative to me as well since I learned a lot from my conversation partners about these subjects.

Alexandra CP 1

CONVERSATION PARTNER 1 - Conv Club at the Globe. Meeting 1

The first week of conversation groups at the Globe there was a very low turnout and only one young man from Taiwan showed up. Mario, my partner for these sessions and I worked very hard to make the situation less threatening for this young man, especially since he was the only one there and only slightly conversant, I think Mario and I were also trying to figure out exactly what our roles in this process would be. Nevertheless, the Taiwanese man, Mario and I spent most of our time discussing our backgrounds and getting acquainted. Later, I expressed my concern about the low turnout to some people at the CIES in order to recruit others.

Alexandra CO 2

OBSERVATION 2 – Grammar with Olga

Today I arrived in Olga’s morning grammar course. By coincidence I knew two out of the three students in the class since they were my tutees (Dongsoek and Ahmed). Olga, had a very informal style, and seemed very comfortable in her presentation style, despite tending to stay mostly in one corner (unless she needed to write something on the board or to oversee class activities). She reviewed with the students the various forms of conditional statements, writing an example of each and leaving the examples on the board. This was very constructive and informative for me as well, since I had never formally studied conditional statements in the English language, so I appreciated the extra time this gave me to take notes from the whiteboard. It was interesting to two of my tutees in new environments and to observe how they play interacted through the games Olga had prepared for today. These particular games centered on the grammatical idea of the conditional, and the cultural idea of superstitions. She encouraged me to collaborate in the activity.

In the first game the sets were self-contained couples of zero conditional statements split in two, which meant that my partner and I had to match couplets to arrive at complete statements about superstitions. We did not know many of the superstitions, so we had to guess many of their meanings, which was fun. It was interesting to hear the students reasoning for putting two particular clauses, even if I knew them to be incorrect pairings. In the next game, she distributed matching pieces across the two groups, but this game was more complicated since it involved many styles of conditional sentences and therefore a great variety of grammatical constructs. This required collaboration between the two groups. The game got competitive, since Dongsoek would unapologetically steal our pieces, which was matched with Ahmed’s retaliation, (much to Olga’s amusement). She did not stop it since it was necessary for the game, seemed constructive and was done in good intentions. I appreciated this hands-off, yet vigilant approach, and found that Olga’s very straightforward style had led to my own retention of the concept.

Alexandra CO 3

OBSERVATION 3 – Listening with Marylyn

Today I attended one of the last lessons on the roster, listening class with Marylyn. Unlike Olga, who had actively included me in the class activities but did not formally announce my presence, Marylyn asked me to introduce myself. Marylyn has a playful, relaxed and casual style, at least with this group. Likewise the students were overall more extroverted and playful, and more advanced speakers. With time I found that one of the students tended to dominate the classroom, perhaps without realizing it, but she did a good job of redirecting his contributions to the other students to ask them for their opinions.Marylyn asked the students if they ever listened to NPR in their spare time, to which one of the students exclaimed, “So boring!”. He said that instead, he preferred listening to TED. Perhaps this is due to the fact that TED is more conversational in style, Marylyn explained, as opposed to NPR which has a distinctly journalistic tone.

Marylyn discussed the day’s vocabulary before the group listening assignment, an excerpt from NPR’s series, this I believe, and interview with Christian McBride, a Juilliard alum and bass player in a band. Essentially, the point of the spoken essay boiled down to: “People who stress age quicker, but those who stay cool will stay young forever”. While the students reviewed, there was a fair amount of dead air while they found words in the dictionary ( a silence which I was not used to), but seemed to reinvigorate the students’ memory. Encouraged them to collaborate and find various meanings in words, not just singular interpretations. She clearly drew from her own life in using examples and acting out the emotions. Marylyn used a lot of real world examples: for example: “If you tried to go out on a date with a girl, who would open the door? The father. The father would give you the third degree.” She encouraged the students to make their own sentences in this way, and the students had a good sense of humor about themselves when they made mistakes since she would laugh along too. She sat at one of the desks, facing the students.

