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!

Brittany TP 11

For my last meeting with Jiyeon I finally got to work on the slang and idioms I’d planned before, but we always tended to get off on other issues, which is great since I first and foremost wanted my tutees to tell me what they need help with or want to focus on, but I knew this would be a fun lesson, especially given the conversational work we discussed in our first meeting. I found a fun website of 10 randomly chosen slang words and phrases placed in sample sentences, then to see the meaning of the word/phrase, you click it and it defines it for you. Each time you refresh the site it gives a new 10 sentences, so we did that a few times and had some laughs (since explaining some of these is a very silly task) while learning some new commonly used American expressions (i.e “He flipped out” or “he’s such a klutz”). After a few rounds of sentences, I went to englishclub.com where they have an idiom, saying, and slang of the day. We spent the last few minutes together just talking about student life at FSU and she asked me some different cultural questions. One question in particular was where do most of us girls shop for our clothes, as she looked around campus and made a comment about the plethora of sundresses. I said Forever 21 and Target are about all most of us can afford, and she just laughed at how pretty everyone looks, joking that she has no time for that, to which I told her none of us have 2 young kids to deal with! I’ve really enjoyed working with Jiyeon and I wish we’d been able to meet earlier in the session that we did.

Brittany TP 10

When I met with Ozan next, I had reviewed his last essay, which was about why parents are the best teachers for their children, and was prepared to work on his 3 main points of support and style points of rewording the intro and thesis a bit. However, when I got to Ozan’s house and we took out our work, he’d written a new essay on a much more difficult and limiting topic- does fast food and microwave cooking benefit society? This miscommunication led to slight detour of my plans, and I tried to go through his new essay with him. The problem was this time, the 3 points he thought of were very redundant, each referring to the convenience of the speed. I tried to help him brainstorm some other ways it could benefit society, and even mentioned the idea of offering one drawback of that kind of cooking, such as nutrition, but Ozan seemed confused and a bit overwhelmed, and complained about the topic. With that I said we should shelf this essay and go back to the original one he wrote and keep trying to bring that score up, and Ozan seemed good with this decision. Back on the original track, we worked on his 3 main examples and thesis and Ozan seemed to feel much better about this progress we made with this essay. I realized too that as a creative writing major I tend to want to help stylistically more than that should be a focus, but when I mentioned certain syntax or word choices, then apologized for being nit-picky, Ozan told me not apologize and that he appreciates my stylistic advice that will help him bring his essay to a 5.

Brittany TP 9

Before this tutoring session with Ozan, I emailed him a list of sample TOEFL essay topics to choose from and asked, if he had time, would he want to write a thesis statement that we could work on and plan an essay outline during our next session. The morning of our tutoring day I check my email to find he’d written a full 5 paragraph essay on a chosen topic- such a devoted tutee! I printed the essay and tried to mark it using some of the error marks from class and made notes on how what to work on and why. When we met, I first and foremost praised is effort and overall success of 5 paragraphs organized as supporting points, each relating back to his thesis. I went through the rubic handout from class and we discussed how we would score the essay as is, concluding it could have been a 3 out of 5, and then worked on how to raise that. The biggest issues for Ozan’s writing are actually more tedious issues that I thought we’d deal with given his limited English study, but the main focus was developing more detailed support and examining how to make it even stronger in relation to the thesis. Also, though I explained it’s not a big deal and could be worked on later, more style issues such as word choice and strong verbs, active versus passive, etc. Though overall I’m impressed with where we got his essay to by the end of our session. I encouraged Ozan to take some of the supporting details we worked on and rewriting the body paragraphs for next time.

Brittany TP 8

Since my TOEFL speaking practice was set aside for reading practice last session, this time I planned for Ozan, who said he hadn’t seen samples of the exam, get a look at what I’ve heard from students are the most challenging sections. Thanks to some awesome resources on englishclub.com, you can see sample exam sections for each skill. On the speaking page it has 2 sample “familiar topics” that students listen to, then given a specific question based on the recording, must speak and record their answer. There are 4 more responses required based on more academic discussion or lecture. We spent the hour working through the samples, choosing one question from each part (3 total). Ozan seemed overwhelmed and sighed, saying it was much harder than he expected. I assured him he was months away from his exam and had so much time to prepare. Since the exam sections gives students 20 minutes total for the whole speaking section, it seems especially daunting, but we spent time replaying the recordings multiple times so I could point out parts that led to drawing a response. Then we played back (along with reading the transcript) of the sample response and discussed that answer; finally, I asked Ozan to think of his own response, pushing him to just speaking more quickly and off the cuff in response to the question versus thinking over proper grammar and word choice in his head first. I think it’s important just to get his confidence up and assure him that most of the time, he can communicate just fine without over thinking it. We only had a few minutes left to look at the speaking section but the format is similar, only students answer questions about the recordings they hear. I believe the biggest issue is comprehending what they are listening to when they can’t pause or replay- there’s just one chance to catch what they’re saying, and I think that just adds more stress to these sections of the TOEFL.

