Kari_CP7

At the tea time that was two weeks ago, my conversation partner Minsuk and I played a game of Scrabble. I won that time, even though he had help from his Korean comrades at the end. Today, he was very determined to beat me and was doing all he could to form triple and double letter pointed words. Today we also had David join our game, and even though David took really long turns, especially in forming words, we all had a good time. Minsuk and I were having a bit of cowboy stare-down competitions because while we were waiting for David to take his turn, the both of us would be staring at the board and glancing up at each other, really hoping that we didn't share the same spot in mid for our words. It seemed that every time there was a slot for a word to be formed from an "a" or "e", he and I would both have our eyes on it. Minsuk's vocabulary range is very broad, which makes it fun to play, but I still won. :)  I think that is going to be our new tradition, to play Scrabble until he beats me. The other thing about Minsuk is that he also picks up the rules very fast. David was having a bit of trouble understanding that you couldn't put letter tiles between separate words unless they came together to form a single word, but Minsuk was the one that explained the rules very clearly to him.

Jackson ITA4

I just got done Skyping for the fourth time with my ITA, Zhong Jun. It has been a very long time since we last Skyped. I had e-mailed him a couple times but he never got back to me. The reason, I learned tonight, was because his internet (which was already bad) completely gave out. However, when I came home from volleyball tonight and saw that I had a missed Skype call from him, I was very excited to get to do some catching up. We had a really great conversation. I can say without any doubt that his English has gotten tremendously better since the last time we spoke. Since the internet connection was also significantly better, it made for our best conversation yet! He told me about his new apartment, The Plaza off of Tennessee Street and his two Chinese roommates. He told me about how hectic his schedule is: 9-5 in the Lab, 5-6:30 in his English class. We talked about his plans to go home this winter and what all he would do (and eat!) while he was there. We also talked about just what exactly it is he does in his Bio-Physics lab. He is responsible for determining the different structures that different proteins have and what function their respective structures allow far. It all sounded like very fascinating stuff and I could tell that he was truly interested in this subject. Our talks then turned to something that BOTH of us are very knowledgeable and passionate about: food (glorious food), and travel. Although the USA is the only country Zhong Jun has ever been to other than China, he has been to extremely beautiful places in china. He showed me many pictures of the places he has been and even recommended many places for me to teach if I really wanted to get a good experience in China. Next we each took turns sending pictures of our favorite foods to each other. We agreed that we would meet Thursday or Friday for dinner at Far East Cuisine. I asked if it would be alright if I brought Fei with me, since she is the one who introduced me to the restaurant and she is also Chinese and he thought that was a great idea. After Fei agreed we all now have plans to eat dinner Friday night. I'll be sure to blog about it and let you all know how it goes :)

Jennifer_TP13

Okay, this is my last tutoring partner entry! I know we were supposed to stop at 12 and not write more than that on the blog, but I had to write about this one since she's leaving this week. I met with Sumayah, my Saudi Arabian tutoring partner. At the very beginning of our session she said she was leaving to go back to Saudi Arabia for two months! This was a shocker for me, she mentioned nothing about leaving before! She will be back at FSU in two months though, and she asked if I could still tutor her after she came back. I said I may not be able to since my school schedule will be different, but that I will let her know, and if I can't tutor her I will find her someone good. :) I wasn't able to meet with her next week because her baby was sick, so we went over a timed writing she did two weeks ago. Apparently she thought she did horribly on it, but she didn't do too bad! Her ideas were clear, and the outline we did helped. I explained some of her grammar errors, what she did great and what she could improve. She then told me that she took the TOEFL this weekend and thought she did very well on the essay section! She also said most of the reading was about science, which was good since she is a math and science person. She thinks she did so-so on the TOEFL. After that I asked her if there was any homework she wanted help with or to go over, and she said she had to tell an American joke in class. She asked me to see if the joke she found was appropriate. Turns out she found a joke that made fun of Americans rather than a joke Americans tell. I explained to her the difference, and told her the joke probably was only appropriate if she was with her very close American friends. She would not want to say this as a casual joke to American acquaintances though, because it basically calls Americans morons. (I thought it was funny overall, but it definitely wasn't what she was trying to find). I proceeded to find a better joke for her. I then realized a very popular "American" joke is blonde jokes. I explained how we had this stereotype that we think all blonde-haired girls who are really pretty are really dumb, although we don't necessarily "believe" this. However, these is are very popular and well-known jokes in America, and there are many of them. I found this joke for her, which she found really funny: "Two blondes lock their keys in the car. One of the blondes tries to break into the car while the the other one watches. Finally the first blonde says 'I can't get in the car!' The other blond replies, 'keep trying, it looks like it is going to rain and the top is down'." (I told her I know her teacher will get it if anything!). It was fun getting to introduce some culture to her. Then we read through three passages of an easier science book and answered questions to it. She ended up learning what fossils and meteorites were! I told her about my culture class at 12pm on Thursday if she could make it, but I told her not to worry about it if she was packing and stuff. I will miss Sumayah - I hope I'll get to see her when she comes back in two months! Anyways, that's it for me as far as tutoring blogs! :)

