FSU TEFL Certificate Course

On Thursday, April 25th, I tutored Sulaiman for the last time this semester. Because he did not have class this week, I wanted to do another fun and interactive lesson. In addition to photography, Sulaiman loves nature, so I thought it would be interesting to do a session in a park about that topic. We went on a trail, and I taught him some of the basic plants that he would commonly see in the Tallahassee area. I had him use different adjectives to describe the plants, such as “fuzzy” and “soft” for a magnolia bud, and “shiny” and “smooth” for the leaves. I also had him compare and contrast some of the plants that he saw with those from Saudi Arabia. Because we got a tornado watch alert on our phones, I also taught him about tornadoes. I felt it was important for him to understand them, especially since tornado season is here. I also asked him about severe weather in Saudi Arabia, and he told me about sandstorms. He said that sometimes, if it’s really bad, people have to stay in their ...

   On Tuesday, April 23rd, at 12 pm, I tutored Vatimetou. We technically had two sessions, so our topic for the first session was about her field, which is civil engineering, and the second session was about reviewing past grammar. For the civil engineering session, I had her explain what a civil engineer does, and then I had her review some construction vocabulary in English because she only knows the terms in French. After she reviewed the words, I had her explain a basic idea of the construction process in English. Because she is mostly learning English to assist with her work, I felt that making the session about civil engineering would not only boost her intrinsic motivation but would actually benefit her career.     After a break, we started again and reviewed some past grammar that she had difficulty with. I have found that both of my tutees have struggled with the perfect tenses because it doesn’t exist in Arabic. For this reason, we did a final review u...

On Monday, April 22 nd , I tutored Sulaiman. Because he didn’t have class this week, I wanted to do a fun tutoring session. I knew that he likes photography, so I decided to meet him at a park to have an English lesson and review regarding photography. I asked him questions such as “what kind of pictures do you like to take?” I also taught him some other key photography vocabulary, such as “focus” and “background.” I had him take a few photos in the park, and then I asked him why he took the photos and also how he felt about them. He really liked the idea of the activity and it was intrinsic motivation for him to learn English. I can tell he’s come a long way from the first time I met him. He’s only been in the United States for about 3 months, but we were able to talk about fairly complex topics, and he understood me well for the most part. There were a couple times when he misunderstood my questions, but he was mostly able to listen and comprehend very well.

On Monday, April 15 th , at 4:30 pm, I tutored Sulaiman. He wrote about a trip he took to the beach with other CIES students and wanted me to look over it with him. Overall, he did very well with his sentence structure, but there were a couple errors. He still had some issues with prepositions and transitional phrases in writing. He also had some issues with reducing an adjective phrase, but because he has probably not yet learned that topic in class, I helped him understand how to reduce it. We also went over present and past perfect again, as well as past participles. I came up with some example verbs and had him use the verb as a past participle in a present or past perfect sentence. He was also curious about the future tense, so we worked on simple future tense sentences. He wanted to learn some basic contractions too, such as “I’ll,” because they’re heard a lot in spoken English.

On Monday, April 15th, at 3 pm, I tutored Vatimetou. Because she was working on reducing in her class and had trouble understanding it, we decided to focus on it. We started with reducing adjective phrases. We then worked on reducing prepositional phrases, time clauses, and verbs of request. She seemed to have the most trouble with reducing time clauses, such as "when I was talking with you," versus "while talking with you." We then briefly reviewed modal verbs. She was also having trouble with 3rd person singular and the proper verb conjugations, so we went over that. We went over present and past perfect again since she was having difficulties with understanding when to use them. We also went over how and when to use “yet,” such as in “I have not done my homework yet.”

On Monday, April 8 th , at 5 pm, I tutored Vatimetou. She was having trouble with her writing, so we decided to focus the session on her book report. She wrote some of her report, but she had some difficulty understanding certain parts of the essay layout that her teacher wanted her to do. We went over an example essay that her teacher had supplied so that I could help her understand what to look for in each paragraph. We went over the grammar in each paragraph as well. I also asked her to be aware of the tenses in the paragraphs, as there were some incorrect tenses that were used together. I noticed that she also had trouble expressing some ideas, such as when she was talking about a character making bad decisions. She had written something like, “he was in trouble way,” and I taught her the phrase, “to go/head down the wrong path.”

