Ganem TP-12

On Friday, July 1^st I had my final tutoring session with Dongsoek. We met again at the Strozier library and got ourselves a group study room. Today Dongsoek wanted to work on different areas of English. He asked me to help him with his pronunciation first. He brought a book with him; it was called The Philosophy of Science. He read a paragraph from the book and wanted me to correct his pronunciation. The paragraph was about empirical research and analysis. Dongsoek had a hard time pronouncing the word “empiricists” during the reading. I wrote out the word “empiricist” on the white board. I then broke it down into syllables so Dongsoek could get the hang of saying it. I wrote it out as”imp-ear-iss-ist” and Dongsoek repeated over and over again so he could get used to saying it.

Another part he wanted to work on was when to pause while reading sentences. He needed to understand how to use commas when reading out loud. He circled sentences from the book and that had commas in them and read them aloud. When he made a mistake I told him to reread the sentence and pause where the comma is. He had a little bit of difficulty at first so I wrote an example sentence on the board. I wrote “Strozier library is a good place to study on Fridays, there are less people here, but it closes earlier.” I explained that the sentence was divided into three parts. Dongsoek then identified them by reading the sentence aloud. He was able to pause when he saw the commas this time.

We took a small break and I asked how he was doing. He said he was doing alright but it was a little stressful for him today because he just signed a lease for a new apartment. He was going to move from Alumni Village to an apartment complex on Ocala. I asked him where it was on Ocala. He took one of the dry erase markers and started to draw a map on the whiteboard .He drew an axis and then drew a rectangle on the upper part of the axis. He then drew a rectangle on the bottom part of the axis to show that Publix and Heritage Grove were below his new apartment complex. He said he was moving to the upper part of town. He asked what it was called on a map. I said the new apartment complex he is moving to is toward the north and heritage grove was to the south.

We started talking about how to give directions to people. He told me he had a hard time distinguishing form when to say “from” when giving directions instead of “on”. He said “If you want to get to my apartment on campus you go this way.” I told him you use “from” instead of “on” when you start from a location and go towards another location.

Dongsoek looked at his watch and it was 5PM; the buses had stopped running. He needed a ride home so I gave offered to drive him. I had never been to Alumni Village before so Dongsoek gave me directions as I was driving. He thanked me and wished me good luck with what I was doing after finishing my TEFL certificate. I thanked and wished him good luck with passing his TOEFL and finishing his degree in mathematics. I’m glad he was my tutee.

Ganem TP-11

On June 30^th, I had my final tutoring session with Tugba. We met in room 415 in the CIES building. She wanted to practice speaking exercises from her TOEFL book. The first exercise was an activity involving Tugba reading a prompt and explaining her opinions. The prompt was “if you had a month to absolutely do anything you want, what would you do? Explain your reasoning.”She answered she would go to Brazil. Her reasoning for wanting to do this: she wanted to travel there ever since she was a small child. She thought Brazil was an interesting country and she wants to experience Carnival in person.

There were sample answers in the back of the book and we looked over them to compare. The sample answer gave the activity of traveling. The reasoning was that it would allow the person to experience different cultures and learn more about the world. The answerer would get to be exposed to different languages and ways of life. These were similar to the answers that Tubgba gave.

We then looked over another exercise that involved listening, reading and speaking. This required her to use the audio CD that came with her book. I brought my laptop with so I put the CD in. There was a pre-reading part that gave a general description of what the passage was about. Then she would listen to the audio track. After listening to the audio track she would summarize and explain the main points of the recorded speech and reading. The first subject was about heart valve operations. The reading explained what the valve was in the heart; it acts as a gate to let the blood flow properly. The recording went into greater detail; a speaker talked about porcine and artificial heart valve replacements and what their advantages and disadvantages were. After reading and listening, Tugba summarized the ideas of the passage. She talked about how porcine heart valves were heart valves from pigs. Their advantage was that the human body does not reject and their disadvantage was that they didn’t last more than ten years and had to be replaced regularly. The artificial heart valves advantage was that it would last many decades but the disadvantage was that they were often rejected by the patients’ bodies.

We looked at another prompt for the same exercise. This one had her read a factual passage and then listen to a discussion between two people. She then had to summarize and explain the opinion ofone person. The reading talked about how a university was going through a budget cut and had to get rid of departments. The discussion was between two students about the budget cuts. One of the students explained why it was a good thing. Tugba had to say why the student believed the budget cuts were a good thing and point out examples of why he supported the budget cuts. She explained that he supported budget cuts because saved money for the school and that the speaker talked about how none of the professors were fired, their classes were still being offered, and they were just placed in bigger departments. One example was that the folklore department was gotten rid of but the professor was placed in the anthropology department and was able to continue his research and scholarship.