Jennifer_TP12

Today I met with Youyoung at the Leon County Library. I had gotten an email from her the night before saying that she had "big news" about her and her family. It turns out she is moving back to South Korea ASAP for two years! Her husband got a job right outside of Seoul at a University. Youyoung told me that her family was probably going to move back at some point, but neither of us knew it would be so soon! I was very happy for her, but sad I wouldn't get to see her anymore! We will still have a meeting this Saturday and next week, but her husband's job starts in September, so they have to move fast! It is a very interesting situation with her youngest daughter though - Youyoung has two daughters (one in Kindergarten who can speak English very well but wasn't born in the USA, and a two-year old). The two-year old was born here, but when she is 18 years old she will probably need to chose if she wants to live in South Korea or the USA since she has dual citizenship. Youyoung stated she still wanted to work on the TOEFL, because there many jobs in South Korea that require a certain TOEFL score because you will sometimes work with foreigners. I was sad to hear she was leaving, but very excited for her. I am hoping to stay in contact here and there with her! We ended up working on the writing section of the TOEFL, where you have to read a passage, listen to a lecture contradicting it, and then write about the differences between the two. I had her do a practice test of it before, and her language and points were very clear, but she only got halfway through the essay and didn't write too much. I reinforced the Intro-Body-Conclusion style of American writing. I also stated that the best way to think of writing is in "Threes". We generally like three main points, about three sentences per paragraph, and three paragraphs in the body. I also went over how to make an outline and told her to jot down her simplified main ideas for each paragraph. This helped a lot as she usually didn't make an outline. The outline helped and then I timed her for 20 minutes as is the case on the TOEFL. I stopped her in the first five minutes though because I noticed she kept rewriting her first paragraph. Turns out she was trying to get every little grammar detail correct before she moved on to the next paragraph, which made it clear to me that this is why she couldn't finish her essay before. I told her to emphasize the "message" first like we discussed in class, and then go back and fix her grammar if there was time. This helped significantly and she managed to finish all the essay, and most of her ideas were clear. Before she was in the 2-3 range according to the ibTOEFL rubric, but now she's moving up more to the 3-4 range. I was very proud of her. I explained why and how she improved, and we went over any grammar corrections. I will miss Youyoung, but at least I'll get to see her two or three more times! :)