On Monday, April 8th, at 4 pm, I tutored Sulaiman. He was still having trouble with pronouns, so we decided to go over them. We started off with subject pronouns. I noticed that sometimes he has trouble using them and will sometimes use an incorrect one, such as in “let me know if she suits you,” rather than “let me know if it suits you.” I think he has the most trouble with “it.” We then went over object pronouns and possessive pronouns as well since he has been struggling a bit with those. I tried to come up with some example sentences that show things in real life, such as showing him “this book is mine,” or “this pen is yours.” We also went over some of his new vocabulary, which included some adverbs. I think that although sometimes he goes over the vocabulary on his own, he doesn’t seem to understand how to use some of the words properly, so I try to go over the ones he doesn’t seem to understand very well and try to use them in a context that he can understand. After going over t...

On Thursday, April 4 th , at 7 pm, I tutored Vatimetou. We went over many idiomatic expressions, as she didn’t have anything in particular she wanted to work on at the time. I chose idioms to work on also because she doesn’t have too much knowledge on them and she mostly just wants to be able to communicate verbally in English, so I thought it would be good for her to learn and review some as they are prominent in everyday American life.   I learned there are some similarities in idioms in English and Arabic, such as “to stab someone in the back.” Both have a similar meaning, although in Muslim culture it is used more so in a situation in which a male decides to date his male friend’s sister, as it is highly looked down upon. I noticed when introducing the new idioms to her, she took them quite literally rather than figuratively and it occurred to me that it makes sense she didn’t understand some of them well because many are embedded in old European or America...

On Monday, April 1st, at 4 pm, I tutored Sulaiman. He needed to practice his oral performance because he had an exam the next day, so we went over it and I helped him correct any grammar mistakes he made and made sure he understood them. His oral performance was about his home country, Saudi Arabia. We then went over new vocabulary and their meanings. The vocabulary was related to prepositions, such as "above" and "below." We went over each and used our environment to create example sentences. After going through everything, he was able to understand and use the new vocabulary. We also went over the pronunciation of some words that he found difficult, such as words that have "gh" in them. He has also had some issues with being able to spell and pronounce some words with "o" and "u" because of the different pronunciations of the letters. Overall though, he has been doing very well and I can definitely see his improvement.

On Sunday, March 31 st , at 2:30 pm, I tutored Vatimetou. I started the session by asking her about her spring break and what she did, and she told me that she went to Panama City Beach with her conversation partner. She also went to the Saint Marks lighthouse that I recommended to her to visit. She needed to go over a writing assignment she did in class and the teacher left feedback, so we went over it until she understood and could properly use the grammar she previously misunderstood. I noticed that she has had issues with past participles in perfect tenses, as well as when to use perfect tenses, so we went over those. We also went over the subject of critique essays, as she was not in class when her teacher explained it. I felt that this was also a good lesson for me because I have not written a critique essay in many years.

On Wednesday, March 27th, at 5 pm, I tutored Sulaiman. I asked him about his spring break and he was able to communicate that he and his friends went fishing in Panama City Beach, and he also went to Jacksonville. This helped him review using past tense. We went over reading and new vocabulary. He showed me an interesting ESL reading website that had different reading articles, ranging from politics to other interesting news. The articles also had 3 or 4 levels of difficulty, but all conveyed the same meaning, so I found that an interesting resource to consider using in the future. I had him read the article aloud so that he could also work on his reading and pronunciation. I also asked him a couple comprehension questions about the article to reinforce his reading comprehension.

On Monday, March 15, at 4 pm, I tutored Vatimetou for the first time. I got to know about her. She’s from Mauritania and speaks Arabic, French, and English! She wants to learn English just to be able to communicate, rather than go to school. She taught herself English just by watching movies and listening to music, which I thought was amazing because her English is very good. Of course, there are many words she isn’t familiar with and has trouble sometimes with grammar, but her speaking fluency is pretty high. I want to focus more on helping perfect her grammar, as she is fairly advanced. We mostly talked about perfect and perfect continuous tenses, as she mostly has trouble with them. It seemed like she didn’t really know when to use all of the perfect tenses, so I explained to her when to use them, and then had her come up with example sentences.

