FSU TEFL Certificate Course

I met with my tutee, Hyo Sang for the second time at Starbucks last week. We reviewed pronunciation and proper speaking formation. We discussed spring break and the activities we partook in during that time. The past tense was a little difficult to use in conversation, especially when switching to discuss current opinions on things that happened in the past. He started off slowly adjusting at first but as he became more comfortable he began to speak fluently. He asked about the slang term for police "po-po" because his sisters friend had mentioned it. I found this interesting and couldn't really find any way to explain it aside from it being slang. The shortening of words to form slang terms used in pop culture is interesting in the context of teaching english. 

I met with my tutee, Renata for the second time today. We went over pronouns again, and this time I was much more prepared, with a simple worksheet I found online. It went much more smoothly than last time, and I feel confident that she has a grasp on the subject now. In the last fifteen minutes, we tried going over present perfect tense verbs, but encountered the problem again where I was having trouble finding examples and we decided to wait until next time. I did encounter a problem with one of the examples on the worksheet though. She didn't know what "It's my turn now" meant. She knew what turn meant but not the phrase, and I couldn't find a good synonym online either, so we had to give up after a few minutes of searching. How do I explain this phrase?

I met with my conversation partner, Jeong-ho, for the second time. We had planned on watching an anime before hand and then discussing that, but we got off topic as we talked about other things. The topic we talked a lot about was drinking. We talked about different drinking habits between Americans and Koreans. For instance, I found that I was more experienced with drinking at home and parties rather than bars and it was the opposite for Jeong-ho. He thinks that its because in Korea, everything was closer together so you could walk from your home to a bar. Whereas here, you have to drive to everything, so it's easier to just stay home. We also talked a lot about the types of alcohol, he told me about soju and I talked a lot about mixed drinks. It was pretty fun to see the cultural differences and similarities in something as simple as alcohol.

I had my class observation today with Dr. Ryan Flemming's listening class. He started the class with a vocab quiz. He gave two minutes before the quiz started to answer any questions regarding the quiz. The quiz itself consisted of two parts and had the vocab words at the top. The first was 10 blank lines that they would have to listen to him say the definition and then write the word. The second was fill in the blank based on sentence context. After the quiz, he explained and had them practice paraphrasing. His explanation consisted of showing them a meme with an overly formal sentence referencing something in American pop culture "May I inquire about the identity of the individual who has released the canines who were being held in captivity" "who let the dogs out." Then gave them sentences with the vocab words they just had the quiz on and had them paraphrase it. What I found interesting when I was practicing this with them, I realized that it was difficult f...

Today I observed Dr. Angel Rios’s speaking class, however he had another engagement today and Ms. Sana covered for him. She started the class by going reviewing the vocabulary. The theme of their vocabulary was corporal punishment. She had the students give the definition, but still gave them hints about the grammar of the word. For instance she would tell them if it was a noun or verb and tell them the different tenses. After the review, they moved onto class discussion about the topic. the teacher went over the topic beforehand to make sure the questions were clear. During the discussion, the students were given phrases appropriate to the discussion to use when they wanted to get their point across. During the discussion, she had me go around and practice recording mistakes to use at the end of class. I learned from this how important it is to give linguistic support in this, because of how much easier it was for the students to participate in the discussion with the phrases in fron...

In this tutoring session, I met with a girl from Korea named Ye-bin Kim. She was an a4 level.  She wanted to work on her reading comprehension so we went over a scientific study she had to read for homework. There were a few phrases and words she didn’t understand so I tried to clarify them without giving away the answer entirely. I was impressed by the difficulty level of the assignment. I think for the most part when reading a paragraph or long sentence it makes it more difficult to pick apart the words to assign a meaning. Getting the meaning of a word across without giving a full definition is also a little difficult. When reading, a broader understanding followed by an understanding of the language is beneficial. I also learned that jokes are often rooted in an understanding of slang and syntax and when communicating with non-native speakers is a confusing thing to get across.

For my first conversation partner meeting, I met with a woman named Rawabi at Starbucks. It was a little trying to find someone you have only met via online communication so we had to describe what we were wearing. Rawabi is from Saudi Arabia. She has a young son who we spent a lot of time discussing. Talking about personal information, such as family, interests and hobbies facilitated easy conversation. When discussing Tallahassee we were at a little bit of a loss for how to describe it. We talked about nearby attractions such as the springs and neighboring cities we have both been to. Rawabi spoke clearly and was easy to understand. I think that as we meet more frequently, conversations will be easier to have and will flow better. We joked about how the first meeting was set up a little awkwardly. It was a good experience.

For my first tutoring session I met up with a young man from Korea. He came with his family and is in the process of learning english. I asked him if there was anything specific he struggled with and wanted help with. The two areas he said he had the most difficulty with were conversations (pronunciation) and grammar. I think this is reflective of what a majority of students have difficulty with. We spent the first half of the session working on written grammar. He has a good foundation of understanding and the only problems we encountered were the omission of needed articles in sentences. The second half we worked on speaking. He struggled with the pronunciation of some words and asked for clarification on how they were said. A lot of T-words had the vowel dropped and we worked on diction through the conscious act of overexerting sound formation.

I observed a class where projects were being presented. It was Derreck Pollocks class 4A speaking class. The instructor provided donuts to make the class casual and fun. A term called “timed speaking’ was introduced. This was the process of agreeing or disagreeing or giving opinion with reasons and a conclusion within a set time limit. Students had 15 seconds to think and prep, and 45 seconds to speak. The teacher introduced the topic of should schools teach sex education do you agree or disagree. The instructor had to clarify the word was sex and not six. The topic was provided and students were given 15 seconds to give their opinion on why they agree or disagree and 45 seconds to give an explanation for their opinion. The teacher mentioned giving points for vocabulary use, this is both encouraging and engages in vocabulary learning. The professor asked for clarification when an unclear statement was given. This helped with speaking and language. The teacher timed each students resp...