Charles_ITA3

Last night I spent some time with my ITA Wangsuk. We decided to go to boxing practice together and then study at my house a little bit after. I picked Wangsuk up and we went to practice, we had a good workout. After, we both went home and since Wangsuk lives across the street from me he came over to study a little. Wangsuk was working on his thesis and I was working on some lesson plans. We had a break and talked for a bit. Wangsuk told me that he once met up with a Rugby team at FSU and could not understand much of what they were saying. I told him that sometimes in a bar setting people speak very quickly and with a lot of slang so that is normal. Wangsuk also told me that he had gone to Gainesville over the weekend to visit his girlfriend. He said that they usually switch off driving to visit each other and this weekend is her turn. He said that they may be going to Wakulla springs and asked if I had ever been. I have never been there so I may join him this weekend. After our conversation we went back inside and I asked Wangsuk to show me where he was from on Google maps. He showed me some cool stuff on street view. I asked him if he had ever heard of the Japanese clothing company UNIQLO. He was quite surprised that I knew about the company since there is only one in the U.S and it is located in New York. He said he likes the company and wears a lot of their stuff. I thought that was pretty cool. Hopefully we can go to the springs this weekend and have a good time. 

Kari_TP8

This afternoon I met up with my tutee Jaewoo and practiced speaking exercises mostly. Even though he is a level 3 speaker and just took the TOEFL test, he still needs practice, especially since he plans on continuing his English learning skills. So I practiced the SPEAK test with him. Normally the SPEAK test is timed with each section, but from the very start of practicing this test with him, I quickly discovered it would not be a good idea to time him. Jaewoo had to think about the question I had asked him for several minutes and asked me to repeat the question multiple times before he could answer. When he did answer the questions, he was very good at correcting his mistakes, especially with the past and present tenses of a word. However, there is a section in the SPEAK test that asks the test takers to give directions on a simple scale map. Jaewoo had a lot of trouble with this part and even after explaining five times to him that he needed to tell me how to get from point A to point B, he had no idea what I was asking him to do. The idea was for him to tell me street names and directions to turn, but literally all he could do was stare at the map and scratch his head. I finally had to take him through the map step by step and explain that this was giving directions, and only then did he understand. He said that in Korea they do not give directions by street names and instead use landmarks. On the rest of the test he did well, especially with the short comic that displayed a short story, where he had to tell me what was going on block by block.

Claire_TP11

This afternoon I met up with Michelle in the CIES lounge for our tutoring session. Michelle had texted me the night before asking if I could help her with phrasal verbs so I could tell she was a little worried about the assignment. We worked on a crossword puzzle she had started in class and needed to finish. I never realized how confusing phrasal verbs can seem to new  English speakers! I explained them to her and even managed to draw some pictures to go with the phrasal verbs that helped her understand better. After we finished the crossword puzzle I think she felt more confident about phrasal verbs and even recognized some from conversations she has heard.

After we finished the worksheet, I had Michelle read a passage aloud. Her main struggle is pronouncing "th", "ch", and "s". But, overall, she did fantastic! It is so cool to hear the improvement in her speech and reading. Before we parted ways, she wanted to make sure she understood her homework for tonight that was focusing on relative pronouns. She seemed to have it down! Soufiane walked by our table and told me that I was doing a good job with Michelle. He is in her class and said Michelle has been speaking up in class and improving! Michelle blushed, but it made me super excited! :)

Ioana_TP5

I met Kosuke again and we went to an Indian restaurant because I learned that he really liked Indian food. He was really excited when he got there, there a few of us who went together. He even ordered something that wasn't on the menu. He explained that he went to India before and he loves Indian food. He also became good friends with our waiter. The waiter gave him a lot of complements about the Japanese being hard workers and how he respects him. It was very interesting. Some of us ordered Taj Mahal beer that is imported from India. Kosuke ended up ordering one too. This wouldn't matter too much if he didn't tell me that his English gets better after he drinks. I was really curious what drinking would do. After the drink he didn't really speak better English, he just repeated himself A LOT. I did get to find out some other interesting things about him and his family though. He mentioned that his older brother wants to come to the US to study as well. My boyfriend was also one of the people that came along and he mentioned that in Korea there is no future for what he wants to do. It seems that outsourcing of ideas is still occurring a lot. Very many others abroad believe that studying in the United States and Britain is very important for their future. It is a little sad to think that so many people are coming here and leaving their country because there are still great things about the other country. The home country and the US are always so hard to compare. They can't really be compared, I go through the same thing as a foreigner, I can't really compare Romania to the US, it's just so different.