On Monday, March 11 th , at 4 pm, I tutored Sulaiman. He was learning prepositions in class and was having some difficulty understanding them, so I made up an activity. I used some common items, such as pencils and my bag to show location. I gave some examples, and then had him describe the location of the item using prepositions. Afterwards, we did a quick review of all the prepositions using an image of a room. We also worked on past participles in the present perfect tense, such as in “has allowed.” We then went over new vocabulary, such as “choice” and “choose,” and because he wanted to learn about them, I briefly introduced him to contractions, such as “don’t” and “isn’t.”Because he is in lower level classes, I did not want to confuse him too much. But since he really wanted to learn contractions, I chose the more simple ones to teach him.

Renata and I went to Starbucks on Tennessee street and got a cup of coffee. I insisted on paying because of how wonderful she has been as a conversation partner. As we sipped on our coffee we discussed on her plans for staying here in Tallahassee. She plans to continue on until she reaches group four. Her boyfriend is a doctor at the Tallahassee Memorial Hospital and he plans to live here for a couple more years. Renata is excited to continue with her journey at CIES. We also went over her speech for her speaking class.

Marcelle and I this tutoring session read a couple books. After each page, we would talk about the pictures. She knows many animals names in English, but still is learning all of them. We then colored two pages in her coloring book and as she colored we discussed why she picked the colors she did. She loves the color pink so her unicorn was pink and purple. We then ate a snack I brought and went back to class. Her English is improving so much!

Seop and I talked about our weekends. He showed me that he ate a snow-cone and drank some beer with friends. We then worked on the listening worksheet. This activity was hard for him because there were no subtitles, but I had full confidence he could do it. We did not complete it, but we knew we could finish it next session. He is improving so much with his speaking and listening skills.

Renata had an exam so instead of conversation we practiced her oral exam. She talked about how much she loves the beaches in Brazil. I helped her write out her minute long speech and we practiced it 4-5 times. I had to help with pronunciation on some words, but overall she sounded great!

Before arriving at Gilchrist I stopped by the store and bought a present for Marcelle, coloring books, and a dry erase board. I wanted Marcelle to feel like she had an option while working with me. We began the session with coloring and talking about her weekend. She has become more confident while speaking to me and I don't have to ask her to speak louder anymore. We then played an alphabet game on the dry erase where she got to write the letters as I said them. She loved it!

I met Seop at CIES and we discussed how our weekends/ spring break was. He told me that he went on a cruise and he practiced his English. We then started on a dictation activity with the movie "Father of the bride". This activity was a little bit more difficult. We only got through a couple lines before the session was up. I told him we will continue the worksheet for next session.

I met Renata at Cies and then we walked to Starbucks on Tennessee. This session I helped her with her speaking presentation. We went through each slide and practiced what she wanted to say. I helped with notes for her to remember and we focused on running through the presentation 3-4 times. She felt more comfortable with the presentation after our session!

For this session, I remembered to bring a green apple for Marcelle because she said that was her favorite. She was so excited I brought her it! We then went to the media center and completed some worksheets on short vowel sounds. She is not really excited about having to speak a lot, but she loves to color. So after each worksheet, I allowed her to color. She is a very smart little girl.

Seop and I met at CIES and we talked about our weekends. We then continued our worksheet on the Friends episode. We went over the vocabulary and I asked him to try and use a couple new vocabulary this next week. We then moved on to him describing four photos I had looked up. Each image had a different feeling and emotion. He liked this activity a lot because he had to really think about what he wanted to say to describe the photos.

I met Renata at the Starbucks on campus, and she ordered her drink and food perfectly! I was very impressed with how much she improved in one week! We talked about her boyfriend and what his occupation was. She speaks to him in mostly Spanish, but also English. We then sat outside at the picnic table and discussed the questions Claire sent for the conversation practice. We talked about the culture in American and Brazil. We also talked about food and common greetings. I enjoyed this session!