On Wednesday, March 6th at 4 pm, I tutored CIES student Sulaiman for the first time. This was my first time not only tutoring, but also meeting a stranger from the Middle East. I had a preconceived notion that because he was a male from the Middle East, he wouldn't be comfortable with a female tutoring him. This turned out to be false, as he was very kind and open-minded. He is a level one beginner, so there were some difficulties in communication of course, but we quickly settled in and got to work after some introductions. I learned that his main goals in his English journey are to focus on speaking and listening. As he had two tests the next day, my immediate goal was to help him on grammar points that he was having trouble with. The main trouble points for him were object pronouns and possessive pronouns. I used our environment around us to help give him some examples. Afterwards, I had him come up with some of his own example sentences. It took a little while for him to grasp ...

On Tuesday, March 5th, at 7:30 am, I had my first conversation partner meeting with Do-Jun Kim on Skype. We did introductions and gave each other basic information about ourselves. It seemed he could speak and understand English fairly well, and only asked for more information on a couple of words. He was also very easy to talk to and down-to-earth, so the conversation was very enjoyable. I  noticed that he had trouble understanding some idioms, which was understandable because even though he could speak English fairly fluently, he probably knows formal English and not so much casual English and idioms. I could maybe use more idioms in our future conversations so he will be able to learn them. Overall, it was a very enjoyable experience, as all of my conversation partner experiences have been, and I look forward to conversing with him again and learning more about Korea.

On Wednesday I met with my tutee Hyuon Seop. He is from South Korea and arrived here three weeks ago. We began by doing an assessment I made of questions. The first set of the questions were more personal and the second set of questions were his studies and goals. His reading and writing were pretty high, but if I asked him a question verbally he struggled. After the assessment, I decided a listening activity would be a great way to finish up the session. We watched segments of Friends, and I would periodically pause to discuss and ask questions about the scene. He really enjoyed these activities. I plan for the next session to prepare a worksheet packet to work on speaking. I look forward to tutoring him next week.

On Monday I observed level 1 grammar class with Mrs. Mcharek. The class had four students, and Mrs. Mcharek started off the class with dialogue. She asked them what they did the past weekend. The students did well for being in level 1, and only had minor mistakes with verb tense. Then she quickly moved on to Simple present tense and present continuous. She first put some examples on the board but had blanks where the verb should be. They each tried one. They then moved on to do a couple exercises in the book. I liked how Mrs. McHarek always verbalized and discussed answers after the student was finished. She also pointed out vocabulary that they were struggling with and had them write in their notebook the words they did not understand. I enjoyed sitting in this class, because it really showed me how interactive, even with grammar, you need to be with the students.

Just had my first tutoring session with Renata. She is a beginner level student and today we went over pronouns. She is very eager to learn, which made the session enjoyable, but I realized how I took for granted how many words I knew. I tried making an example sentence using the word purse and she didn't know what it meant. This showed me not only how important it was to use high frequency words, but also showed me my failing at being unable to come up with those words easily, which will be something I have to work on. I also learned how much easier it is to teach when simple sentence structure is used, as she was able to understand easier when I explained which noun to replace using the SVO sentence base. Next week I am planning on getting a worksheet for her to make the session more organized and to brush up on my own understanding of the subject so that I can be of more help.

I had my first class observation on Monday, March 6th. I observed the level 3A class taught by Ryan Flemming. He started the class with a brief review of the syllabus for the week and upcoming assignments. He used clear dictation and slow speech patterns to ensure the class fully understood everything. I found his ability to engage students interesting and appreciated the effort to check up on students to make sure they were not being left behind. He introduced an upcoming assignment which was a presentation of a controversial topic followed by a group discussion. I thought this method of engaging students through interests was well done. A debate is sometimes difficult for native speakers and introducing a debate to language learners is an interesting way to spark intrinsic motivation and participation. At the end of the class students were able to ask questions and speak amongst themselves. The conversations and questions had to remain in english though. I think that establishing the...

Just had my first meeting with my conversation partner, Jeong-ho. We had the resources provided by CIES to start our interview, but luckily we hit it off when we both discovered that we were both huge nerds. We spent the entire hour talking about Anime and League of Legends and had a pretty fun time. His english was pretty good, the only problem we encountered was with the names of characters because either I wasn't very good at understanding passed his accent or the names were translated differently between America and Korea. We got over this by just looking up pictures of the characters and showing them to each other. Overall a very good start. I'm thankful that we found something we were both interested in and I'm looking forward to our next few sessions.

   I had my first class observation today with the beginner level grammar course taught by Sana McHarek. She started out the class by reviewing their previous lesson on pronouns and possessive adjective. What I thought was interesting about the way she did the review was she encouraged the students to remember on their own by asking a lot of questions and clarifying their answers, rather than just reiterating a lecture on the rules. Throughout the lesson she used the deductive approach by making sure the students understood the rules before moving on to the activity. What I was also impressed by was that during the review she went over the definition of possession and then in the activity, used that as the topic: "Write about your favorite possession."    During the main lesson of count and non count nouns she used the same deductive approach of teaching the rules before the activity. Similarly encouraging the students to explain the new subject themselves by giving...

I had my first session with my Adult tutee, Do-jun Kim, today at 7:30. It was mostly an informal get-to-know-you session though we did talk a little about some confusing English phrases. His English is very good, especially the grammar, but he seemed to have trouble pronouncing some words. Mostly, we discussed traveling and learning new languages to make that easier. He was interested in practicing more casual and at ease conversation. I think that after some more practice he will be able to speak much more smoothly without having to consider his words before each sentence. I look forward to watching his progress.