Marylyn is very good at drawing out students’ own interpretations of the words. Marylyn also used the students themselves in their examples, for instance, “If later today, I see Habib…”. (Speaking of which, she also focused a lot on Habib today, who seemed to be despondent about his test low practice TOEFL scores and was acting somewhat sullen). Despite his sullen demeanor, her disposition was always sunny, which prevented it from weighing down the rest of the class. Eventually she asked him directly, “Why aren’t you smiling, today?”. Having been gently prodded enough by Marylyn’s purposeful inclusion of him in the conversation despite his own lack of volunteering by using him as examples, by this point, he was ready to admit “I’m not here [mentally] today.” After that he started to open up and contribute a little more to the discussions. I was very impressed. Clearly Marylyn is very sophisticated in classroom management and interpersonal strategies. I took away many good pointers from this class today.

Alexandra TP 1

TUTORING PARTNER 1 – Dongsoek, Meeting 1

My first tutee is Dongseok , mid-twenty-something young man from South Korea. Dongseok is quite hilariously enthusiastic, showing extraordinary commitment to taking charge of his learning. Coming from a town a few hours outside of Seoul, Dongseok has been studying English since high school. Though his grammar is fairly accurate and his ability to sustain a conversation is strong, he does struggle with fluidity every so often, mostly just in needing to stop and take time to think. Whenever I supply him with a word during any such pause, he assiduously writes it down phonetically, and then I often have to correct his spelling. He scrawls reflexively as he speaks to reinforce his train of thought, and if he doesn’t have pen or paper on hand, he “air-writes” on his palm. He is a kinesthetic learner if I have ever seen one.

I hope to eventually ease him away from this safety blanket, but for now it gives me good insight into his though process and helps us find words on the rare occasions where there is a breakdown in communication. Given his all-around strength in English, especially his listening skills, I asked him what he would prefer to work on. He emphatically answered that given that he has ample grammar practice from the CIES, what he would really like to work on is his pronunciation. This excites me greatly since it is one of my favorite areas to teach. I look forward to trying out a variety of techniques to see what works best.

Fortunately, while getting to know each other, Dongseok had made his zeal for American sitcoms crystal clear (particularly "Modern Family"), and I think this presents an excellent opportunity to develop speaking-based exercises around his passion. Since he already transcribes things he doesn’t understand from Everyday English onto a notebook, I asked him to transcribe a few minutes from his favorite sitcom in script format. When he comes in next time, he will be bringing the segment of the sitcom for me to watch as well as the transcription which I will then evaluate for accuracy. Once we read it aloud several times, I hope to begin using his lines to start honing his pronunciation, particularly his difficulty with consonants. We will also be using tongue twisters since his consonants tend to be weak. We’ll see how this well this strategy works or not next time I see him, but it should be a fun exercise nonetheless.

Alexandra TP 2

TUTORING PARTNER 2 – Dongsoek, Meeting 2
Today Dongsoek and I worked on his pronunciation. At first I was nervous in approaching the assignment, but I quickly found my pace. I still find that this is one of my areas of strength. In order to crystallize Dongsoek’s ability to differentiate between certain vowel sounds, as well as to strengthen his consonants, we used a packet of tongue-twisters which his CIES courses had already provided him. I asked him which consonants and which vowels, in his perception, were those that were giving him the most difficulty.

He said that r’s and l’s were the most difficult for him, and I could also hear, perhaps more distinctly, that his greatest weakness is on the consonant w. We picked out tongue-twisters which emphasized these sounds and went through them deliberately and slowly, many times. Dongsoek worked very hard and proved to have a good ear. Though he was very tired by the end of the session, Dongsoek seemed happy with his newfound grasp on certain kinds of sounds, but of course we will have to continue reinforcing this until his muscle-memory takes over. The most important thing we will need to work on is his attacks at the beginnings of words given that this determines the probability of hitting the following consonants in the word.

Alexandra TP 3

TUTORING PARTNER 3 – Dongsoek, Meeting 3

Over the past few weeks, I’ve continued to work with Dongsoek, who I must say, is fast becoming a good friend, especially since he is now a regular at the Coversation Club which Mario and I lead at the Globe, and apparently at other weekly club meetings as well. His friendly demeanor and work ethic make him a great student to work with and he’s willing to try anything, but, to my pleasant surprise, feels comfortable enough with me to express his doubts about certain methods or approaches.

For instance, during our last session, Dongsoek, informed that a colleague had commented on how his accent was changing, apparently in an unfavorable way. I talked to him a little more about this concern and asked him if he thought it was connected to our lessons. He said that it was not entirely the case, but that he thought it had something to do with it. This surprised me, especially since we have been working together on conversation and he has made considerable strides (his pronunciation, though still distinctly Korean sounding, is much sharper and his consonants are clearer).