I met Seop at CIES and we started on a listening activity with the sitcom Friends. I got the idea from our class and thought it could be fun. We watched the "Cheesecake" episode and we started on the worksheet after watching the video twice. He depended on the subtitles for most of it but seemed to understand 75% of the topics. We couldn't complete the whole worksheet but we saved the rest for the next session. He really enjoyed this activity.

I went to Gilchrist elementary school to tutor my 8-year-old student from Cameroon, Africa. Marcelle was very shy at first. It took me a while to get her to speak. She loves to color and is very good at copying words. At the end of our session, we read a book about food and that is when she opened up to me. I was asking her what her favorite foods were and she told me crepes with Nutella. Even though we didn't get a lot done I felt a little victory at the end when she was speaking about food and laughing with me.

The third class I observed at CIES was Mrs. Felicia's level one speaking class. We met downstairs in the student lounge, which I thought made the environment more relaxed for students to be able to speak. They answered questions about how long they have been in Tallahassee and if they liked living here. All students participated and even though they were all at different levels they still could all communicate how they felt about Tallahassee. She then had them go outside of the building and interview someone about Tallahassee. This at first seemed intimidating to the students, but they quickly went out and asked a new person about Tallahassee. I really enjoyed Mrs. Felicia's class!

My conversation partner is Renata and she is from Brazil. She is a level one English learner and has been here in the United States since December. She was a little timid in the beginning, but by the end of our session, she seemed more relaxed. She could communicate where she was from, details about her family, and what she studied at the University. Even though her English was broken I could still get all of these details without too much work. She could speak in the simple present but had issues with simple past and future.

On Thursday, April 18 th , at 9 am, I had my last conversation partner session with Dojun. He seemed a little tired since his work has been a bit busy recently due to issues regarding the new Boeing aircraft. I started the session off by mentioning the idea of critical incidents and explained the concept, as well as gave an example. He had some trouble thinking of a particular incident, but he did remember one. He mentioned that about a decade ago he visited the United States. He and his friend were staying at a villa hotel in Seattle and there was a Costco somewhat nearby as a place to go get food. He and his friend walked all the way there and gathered many groceries, then they went to the cashier to pay. The cashier there was Asian-American and had a fairly thick accent that was unfamiliar to him, so communication was a bit difficult. The cashier kept saying, “you need your card,” and they did not know why she wouldn’t accept the cash that they gave her. They ar...

On Thursday, April 11th, at 9 am, I had a conversation partner session with Dojun. I've noticed he's been a bit tired from work recently, which seems to be affecting his speech rate, as he was stuttering a bit more and had more trouble recalling words. Regardless, once we started talking, the conversation livened up a bit. As usual, we talked a little bit about his work and the Boeing aircraft situation. I mentioned what was going on in class, as I had the final exam on this day. Because we were talking about school and education, I suddenly remembered something from my childhood. I asked him about the Kumon, the private tutoring school. I used to go to one near my home as a child, as we had them in Atlanta. He immediately recognized and confirmed that South Korea has those too. He thought it was very interesting because he thought Kumon was confined to Eastern Asia (Korea and Japan.) We then talked about different medical topics, such as blood pressure. This was a very interes...

On Friday, April 5 th , 2019, I had a Skype conversation with Dojun. I started off our conversation by mentioning April Fool’s Day, since it occurred between our last meeting. He mentioned that Korea also has an April Fool’s Day, but it is mostly for younger people, as older people are not as aware of it. He also talked a little about Korean holidays, such as Children’s Day, and how there aren’t really things like parades in Seoul because people don’t want the streets to be clogged up with traffic. I think maybe because it was morning time in Korea, he was stuttering a little more than usual, but as the conversation went on, he picked up his speaking pace. We also talked about some idioms, such as “hitting the road” and “hitting the hay.” He found most of the idioms that I introduced fairly easy to understand, since he said some of them were similar in Korean. He also had some issues understanding how to use the verb “make” in past tense with prepositions. We went ...