Brittany TP 7

For my second meeting with Jiyeon I planned a lesson consisting of expressions of agreement/disagreement that would be common for speaking, as well as a list of common American slang and idioms (randomly chosen from a large master list). I told Jiyeon my plan and also told her to let me know if I was speaking to fast or if anything was unclear; to this she said that I was fine, and that just listening to me speak was great practice for her. So after a few minutes of discussing our weekends, I began going through the list of expressions. I wasn’t quite sure of her level yet, so I check with her if most of them seemed familiar or not, and I found about 50-75% of the expressions were new, if not just unsure of the meaning. A particular phrase “I couldn’t disagree more,” prompted Jiyeon to ask about modals (could/should/would/might) that have been confusing her. This tangent eventually morphed into the lesson, and, thankfully, technology is great and I could quickly find some examples and practice quizzes on my laptop to check her modal comprehension. I think Jiyeon understood by the end, at least better, and I explained that they are tricky because we use them in our speech so frequently and the meaning and word choice varies so much depending on the context, but that now that we went over it she would likely notice it when people speak, and in turn, learn when specific modals are used most commonly.

Brittany CP 9 & 10

After Ali and his friends invited me to experience their traditional cooking last time, I couldn’t wait to hang out and eat with them! They invited me to bring a friend, so my roommate Katie and I showed up around 10:30, were greeted by Ali, then he jokingly said they just started cooking- we were in for a late night haha… When we walked in there were at least 10 guys in the living room, made up of mostly Ali’s friends I had met before including Hassan and Mohamed and their good friend Jia. I didn’t realize what a fun feast they had planned, and for just starting, the house already smelled delicious. We sat down and talked with everyone while Mohamed and Mohamed were cooking away. One guy (wish I could remember all the names!) offered us Krispy Kreme donuts with the tea we all were having, and not one for donuts or wanting to spoil my dinner, I politely declined, but then found myself experience a mild cultural incident- Ali said (with a playful tone) “Ah, you’re doing to deny our sweets?” I explained my reason and thanked them genuinely anyhow, then Ali said, “In our country it’s common to have tea and eat something sweet before a meal rather than after.” I guess my face seemed embarrassed and I did feel I’d been rude now to refuse, but Ali quickly assured me it was fine and that they just wanted to show us their cultural traditions…still I didn’t deny anything else they offered for the rest of the night!

We all just talked and got to know about each other for the hour the boys spent cooking; everyone was so curious to ask me as well as Katie about FSU, our majors, our families and our future plans, just as we asked them a million questions about their culture and their plans.There is just never a shortage of awesome stories when discussing life with students from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Turkey- even though among that group there is also no shortage of tangents breaking out in Arabic. It was funny to watch them joke around and slip into their native language, laughing and shouting and busting on one another, seeing who is the biggest joker among them; Katie and I couldn’t understand exactly what they were saying, but we could tell what they meant, like who had cracked the best joke or who had said something ridiculous. We were all laughing and having a great time, and then it was time to eat! Ali asked if we minded eating on the floor, to which we replied absolutely not, and all circled the multiple pans of chicken and rice, the curry smell making my mouth water. Then Ali passed out spoons (which they had just specially washed), and when one guy refused, Albraa (the joker) yelled something in Arabic and motioned at me and Katie; it seemed Albraa was trying to persuade him not to eat with his hands with the guests they had. Katie and I told them we didn’t mind at all and if that’s how they wanted to eat that way they should, but they all went along with spoons. After just a few minutes Mohamed was annoyed and whispered something about it to me, so I said, seriously, use your hands then! Still hesitant, Katie and I put down our spoons and started eating with our hands (even though rice is a challenge), and the guys loved it- they all started digging in. The meal was so delicious and after we finished I thanked Mohamed for cooking, prompting the group to teach us the Arabic saying when thanking the chef, which includes a response from him. Our pronunciation was definitely off, but they cheered our effort. I have truly never felt so welcomed and appreciated as a guest by anyone, let alone a group of college age guys- I love my Arab friendsJ

After dinner the gang taught Katie and I how to play a popular card game in their region called ‘kout bo 6.’ It’s somewhat similar to Hearts, but when everyone is a kout bo 6 expert, it’s really confusing! I paired with Mohamed and Katie was with Albraa, but you don’t speak to your partner, you have to just play and hope you’re on the same strategy- needless to say, both us girls had a guy in our ear telling us what cards to throw- it was so funny. The rules dictate playing to 100 points, and when we kept switching up partners and calling them practice rounds, we ended up playing until 3:30 am- no joke! After all that time Katie and I had gotten pretty good and we were all being competitive and lost track of time. I never expected a traditional dinner invitation to be such a full night of fun, not just discussing these students’ lives, but also experiencing a night of fun they would have together even if we weren’t there. Truly a night I’ll never forget!