It was only when, I found out that this colleague was a girl from South Korea, and that this girl had known him since the beginning of his time at the CIES, that my fears and conflicts were assuaged. This is not to discount her opinion, but, by talking it out, we came to the conclusion that it was likely that what the girl was responding to negatively was simply a linear, change- in fact his progress- which now makes him sound different than when he had a much thicker and very typically Korean accent.

I assured him that by my ears at least, he now sounded much more articulate, and had what seemed like far more confidence. Just the same, I asked him if there was anything else he wanted to work on in order to quell his insecurities about speaking and accents. He said he was uncertain about intonation. This makes perfect sense. Dongsoek has been making very good progress in pronunciation, but I had neglected to work with him on sentence cadence.

Alexandra TP 4

TUTORING PARTNER 4 – Dongsoek, Meeting 4

Given my discovery of last week regarding Dongsoek’s difficulty with English cadence, my new strategy is to continue with the tongue twisters as well as the reenactment of scenes from his favorite TV shows (as we have been doing), but I am now going to try to introduce him to different kinds of speech cadences. Since there is no one answer to "how to produce an English cadence", I am trying to develop a multi-pronged approach. First, I am going to use our recreation of scenes from "Modern family", but I will have him interpret the scenes, reading them through with one consistent emotion each time, tying on several for size to see how stress changes the articulation of the lines (examples: angry, sad, overjoyed, etc.). I also sent him home with a couple of samples of presidential speech so he has a point of reference for oratory, and more rhetorical, official modes of address. I wanted him to listen to them and get the sounds in his ears.

Now, this coming week I will give him a couple of casual interviews with scientists to listen to so he becomes acquainted with the cadences of more normal, spontaneous, yet still slightly formal speech. I plan to continue working our way down all the way through more relaxed and informal speech. I’ll keep introducing him to different styles, until he can loosely distinguish stress patterns and rises and falls in voice depending on the speech context. I am eager to see how this will or will not work, but I trust that Dongsoek will be honest with me either way.

Alexandra TP 4

TUTORING PARTNER 4 – Shayan, Meeting 1

Today I met with Shayan who is usually my conversation partner, but with his permission, we treated this meeting more like a tutoring session than a conversation session, given that he had wanted to increase his familiarity with idiomatic expressions. We reviewed some of the material from the book which I had checked out for him from the public library. This slowly evolved into a conversation about media and its distortion of several words associated with coverage of Afghanistan. We discussed the ideas surrounding these words and broke down the reasons why they might be misconstrued or abused. When appropriate, I intentionally threw in colloquialisms as modeling, most of which were at least somewhat familiar to him. We closed out the session by discussing how to continue reinforcing the skills he wants to work on.

Alexandra TP 5

TUTORING PARTNER 5 – Geonae, Meeting 1

Geonae Kim is very pretty, young Korean lady who has very recently come to live in the US with her family. Goenae’s husband does research in some sort of hard-science, though I was not able to understand with any great clarity what exactly it is that her husband does at the university, and which University in particular he is attending. Though Geonae has done some college in Korea and has some comprehension of written English, she exhibits virtually zero verbal functionality and mostly laughs when asked a question. She usually answers me with “Oh! yes, sir,” to almost everything, so I have to question her quite a bit to find out whether she’s actually understanding what I’ve been saying, which oftentimes she hasn’t. She is generally very quiet.

Though it quickly became clear to me that behind this shyness Geonoe does have a very modest vocabulary, she either lacks conference or the ability to link these isolated words with each other in a sentence. Fortunately, she seems to have a very good work ethic, having self-referred to the Leon county library system and demonstrating great concentration during the lesson.

Since the very little I know about Geonae is that she has a children, and she is often at home alone with them, I hope to build her up to the point where she can construct basic sentences pertaining to needs and emergency situations. Last week, we worked together in being able to identify and describe the relationships between members of a family as seen on a genealogical tree. It was this exercise which first made me aware that she is not comfortable using pronouns. In order to achieve the goal of helping her form simple sentences, I must first find a way to be able to recognize personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns as well possessive pronouns.

After she has mastered these, I hope to move in to the introduction of a few important verbs. While she develops these basic skills, I hope to assign her English language learning cartoons that she can watch with her young children, as well as selected English lessons from you tube that accurately and clearly address these critical first steps in sentence formation. I hope that this strategy works, and I hope to be able to make modifications as new needs come up. I am looking forward to our next meeting where I will be able to see what she interpreted from the homework which I assigned her, and will do my best to make her feel her own progress. I have never tutored a student from essentially the beginning, so any suggestions in constructing a more comprehensive plan would be appreciated.