Lastly we were at the Indian restaurant so that Kosuke practices his English speaking since he did not want paperwork, he wanted to become more comfortable speaking as a Japanese student coming to study here.

Ioana_TP4

On Thursday I actually got to meet Ryoko and tutor her. I was very surprised that she contacted me because she was very hesitant at first. She taught me a very good lesson. I always thought I didn't have a problem with speaking to shy people but I actually do! I don't know what to do when someone is quiet or they don't talk, I freak out inside. I kind of try to match the energy of others when I speak to others which I don't do on purpose, it's just what I noticed I do. So when someone is really shy I tend to close up and get shy as well. It definitely did not help the situation. I tried to ask her questions and not look directly at her face. It was difficult to get information from her too because she was so quiet when she said things and the room was quite loud. I found out, however, that she likes nutrition and she is studying nutrition in school and she is a senior. I told her about what I am writing about in my International Cultural Leadership class. I hope she thought it is interesting since it is about food and changing the public school lunch system which Jamie Oliver is popular for doing. When I showed her the lunches she was very surprised because she did not know that school lunches looked so unappetizing.

Ioana_CP3

Tea time was fun this past week, a lot of us met together during tea time and we talked a lot. I noticed that this time there were so many people that I didn't get to talk to Jaewoo too much. He was also talking to other people as well. we all talked about an app that we found that has to do with nutrition. It's called "my fitness". The app calculates how many calories you should eat and then you can input the type of food that you eat. The app has EVERY food listed already, I was very surprised, even Afrika cookies that I got from the Mediterranean store. Jaewoo told me that there was an app like that in Korea as well. I also found out that Jaewoo does not like cheese puffs. The ones that were at tea time that looked like cream puffs but it was actually cheese. It was really funny to see him eat it because he stuck it in his mouth and then started making faces and chewing funny, as if he was going to spit it out but he actually ate it. I was really surprised to see that. We didn't really go too much in depth this time sadly about culture or anything. We just talked about the hot weather and what we did that week. I wanted to invite him to see Ramin play and get Indian food on Friday but he was preparing for the TEOFL. I hope he did well!

Jackson CO3

For my final classroom observation I sat in with Whitney and her group 3 listening class. There were some familiar faces in the class which was nice because I had not seen these particular CIES students in a classroom setting before. Whitney was extremely kind to me and provided me with all sorts of ideas and resources for teaching English as a second/foreign language. She pointed out a book that she based many of her lesson's on - Noteworthy, Listening & Notetaking skills 2 (published by Heinle Cencage Learning). This book provided entire lesson plan's (including pre-reading, active lesson, post-lesson, homework, etc) as well as an audio CD that had various articles, comprehension questions, and other related things on it. Whitney started the class by allowing the students to compare notes from an article that they had listened to the previous day. The article pertained to public education in the United States. She let the students know ahead of time that there would be 10 comprehension questions and that they would be allowed to use their notes in order to encourage the students to exchange as much useful information as possible. The questions, which were included on the Noteworth audio CD, were only played once for the students. They were given only a minute and a half to answer. If the question had multiple parts or was a little difficult, Whitney would help reiterate what the question was asking. After the comprehension questions, Whitney prepared the students for a TedTalk that they would be watching. She began asking pre-listening questions that pertained to their own thoughts on the value of creativity in a classroom setting. Next the students had 5-7 minutes to discuss the pre-listening questions among themselves. Lastly Whitney covered new vocabulary for the TedTalk (innovation, contention, hierarchy, epiphany. The TedTalk itself was particularly interesting. The speaker had a strong English accent, and while I could understand what he was saying, it was obvious that the students were having a very difficult time understanding what his message was. It was a valuable lesson to see that pronunciation is truly important for the development of these students' listening abilities. Even though these students were the highest listening level possible at the CIES, they were still having a very tough time with an accent different than what they were accustomed to. After the class ended Whitney and I sat around and talked about what her teaching methods/techniques/and experiences have been like at the CIES. She took my email address and promised to send me CIES curriculum (which she did promptly).