Brittany TP 6

When I met with Ozan this time I came with a few sites and print outs focused on TOEFL speaking skills and planned on working through a practice section I found online. However, when I came to the student lounge with my plans, Ozan asked if I could help him with a reading assignment from his class that he didn’t understand, so I altered the plan. The article assigned was about the Salem Witch Trials, a brief origin/summary, followed by comprehension questions including TOEFL style exam questions that are definitely a challenge at Ozan’s level. I read the article out loud while he followed with me to model the pronunciation of unfamiliar terms, stopping every few sentences to ask Ozan what had just been said. Sometimes he understood, but given the topic, some terms were especially strange and I had to explain the ideology behind the Puritans and why witchcraft, sorcery, and “dark magic” were in direct opposition to their beliefs. Going over the notion of a witch hunt, insufficient proof and unfair trials based on rumors and the fact that many of these women were nonconformists in society—admittedly a bit of a challenge to explain themes of this nature with a language barrier! Once we had read it and I had Ozan summarize it in his own words, we move onto the multiple-choice questions. This actually took the rest of our time together since the wording of the question (i.e which is NOT true, logical order of events, author’s main purpose, etc.) can be an explanation in itself, so with consistent reference to the text, I could see Ozan appearing discouraged, perhaps worrying about the notion of this in a real exam. I tried to reassure him that exam questions are always mean to be more challenging, even on the SAT that I took, and that it would just take practice with this format to get it down. I did tell him a good test trick in these sections is to look over the questions prior to reading so he’ll know what to look for in the text. Though my TOEFL speaking plan didn’t happen this time, I’m glad we could work on some reading practice.

Brittany TP 5

My next tutoring session was with a new partner, Jiyeon, from South Korea. We met at the library and she told me that her husband is in grad school at FSU and they have a 7-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son. Immediately working with her intrigued me- she isn’t trying to pass the TOEFL or get into a university, she is living here and is learning for communication purposes, so we discussed her current studies. Jiyeon takes 3 classes at the Center: grammar, composition, and reading- so she is most eager, as I expected, to spend our time working on speaking and listening skills. I showed her a few resources we might use in our sessions, including one of the NPR Storycorps, and happened to find one about a mother and daughter. Overall my plan for Jiyeon’s sessions is to focus on conversational speaking and pronunciation, as well as working in idioms and common slang to better her understanding of the type of everyday language she struggles with currently.

Brittany TP 4

For our fourth session I addressed again some issues Ozan specifically asked me to clarify: First, active vs passive voice, which can be a strange concept to native speakers, as we don’t usually realize we are using one or the other until it is explicitly noted. When I was giving Ozan a general explanation and showing him examples, I explained how it is easy to fall into passive voice when writing academic essays and that’s not good; I showed him an excerpt from an old paper I wrote for an anthropology class that my teacher marked up in red almost exclusively for use of passive voice. At first I think Ozan was a bit confused, but the examples in my other resources were clear and I told him it’s nothing more than a grammatical pattern, where passive will always be subject + auxiliary to be verb + main verb in past participle form. For Ozan’s confusing distinguishing rules of perfect continuous in present and future, I had to do some grammar refreshing myself, but with a few worksheets, sample sentences (which I paired in a comparison/contrast way) plus a practice quiz, I think Ozan felt pretty confident with those issues in the end.

Brittany TP 3

Based on the last session I tried to find references for using ‘of,’ and was able to find some samples sentences, but none with much explanation for what Ozan was confused. I asked a few other TEFL classmates their idea on it, and overall we were strugging to develop a more in depth definition for that one- thankfully Ozan’s ambiguity tolerance is good and he accepted that it’s a word/phrase he’ll just have to get used to. Ozan’s weekly email had expressed working with comparative adjectives (-er/-est endings vs. more), so I brought in similar resources to the second session. First we went through the general explanation together and spent the majority of the time working with sample sentences, or I would give Ozan the original word and he had to show me the comparative adjective form (and sometimes vice versa). Later I had him write the opposite adjective to the one I wrote (i.e ‘harder’; ‘softer’) then gave him a practice quiz (from englishclub.com) where he had to select the correct adjective form. Ozan amazes me sometimes when he so quickly learns a topic he told me he’d been confused about before, but I guess the individual attention can truly have a greater impact than a classroom- I know I always learned better when one person actually explained sometime to me rather than trying to teach myself or listen when distracted in class.