Alexandra TP 6

TUTORING PARTNER 6 – Goenae, Meeting 2

Today I worked with Goenae on pronouns, possessive pronouns, and sentences with direct objects. In order to help her practice the use of particular transitive verbs as well as pronouns, I had prepared a document with cutout clip-art pieces for a word-game. The game involved objects she could move around from one character to another so that she could practice using pronouns, and ways in which she could show possession, for example: “She gave the cat to them”; “The crayons are hers.” After the lesson, I sent her an email with several youtube links, explaining the difference between demonstratives and other basic parts of speech.

Alexandra TP 7

TUTORING PARTNER 7 – Geonae, Meeting 4

Geonae has made good progress in her studies and was able to briefly explain pictorial scenarios to me today, still with minimal proficiency, but nevertheless, showing some improvement. Today we mostly worked on sentence structures. I would really like to have Goenae begin speaking in complete sentences, even if extremely short, just to break her out of her shell. I am fully confident she can do at least this, even if with some errors, but I know she is just shy. I went into the media room of the library and pulled simple, level 2 children’s books in order to explain to Geonae how to decipher the subjects, verb(s), adjectives and other parts of speech in sentences.

I picked from three separate books to present different sentence styles to her. I also had her read several passages, which she did quite well. It was enlightening to hear her speak English even if for a moment, being that she communicates with me mostly non-verbally. I have also introduced various different kinds of parts of speech to her. Though I have not yet explained it to her in this way, I am trying to introduce her to transitive verbs. We still have much difficulty communicating, because since she seems reluctant to engage in any kind of talking, I can’t tell to what degree she has or has not understood me. Still, I find her progress and diligence encouraging.

Alexandra TP 8

TUTORING PARTNER 8 – Geonae, Meeting 4

Having now met with Geonae four times now, I can see that the underlying problem behind our difficulty in communication is still her nervousness about speaking. Still, Geonae is very compliant and motivated, as exemplified by the fact that today she came in with more than triple the amount of homework I had asked her to prepare, all done with meticulous care. We went over her assignment which was to copy down sentences from a children’s book. She can now very quickly identify parts of speech, and today’s exercise proved to me that Geonae knows, at least in written form, far more English than is evident. I worry about boring her by belaboring things she may already know, but I’m taking the approach of “better safe than sorry”.

Sensing her perhaps masked comprehension of some English, I had her read aloud the sentences which she had deconstructed for homework, and although she could sign or insinuate the definitions of most of the words and place them in the correct category (noun, verb, adjective, preposition, article, conjunction, etc.), and though her understanding of sentence structures is improving, when I asked her to read aloud, I found that her pronunciation was far more choppy and awkward than I had initially noticed. I now understand why she would feel so shy about speaking.

Previously she had read a short passage for me and did rather well. Now, however, it seems obvious that she is not used to certain phonetic constructs. It required a longer reading than I had ever asked her for previously in order to diagnose this issue. I told her that it was my hope that we could continue to make her more comfortable with sentence varieties, so that we could slowly transfer her away from the page to vocally producing small sentences.

For this purpose I gave her a “mad-libs” like set of sentence structures so that she could have a template for generating new sentences with her new vocabulary lists. After checking her homework next week, I will introduce her to pronunciation exercises to ease this half of her anxiety, hopefully slowly making her feel more confident, especially with the new vocabulary she’s accrued and currently studying.

Alexandra TP 9

TUTORING PARTNER 9 – Ahmed, Meeting 1

Although I’ve already had a few conversations with Ahmed, a young man from Egypt, today was the first day that I tutored him formally. He had requested my help with his reading skills earlier today, claiming that he had a gotten a low score on the practice exam. I was surprised by this given his relative ease with conversational English. Since the meeting was rather spontaneous, I didn’t have materials already in hand, so we used national Geographic website as a source. I asked Ahmed to do a cold read of a travel blog for me for diagnostic purposes, and after a few paragraphs and questioning him. He seems to understand the general concept well, but upon cold reading, does not get the finer details. Given a few minutes, he understands nearly 80% of fairly complex material. The most important giveaway to me was the choppiness with which he was enunciating, which presumably is hindering the aural recreation of a sentence in his head. I then showed him techniques designed to help him slow down and break the text down by reading sentences with an emphasis on slow evenness, syllable by syllable, and then rereading it. This enhances his audiation of the sentences, and he reported being able to understand the sentences with greater ease. I think the strategy from here will be to work on phonetics independent of the meaning of words and slowly increasing vocabulary.