Charles_TP5

Today I met with Hamad during lunch time. We started out with talking about Ramadan and how he is doing with his fasting. Hamad told me that it is very hard because he is away from his family and the days are very long in Florida. He said that the days are around three to four hours longer than in Kuwait. It was very interesting hearing how Hamad can be in a foreign place and do so well. He has a lot of ambition and drive. After we started on the lesson that I had. I used Charlie’s online preposition preposition exercise (thanks Charlie!) and it worked very well. The exercise is listed below but it is a paragraph with spaces that contain three preposition options. I first asked Hamad if he could tell me each one without using the drop down menus. He did get most of them, however, some were a little difficult. We wrote the ones that he could not get and worked on them a little more in detail. The most difficult sentence was “we sat _______  campfires and went dancing ______ the early mornings.” The first one had the choices of “over, at, round” and the second had the choices of “ for, against, till.” Hamad was able to guess each answer correctly with the options present. However, he did say that trying to answer those without the options would be impossible for him. I will keep working with Hamad on his prepositions and create a few more lesson plans for him before he goes back to Kuwait on break. 

Charles_CO2

I observed a 3C level listening class. Much like my last class, this class was composed of only 7 students. The class started pretty much immediately with the teacher initiating a review of the listening exercise from the last class. The students were placed into 3 groups  with surrounding students to share notes and information regarding the listening from the previous class. One group was speaking in their native language and the teacher asked them to switch to English. The teacher gave them a time minute of 5 minutes to go over their notes which I thought to be a good practice since the class is only 50 minutes. Using his watch to time the group work periods, the teacher announced that they must now switch to different partner for another note sharing session. After this, the students were asked to answer questions off the projector based on their notes. Again, the students were timed, given 12 minutes to answer the questions. While walking around the room looking at the work of the students, the teacher kept them updated with the remaining time. 

For the third lesson, the students were given a vocabulary list relevant to the listening exercise and asked to define them with a partner. However, the students were also asked to partner with a student who does not share the same native language as them. I thought this was interesting and added a more friendly environment to the class. The students finished their vocabulary list and the class ended. I thought that the students really reflected the enthusiasm of the instructor. The students participated and engaged the instructor. This class seemed to focus more on a review from the last class so it was more activity centered. Class time was used efficiently since the instructor timed each session with his watch. I thought that was a really good practice in such a short class. 

Claire_ITA4

Last night, I invited my ITA, Shuying, over to my house for a movie night. Shuying had been in the lab all day so she was excited to hang out and relax. She is currently doing research on rocks from the moon! I told her how my brother just received his Masters in Astrophysics from MIT and is working on something similar at his job. She was so interested! We then proceeded to Facebook stalk my brother which was a fun way to show Shuying what my family is like.

Then Shuying met my roommates and we all sat on the porch and talked for a long time. They got along great! She really liked my house and my neighborhood because of all of the college students everywhere (I told her that where I live is referred to as the "student ghetto"). She really liked how my house felt like a home. Shuying wants me to help her decorate her apartment so she can feel at home too.

I let Shuying decide what movie we should watch and had her pick from my movie collection. Out of all of the movies she picked out her top three choices: Sex and the City, Legally Blonde, and Clueless. Shuying loves chick flicks and she LOVES pink. We decided on Legally Blonde and Shuying was laughing the entire time! Throughout the movie she had questions about sororities, fraternities, and other things like that. After the movie, Shuying had to head home to Skype with her mother back in China. Next weekend Shuying wants to make me homemade Chinese food!