On Tuesday, March 26 th , at 9 am, I had a conversation partner session with Dojun. As I had just finished Spring Break, and I was still in Orlando, I told him about it. Naturally, we started talking about Disney World and the theme parks here in Orlando. He also mentioned the news about the child who had been killed by an alligator in one of the lakes at Disney. I was a bit surprised to hear that this news story was so popular in South Korea, but I suppose it makes sense, because many tourists from all over the world visit Orlando and go to Disney. We also talked about beaches and their differences in America and South Korea. He then brought up one of his trips to Saipan. He told me all he learned about the history there, as many events occurred there around WWII. I really felt like I was given a good history lesson! This is good proof that visiting another country can really teach you more about history. I also learned that a big issue in Saipan is that in partic...

On Tuesday, March 12 th , at 9 am, I had a conversation partner session with Dojun. Because I had been at a wedding over the weekend, I mentioned that, and we talked about some differences in weddings in America and in South Korea. As he works for an airline company, we also talked a lot about that topic. Because of the somewhat recent Boeing plane crashes, his work has been in a sort of frenzy. They had contracted the new plane for the airline company, which is scheduled to come in around the next year, I believe. Of course, this was an issue for the airline, as it is unacceptable to have risky planes. Luckily, Boeing said they were working out the kinks. Dojun told me that there is an issue with a certain component in the plane that is supposed to prevent stall in flight aerodynamics. I thought the conversation was very interesting, as I don’t have a lot of knowledge about planes. I was also impressed about his ability to communicate complex ideas, especially about t...

I met with my tutee Hyo-Sang, as a conversation partner. We discussed various differences in American and South Korean culture and talked about popular American movies that he enjoyed. He talked about the movie 'Get Out' and said it was one of his favorites. He also discussed the differences of driving in America and in South Korea. We both agreed that we didn't think police should be able to hide to catch speeding on the interstate.

I observed Dr. Pollocks class where an activity was being done. Students had been broken up into groups which I feel lowered their affective filter and led to a comfortable environment where students were able to productively work together. They were given a worksheet with questions on them and students would receive papers in a game like fashion that would streamline the activity. Dr. Pollock would visit each group to observe and assist with any needed clarification and confusion. The class ran smoothly under his instruction and I feel like students enjoyed the activity while learning a great deal.

Last week I met with my conversation partner Rawabi. We used the "ice-burg" worksheet emailed to us to share our cultures values. We discussed clothing and how religious holidays are presented in America. We also talked about how tanning booths and spray tans were common in American.

I met with Hyo-Sang last week and we went over common American expressions and slang. It was interesting to come up with situations in which certain expressions would be used. The expressions "knock on wood" was one of the mosre interesting terms to explain because I realized I had no idea why this expression had come about in the first place. 

I met with Hyo-Sang last week for a tutoring session at Starbucks. We spoke about our spring breaks and worked on fluidity in terms of switching from past to present tense. Hyo-Sang spoke about his time in the military and we introduced each other to a few new words in each of our languages.

Last week I met with Jeong-Ho for another tutoring session at Starbucks. We went over an essay he had written in class. There were a number of grammar questions and word formations he struggled with. Jeong-Ho wrote about city life and we worked on the structure of the plural, singular possessive, and plural possessive of the word.  The 'beautiful mistakes' he made were quickly corrected by him after clarifying the sentence structures.

4/1 Today  Do-jun and I discussed various holidays. He was curious about thanksgiving in particular. He told me about some major Korean holidays as well as the cherry blossom viewing season. I told him about the Western stories about the origin of Christmas and what the actual origin was. I got to rambling a little so we went a bit over time, but it was an enjoyable conversation.

3/16 I met with Danny at the starbucks close to the CIES building. He's not A CIES student. He actually works for a factory close by. He is very proficient in English and actually asked me to speed up talking because he didn't realize it was just my accent. We talked politics, what he liked about Tallahassee, his experiences in America and so on. after our hour was up, I invited him to the chess club meeting. he seemed interested in making new friends.