Jessica TP7

Since we were making up for missed weeks, and since Jesus was still in to continuing on with the lesson we decided to go to the second activity about subject pronouns. This was another explaination page/introduction with examples and then a fill in the blank activity and one where you had to write your own sentances. One of the big differences between Spanish and English is of course the lack of gender for inanimate objects, just as it took some review, extra examples, and getting used to in Spanish I knew it would be a point to focus on when teaching English to Jesus.


I started of by giving him some examples of sentances using names or actual objects, then repeated the same sentances with subject pronouns. He got the drift of the grammar rule really quickly so we moved to the worksheet. As usual the questions there were a jumping point for a bunch of other related questions. We practiced using subject pronouns with examples of the things on the table/around us. (ex. Can you pass the cup to me...Can you pass it to me.)  It's great when you can take a break from staring at a worksheet to bring the rest of the environment into the lesson. I'm sure this also makes the grammar points more memorable. I worked some more vocabulary into this worksheet so we took the time to review that during/afterwards. I also thought it would be a good idea to put in some common English names to get him used to pronouncing new words, this worked pretty well except for one example when he automatically read the name 'Peter' as 'Pedro' haha. So the plan is to review the new vocab and for us to meet up again next week...Si Dios nos da licencia. :-)

Jessica TP6

So the whole arranging lessons with 4 or 5 people from work has been a bit of a rocky process at best. Despite having plans for lessons for the last three weekends I've only been able to sit down once, with one person. It's a difficult thing to have schedules line up, and I totally understand last minute plan changes, so I think in moving forward I'll try to just set up things individually, or with maybe two people. Even though a group is fun for activities, it's a lot easier to focus on each student with one or two at a time. So, Jesus and I met up to go over some basic grammar points. We started with a review of the alphabet and vocabulary, some from the previous session and some that we'd use in the activity. I had a worksheet about the present tense verbs 'To Be' 'To Like' 'To Need'. Unlike the previous class I made an effort to use mainly English for this one, I made sure to speak clearly and to repeat things multiple times. I also got him to start asking basic questions in English, there's a lot of vocabulary to be learned just in the words necessary to have a class, so working only in Spanish would definitely cut out that opportunity.

The lesson went really well, and when we were going over the worksheet he had learned the conjugations well enough by the latter half of the page that he didn't have to look back to the example/ verb chart he had to fill in the blanks. We also spent a lot of time on pronunciation. I'd have him read a question, figure out the answer, and then re-read it. Unknowingly I put a lot of double 'e' words in this activity which turned out to be useful because he had difficulty pronouncing them at first, but by the end would recognize similar words and correct himself if he mispronounced something. After about an hour of that we took a quick break...

Jessica CP5

I'm sure you guys all get the questions on what a good typical example of american food is, and I've used a variety of answers...hamburgers, hot dogs,  apple pie...but I think we're actually better at having a great variety of food and influences all mixed together in this country so it's difficult to pick just one thing. It varies by region, season, the part of town your in, etc. Having said that, my favorite place in town is Sahara, the Lebanese restaurant  behing New Leaf. It's *delicious* and the owner is always there answering questions and enlightening guests on his traditional cooking practices. So when my conversation partner Cloris asked about it I told her we had to go!

We went there for dinner last week and and once again Sahara didn't fail to impress. We chatted about classes and how crazy Florida weather can be. While we were hanging out she was keeping a list of new vocabulary words, which is great! I told her I do the same in Spanish and it really helps, that way you have a new word and a good story/context to remember it by. The word of the night was 'frizzy' inspired by an afternoon shower and the following humidity that engulfed the town, haha.

She mentioned that she and her sister, friend, and cousin Alonso were headed to New Orleans for her birthday the following weekend and invited me along. I would have loved to have gone, but my weekend was already pretty busy so I couldn't make it. I did tell her that she was going to looove the city, to be careful when drinking the super potent 'Handgrenades' (She's turning 21!) and that she absolutely must see the Garden District. I'm sure they had a blast, hopefully we'll meet up this week so I can hear all about it.