Jennifer_TP11

Last night I met up with Yuki, my tutoring partner from Japan! I ended up running late by thirty minutes for our tutoring session, but we ended up going later, so it was okay. We started off by correcting a timed writing he did at a previous session. I first praised his message, as it was very well organized and clear. Then I explained any spelling, word form, or preposition/article errors he had made. Overall he did a really great job! Next, I gave him a worksheet on prepositions. Prepositions are especially hard for Yuki, and it was sometimes difficult to explain why the correct preposition was the correct preposition. For the most part he did very well. Next, I decided to help him work on some pronunciation, vocabulary, and critical thinking using a simplified Bible story. Even though Yuki is from Japan he is a Christian, and before I even started tutoring him at CIES I first met him attending the International House of Prayer (IHOP) I go to! Hence, I thought it would be really cool to read a simplified Bible story from a read-aloud book I got at the library. Yuki was very excited by this because he only has the New Testament in Japanese, so he really wanted to read an Old Testament story. We ended up reading the creation story (since it had familiar words like sea, land, dark, light, animals, etc.) Yuki read a loud each paragraph to work on pronunciation. I encouraged him to aim for pronunciation and not to worry about reading aloud fast, and this helped him self-correct himself, which was great! After each paragraph, we would discuss what he thought it meant. For instance, one paragraph talked about God separating the light and the darkness, and he called the darkness night and the light day. Yuki would explain it back to me in his own words, and he did a great job of this.There was also some new vocabulary for him, such as "formless void" (talking about the Earth before it was formed), "bare" (talking about the bare Earth) and dome (dome=sky, in this case). It was interesting explaining what the word meant in this context, and what other definitions it could have (for instance, void could also mean to cancel a transaction at the grocery store). We used context clues to try to help him understand, and would turn to the dictionary if he really was having trouble, but he did very well! We got about halfway through the story, and then CIES was closing. Yuki was very hungry after our session, so we decided to go to Chick-fil-a, his favorite restaurant apparently! While we were eating he kept saying how Chick-fil-a was so delicious and had the best food ever - it was pretty entertaining and hilarious watching how happy he was eating. Then I took him to IHOP because he wanted to go and needed a ride, so we got to just hang out and be with all our other friends instead of a formal tutoring session, which was nice. Even though Yuki is my friend, we always are able to maintain the focused atmosphere when tutoring, and the friendly atmosphere when just seeing each other at IHOP. Overall, the session went well, and we also had a fun evening with friends afterwards!

Kari_ITA5

So, after we went to the grocery store and proved that I have a short attention span when it comes to new things-we went back to Keith's house where the rest of his friends arrived for the rest of the night. There were 11 of us total. For the next 2 hours they were all bustling around the kitchen preparing ingredients for the soup like squid, shrimp, crab, tofu, mussels, thin sliced beef, 2 types of cabbage, Japanese mushrooms, and the ramen noodles. While bustling around in the kitchen, one of the Vietnamese guys was making chips! He had a pan of oil and was taking these really thin slivers of dried potato and when put in the grease, they would expand and he would form it and stretch it with chop sticks. They turned out to be really fluffy and really tasty! Earlier in the day, Keith had made the broth for the soup, which tasted like it had Cayenne pepper and a lot of other salts and flavors in it (it was really similar to a Cajun broth). The coolest part was yet to come though-in the middle of two tables, they set up portable burners and split the broth in them. Then the raw ingredients were put in bowls all around the burner. Everyone sat at the tables, and once the broth was brought to a boil, everyone just put in whatever they wanted to eat and let it cook. Once the ingredients were cooked, you took your chopsticks and pulled out whatever you wanted, put it in your little soup bowl and ate it! It was so cool because it was such a communal dinner! Oh and the squid--it was awesome. The Japanese mushrooms were also really good-they had a TON of flavor to them and were kind of salty, unlike portobello or other mushrooms you get in Publix. While we were eating this fabulous dinner, we also watched the opening ceremony to the Olympics, and what was funny was whenever a country would be announced, we came up with this game to guess that country's capital. Whenever we didn't know one, we would look it up on the Google. Apparently a lot of us don't know our geography...