She struggled a little with the speaking exercises. She needed some help with vocabulary and conjugation of verbs. I had to correct her whenever she made a mistake with plural and singular nouns. Overall, Tugba has strong speaking abilities and is easy to understand. When the session ended, we said bye to each other and went our separate ways.

Ganem TP-10

After tutoring Tugba, I had another tutoring session with Dongsoek on Friday, June 24^th. This was at 3PM at the CIES building. Dongsoek had just gotten out of a listening class and wanted to practice listening. He brought his iPad with him. We went on to TED Talks website to look for lectures Dongsoek could write dictocomps for. He wanted to practice doing this so he can become ready to take university classes in English.

The first TED talk we listened to was about how a team of scientists were building a car that blind people can drive on the road. It started out as just a project to build a computerized car that didn’t need to be driven by human beings. It then developed into a system of sensors and software that blind people can use to maneuver and navigate independently on the road. As he was writing the dictocomp I asked him what some of the changes were in the project. From the lecture,he answered it was originally a project to build a computerized, automatic car with no input other than the location from the driver. Then it was changed to build a car that can be driven in real-time by the blind. I asked him what some of the challenges were after to meet the goal. He answered the first prototype was designed to complete an obstacle course that a blind tester would drive through. However the obstacle course was too limited to simulate the conditions of driving in real traffic. The scientists and engineers had to redesign it so blind people can drive on the road.

I asked him how he felt about the lecture. He said it was really interesting but the speaker spoke really and there was a lot of information covered. He told me it was long and a little overwhelming for him to follow. So we looked for a TED talk that had a slower speaker and was shorter. We found one that was about the nature of news and looking at world events in the long run.

We listened to this TED talk and it lasted for about three minutes. It talked about what world events form recent history would be remembered thousands of years from now. Will people remember September 11^th? Will people remember the uprisings in the Middle East? He also talked about how millions of news stories are published and broadcast every year. Then he asked how do you know what matters?

Dongsoek wrote a summary of his ideas. He wrote the lecture was about how individual news stories can be measured as part of the big picture in life. Dongsoek told me this lecture was more interesting to him and the lecturer was exciting. We then ended our tutoring session.

Ganem TP-9

I met with Tugba on Friday, June 24^th at 12:30PM. We met again at the CIES Building. On this day Tugba forgot to bring her CIES book. I asked her if she wanted to work on writing today. She told me she wanted practice speaking today. I told her about a lesson plan I made for teaching the recorded class lesson. It was about music and people expressing their opinions. I pulled it up on my laptop and showed it to her. She liked it so we proceeded with it.

I first showed a list of expressions that could be used for expressing opinions. These range from agreeing to disagreeing to just stating what a person thinks. She looked at them and was a little confused. She told me it didn’t seem like people would normally use them in everyday conversation. I decided to move from that subject area. I pulled up a series of questions regarding music. They included “What kind of music you listen to?” “When did you first start collecting CDs, mp3s, or records?” and”What kind of emotions do you feel when listening to this music?”. She answered each and every question. She said her favorite kind of music was traditional Turkish music. I asked her what sounded it like, so she sung a melody from it.

She got really into the subject. She went on YouTube and showed me some traditional Turkish music. She then asked me if heard about Rumi’s Seven advice. I didn’t, so she showed me:

In generosity and helping others
be like the river.

In compassion and grace
be like the sun.

In concealing others' faults
be like the night.

In anger and fury
be like the dead.

In modesty and humility
be like the soil.

In tolerance
be like the ocean.

Either you appear as you are or
be as you appear.

I asked her to explain what each stanza in the poem represented. She at first had some difficulty so I asked her why Rumi used nature to express each emotion. She said the night metaphor was used to explain that other people’s faults aren’t meant to be exposed. The dead metaphor meant that people should not act on their anger. The sun metaphor meant that people should be really generous with their compassion.

She then told me more about the poet Rumi. He was a Sufi mystic from Persia who is famous for his poetry and writing. He lived during the 1200s. Tugba told me she learned this in her art history classes in Turkey. It was already 1:30 and Tugba, we had to end our tutoring session. I had another tutoring session at 3PM, after he got out of class.