3/28/19 I had to move our normal meeting day thanks to a trip I had during spring break. We still met in the morning thanks to the time difference. This Session we talked about the differences in our education systems and the similarities of students across the globe(procrastination). W e also talked about families and I showed  Do-jun the confusing chart on how we label cousins in America. 

3/18/2019 Do-jun and I talk about our hobbies. I showed off a few of my craft projects and  Do-jun introduces me to a new type of billiards without pockets. We went over the cultural differences of when to use 'can' or 'could' in a sentence. I explained that, with spring break coming up, we'd need to move our next meeting.

On Wednesday, March 6 th , at 2 pm, I observed Ms. Ciapetta’s listening 1-A class. She started the class by going over why stories and story books are good to use for language learning. She also went over some difficult verbs with the students by using visible actions, such as taking off and putting her earring back on. She then gave students a list of topics, such as “what is a conversation partner?” She had one student respond as an example, and she had the class pair up and discuss their questions with each other. She then went over their answers with them. Afterwards, she gave each students a worksheet, and they had 4 minutes to fill in the blanks using the vocabulary they learned. Answers were gone over after the activity. From looking at worksheet, it seems like the students could use context clues to figure out which verb and what form belonged. The last activity was a listening activity. There was an audio recording, and the students listened to it a total ...

At 1 pm on Tuesday, March 5 th , I observed Mr. Ryan’s level 3 speaking class. I originally was scheduled to observe Ms. Ciapetta’s class, but I did not see anyone inside the classroom, so I asked Mr. Ryan if he knew where they were, but he didn’t know, so he let me observe his class. He started the class by going over the daily schedule with the students. Mr. Ryan also went over the motivations to learn English, and had students answer questions about the topic, such as, “what problems are there with speaking English to natives?” The students would answer the questions by talking to their partners. He then reviewed questions about class discussion and controversial topics, such as “should the legal alcohol age be lowered?” He then had the students give advice to their partners on a certain topic. It was a timed speaking activity, and they needed to use their smartphones to record their speaking. The students were also all given a worksheet that included a table in...

On Tuesday, March 5 th , at 10 am, I observed Ms. Sana’s Grammar 1-A class. I got there early, which was to my benefit, as we had switched classrooms. Ms. Sana started the class with timed speaking presentations. The students had two minutes to review their notes and one minute to speak. The presentation was about the students’ hometowns. They needed to use the correct verb tense, word order, and subject-verb agreement. The next activity was going over pronouns. Students then came up with their own sentences using pronouns, and any mistakes were noted and corrected afterwards. Ms. Sana also went over possessive pronouns and possessive adjectives with the students. Each student got a worksheet and had a few minutes to work on it alone. The answers were gone over afterwards, and beautiful mistakes were also reviewed. I really enjoyed observing the class, as the students really seemed to enjoy being there.

3/11 I met with Do-jun at 8. We worked on a few similar pair words and some tricky words such as language. We talked about his experience at his job and his experience using English in the work place. English is the language of flight so it's important for anyone working with or around planes to speak it well.

With Renata today, we mostly went over the verbs she had to study for her quiz. It was interesting to try to come up with ways to explain the verbs using synonyms and demonstrations. One we both got a laugh at was the verb hear. She knew what listening meant and I explained that they were the same, but there was a saying that listening meant paying attention and hearing didn't.

Today, Jeong-ho and I meant at the computer lab in the SLC and played League of Legends together. It was a rather fun, if not simple way for us to practice communicating in a stressed but fun environment. Something I taught him during it was what a few acronyms meant, like the XD laughing face. I thought that was great.

The second class I observed was Mrs. Felicia's reading class level 1. In this class, she was teaching the students how to recognize when to produce short vowel sounds when reading. She put about 15 different three lettered words like; hat, sun, sit, cat, etc. She had them mark an x under the vowel and then if the vowel was followed by a consonant she would have them put a star above it. This would indicate to the students that the vowel is a short vowel sound. We then as a class we practiced pronouncing all the words. I really liked how the students were willing to volunteer to read the words. I saw improvement from students in their reading skills in just one session.