Kari_ITA4

So, last night Sydney and I did so much and spent so much time with our ITA that it really needs to be put into 2 parts. We went to Keith's house around 5 and met some of his friends that had already arrived. They were also from Vietnam but were very fluent in English. One of his friends even had a phd in English and was a professor in Vietnam. After we arrived at Keith's place, the first thing we did was go to a Vietnamese grocery store, and man was it COOL!! It was actually divided into 2 parts-one side was a seafood store where they sold fresh seafood (and at really good prices too), and the other half was the actual grocery store.

This is at the seafood store-they had squid, crawfish, shrimp of various sizes, fish, lobster, crab and much more.

This is in the actual grocery store-this ENTIRE aisle was made up of noodles, it was awesome!

This is Bubbles. He really liked Sydney and kept waving his feeler things at her ;)

The grocery store was so cool-the vegetables and fresh produce they had were nothing like what's in Publix. They sold Japanese mushrooms, which were these tiny little stringy things that looked like really thick bean sprouts. They also had flowers (edible), leek roots, palm tree sugar, dragon flower roots and a bunch of other stuff that you never see at Publix. Also, I don't think I've ever seen SO many noodles and ramen in one place! They had them in about 20 different seasonings and flavors and even came in huge value packs. They also sold containers of tea leaves in jars and sold tea sets to go with them if you needed one. Oh-and they also sold the pearls that go into "Bubble" or Boba tea-one of my personal favs!

Jackson TP8

On Wednesday I met with Fei for our fourth tutoring session in the food court of the Governor Square Mall. I’m starting to see a trend in the places we meet – they always involve food! Even though neither of us wound up eating, the mall was a perfect place to meet to cover that day’s grammar point (articles) because of the vast amount of places, things, and people (things that necessitate articles) around us for Fei to use as an example. All in all I think that the lesson went really well. The fact that there are only two types of articles (a/an & the) really helped to simplify thing for Fei. She did seem, however, to have a little trouble with when it is appropriate to use a definite article over an indefinite. This problem was addressed, however, just by using examples right in front of us. I explained to her that the appropriate time to use “a/an” when there is not a specific member of a group that you are referring to. Here, we used the example “I want to see a movie” over “I want to see the movie.” Also, I referred to a text I had sent Fei when she had told me that she was at the Mall – “I’m in front of the Starbucks.” Since there was only one Starbucks in the mall, it was appropriate to use “the”. Fei’s reception of every lesson we have covered so far has really impressed me. It is also nice seeing our friendship develop both in and out of class!

Jackson TP7

Last Monday I met with Fei for our third tutoring session at Red Elephant Café. It was both of our first times eating there, so it was a unique experience for both of us. At the end of our previous lesson we agreed that we would cover when and how to use gerunds and infinitives. I had already given this lesson with my other TP Jasem, but I knew that this lesson would be much different because of Fei’s English abilities as well as I wouldn’t be using a youtube video this time around. Fei seemed to pick up the functions of gerunds and infinitives immediately, and had no problem conjuring up examples of how both of them can respectively function as a subject, object, or compliment. Like all of our meetings, we also covered going through and editing Fei’s blog entries as well as revising a lesson plan that she would be turning in the next day. I’ve been basing what Fei’s needs are as far as grammar lesson based on both what she has expressed to me that she would like to learn as well as what we cover when we go over her textual work. I’ve decided that, since Fei speaks Chinese (a language that doesn’t use articles) that we would work on this grammar point for next week. I know that it is beyond her level of understanding and comprehension but I hope that after our lesson she may be more inclined to use articles in her writing and speech :)

Brian_TP5

Last Monday I met with Karen Gotti of the Leon County Public Library to set up a one-on-one tutoring session for the following week. As she was explaining the program, she brought me to a room of about 8 students and explained that their teacher was on vacation. She asked me if I wanted to fill in, and I agreed. I began by introducing myself and talking about some things I like to do around Tallahassee. I asked each of them to think of something that they liked to do in their home countries, and to split up into pairs and talk about it with their partner. After about 15 minutes of what seemed like a lively discussion, we reconvened and the students took turns talking about where they were from. This part was very interesting for me, as I got to hear from a professor from Turkey, a man from west Africa who used to work on jet fuel for Mobil Oil, a couple from Japan, and other people from places as diverse as Cambodia, Puerto Rico, and Pakistan. It was an abbreviated class, so when everyone was finished I thanked them and the class was over. In hindsight, I wish that I knew about it so I could have prepared a lesson, but overall I think it was a cool experience.