Brittany TP 2

After meeting Ozan and establishing our testing focused cirriculum, I researched more TOEFL resources before our session. In addition, Ozan emailed me with a few grammar topics from class he didn’t understand: articles, prepositions, and relative pronouns (who/which/that), so I looked up some practice and helpful tips for those as well. I already had a few resources and sample sentences for learning articles and common prepositions from the grammar log the previous week, but for additional practice, particularly for the pronouns, I printed some helpful pages from englishclub.com (which I highly recommend!). We went through a general explanation of each topic, followed by 2-3 sample sentences that I guided him through, and ended each topic with several examples that Ozan did on his own. Given how smart Ozan is, with some specific explanation and walking through each sentence, he seems to understand the work. The only point he was still confused about was the word ‘of’ when discussing prepositions, and wanted to know a definition. I couldn’t think of a real meaning for the words to easily express, and tried looking at sample sentences, but realized I view it as a meaningless common word that I could only explain by saying that it generally comes before a word that gives extra detail to the rest of the sentence (for example ‘I carried a box of books.’) and more like that. Other than the few I could think of I was at a bit of a loss to explain and told Ozan I’d look into it for next time.

Brittany TP 1

The first tutoring session I had with Ozan was mainly to get to know a bit about each other, assess his needs and find out what he wanted to focus on most. I reviewed the tutoring plan/getting started document Ramin sent as a guide to our meeting, but when Ozan seemed timid about telling me what he wanted to focus on or what he needed the most help with, I simplified things with a question: Do you plan on taking the TOEFL? Yes, he said. This was a good start since I have found a lot of resources for the exam, and based on my own experience of preparing for standardized exams, I feel like I can guide Ozan through the aspects of the test that are a real challenge. Ozan is also very dedicated to his English study; when I asked what he does in his spare time, he said he studies- even when I asked if he liked to watch TV he said mostly in English for listening practice- no lack of motivation with my tutee I can tell! As a Turkish student with a B.A in computer engineering, Ozan hopes to get into a Master’s program for medical software development, so he is to put it simply, brilliant, and I’m sure he’ll pick up these skills in no time. Since this was his first session I asked if any specific grammar topics or speaking situations had given him trouble, but he couldn’t think of any in the moment. Given his diligent attitude we decided to meet twice a week, and I told him to email me with any specific grammar questions when he thought of them.

Brittany CP 8

Since the last time we met I found out Ali had only 5 days left in Tallahassee, I wanted to hang out as much as possible until then! Because his birthday would be after he left, Ali decided to celebrate early and invited me to join. Truthfully I had no idea what to expect when I drove to University Club apartments (where his friend was hosting the party), and found Ali and a familiar group of CIES students standing outside the dark apartment. After being warmly greeted by some guys I’d met before and some new faces as well, I realized why the apartment was so dark- this party was all about the dancing! Lights out inside, loud music, furniture apart, and a select few students with some celebratory drinks all in the middle of the living room dancing away! Ali was eager to show me a good time and kept offering me a drink or said I should dance, and while I appreciated the offer, I wasn’t drinking, nor am I usually a big dancer… Admittedly, I was a bit nervous, and, as one of only 4 girls (only 2 of us American), I was very aware of how much I stood out, but thankfully most of Ali’s friends were very sweet and excited to ask me lots about myself as well as answer all my questions about them. I was able to spend a good amount of time with Ali, but he was moving about to spend time with all his guests, so I also spent a lot of conversing time with Hassan and Mohamed, also from Saudi Arabia. These guys were so nice and even seemed like bodyguards during a few instances when a few other boys at the party (who’d been drinking a bit too much) became quite insistent that I dance with them rather than stand and talk, or when someone else bumped into me, Hassan, Mohamed, and Ali would check repeatedly that I was okay and apologized over and over for the inappropriate behavior. I tried to assure them all that after 4 years at FSU, this behavior was pretty tame and that I wasn’t offended at all- though they still seemed a bit unsettled by the situation, I tried my best to keep it light and joke that this particular guy would be hurting tomorrow- and they finally laughed about it! Success!

Despite being a pretty different birthday party than I’m used to, I’m so glad I got to spend time with Ali before he goes and got to meet some new friends. This group of guys have been especially welcoming and kind, yet they continually thank me for taking the time to speak with them since it truly is helping them become more fluent. Before I left for the night the guys invited me to come over for them to cook me a traditional dinner- I can’t wait!