Ganem TP-8

I met with Dongsoek again at the Strozier library on June 20^th. He had brought back his journal activity about traveling. He first wrote about coming to America. In his writing he talked about how it was a life changing experience. He wrote further by talkin g about the time he traveled to Orlando. He also wrote about wanting to visit more cities throughout Florida, such as Tampa and Miami. He also wrote about traveling throughout the rest of America to see really big cities such as New York, Boston, and Chicago. An interesting thing he wrote about was that living in Tallahassee was different than what he expected America to be like. From watching American television shows and movies in Korea, he thought American life would involve being surrounded by tall skyscrapers in crowded cities. He wants to visit the big cities to experience this.

He also talked about wanting other countries like Spain, England and Brazil. He wants to learn about different cultures and experience their lifestyles. He also wrote about wanting to watch a soccer game live. In the end of his writing, he talked about how traveling from South Korea to America makes him want to travel throughout South Korea. He’s only seen his hometown, Seoul, and the surrounding cities. He wants to get to know his home country better.

There were some mechanical mistakes in his writing. He still was in the habit of writing past tense verbs as present tense verbs. Some articles were missing in his sentences. When he described wanting to see a soccer game in person he wrote “I want to see soccer game face to face on the field.” I explained that he should write “in person” or “live”, and he shouldn’t write on” the field.” I told saying “face to face” and “on the field” sounds like he is playing the game himself in person. We joked about this, he said wanted to travel so he could play for Real Madrid.

We went over the sentences and rewrote them to fix these mechanical mistakes. He then showed me some idioms he had written down from his conversations and watching movies and television. He asked me what they meant and when they were used. After all this he had to catch his bus. We said bye to each other and we both we went home.

Ganem CP-6

On Thursday June 16^th I had my final conversation partner session with Mustafa. We met at the Circle K outside. I asked him how he was and he replied he was doing well. He asked how I was and I replied I was doing well but was tired from working on my presentation for the country I want to teach English in. He was interested in my presentation because he knew I wanted to teach in Turkey. I brought my laptop with me so I decided to show him the presentation.

I wanted to get his opinion on whether or not the information was an accurate portrayal of his country and culture. I showed him every slide. He said it made was pretty good. When I showed him the portion about food, it became particularly interesting. He asked me if I thought that Turkish food resembled Greek food. I replied that it did. He then went on to tell me that Turks were the first people to make that kind of food and Greek people just copied it and claimed they were the first. I thought this was pretty funny.

After showing him the presentation we talked about other things. He told me he was going to leave Tallahassee pretty soon, in a couple of weeks. He said he feels sad because he is going to miss living here and miss the friends he made through CIES. Mustafa still isn’t looking forward to serving in the military when he has to go back to Turkey. However, he said he does want to go back to Turkey and visit his family and friends. He is also looking forward to eating Turkish food when he gets back.

We talked about music again. He brought his laptop with him and he put some Turkish rock songs on my flash drive. These were some of his favorite bands and he had seen many of them live. I thanked him for this. It was almost four so I had to head to class. He wished me luck on the presentation then he went home and I went to class.

Ganem TP-7

I met with Tugba again on Wednesday June 15^th.. I asked her if she finished writing her essay on why she believed physical education should be mandatory and she replied no. She told me she had forgotten about it. She still wanted to practice writing. She brought her TOEFL practice book with her again. There was a set of exercises for practicing writing sentences in the passive voice. We went through these.

She asked me to explain what it means to write in the passive voice. I explained that in the active voice the subject carries out the action and the in the passive voice the subject receives the action. The exercises themselves were a set of sentences that were written in the active voice that needed to be changed into sentences for the passive voice.

We went over some other exercises that involved noun phrases. For the exercise, Tugba was given a subject and verb to write sentences using noun phrases. I was a little confused by this myself because I don’t remember being taught this in any of my English classes. When there were some difficulties with the sentences I had to tell Tugba, “I don’t know what the correct form is, let’s look in the book to find the right way of doing this.” I learned noun phrases use nouns to describe the subject in the sentence. One example is “Those five Jonathan apples are sitting on the chair.” “The five Jonathan apples” describe how many apples are sitting on the chair.

I was learning something new as I was helping her. It was a challenge and I felt a little bit of frustration but I was determined to help her as much as I could. However, this tutoring session could not last as long as the other ones. We had to cut this tutoring session a few minutes short because Tugba had to leave early for personal reasons.