Kari_TP7

This afternoon I met with my tutee Sangwon and we mainly went over errors that he had made in one of his essays. The main problem he had was with articles like "the, a, an". In Korea they do not use articles, so he was having a lot of trouble with them. Depending on the sentence he was using or needing the articles in, I would break down in the format of nouns, objects, or events and explain to him what would be acceptable for what and when it wouldn't be acceptable. Once I broke down the sentence and individual parts, he caught on really fast and even came up with different scenarios and different forms of the sentence that could use the same articles. Like with the sentence, "I have lunch this afternoon." At first he had, "I have lunch at this afternoon." Later after fixing it he switched it to,"I have lunch in the afternoon." Sentences that had no specific time like the "afternoon" he had trouble with, or with words like "culture" because sometimes it could be a specific object and other times it was more broad, so I spent time explaining when those words could be an individual or general thing so he would know when to use an article. After we were done with the actual tutoring and reviewing, Sangwon really wanted to show me some Korean music videos. (Earlier the movie Howl's Moving Castle had been on tv-it was Yuki's movie and we had been talking about it earlier) What was really funny about them was that they were really similar to western music videos in terms of girl's singing, props, weird random scenes that make no sense whatsoever and the image of having sexy girls all over the main singer. Then Yuki came over and pulled up the same music video but in a parody style that was performed by male comedians and really overweight male dancers. This reminded me a lot of the American movie series Jackass. So...I pulled up the ending song from Jackass 2 and showed him that America is very similar in parodies of music videos. He and Yuki thought it was hilarious, so we ended up browsing youtube for more clips from Jackass, and Sangwon kept asking, "Why do they do this?" I kept telling him that they did it just because they could and also that they were professional stunt performers and loved doing this. He was really baffled by the things they did (riding a teeter totter with an angry bull, putting leeches on their eyes, hitting each other with medicine balls in a dark room, etc.) but found it funny all the same.

Ioana_CO3

I visited Travis' class on Tuesday and I learned more about how to teach level 1 students better. The class started with attendance, it was a pretty small class. The students were told the plan for the day and that the last 5minutes they would interview me. Travis went over a TED talk with the class and had a worksheet for them to fill out. They listened to a talk about success. Travis also mentioned that the talk was faster than the one from last week by asking te students wha they thought afterwards. The first time they listened to the talk they went through the whole way without stopping. The second time Travis told them to look out for the answer to the first question. Travis stopped the video and asked what the answer was. They also went over the vocabulary of the question that could be a little challenging for the students. After goin through the question they moved on to the second question. It was a fill in the blank and it was a little difficult for the students. Travis tried to get the answer from them by askin other fill in the blank questions about "when you like soccer a lot you blank soccer". They were all Arab in the class and got confused when some examples were mentioned but when parents were mentioned, they understood it was love. I found that interesting, I'm not sure if it has to do for language or cultural reasons that it happened that way. They went through the rest of the lesson and then asked me some questions.

One student asked me a very awkward question about how my husband would feel if I tought English abroad. It was very hard to explain to him that I didn't want to get married soon and that even if I did get married that my husband and I would decide together then. It was a question I definitely did not expect at all. They also said that I looked middle eastern a bit, I was a little confused but flattered too because i think middle eastern women are very pretty. Hopefully it was a complement?

The one critique I had of the lesson was that the subtitles on the video were VERY wrong. The words that the speaker said did not match very much and I felt that some of those words were key words. I wonder if it's better to just not have subtitles at all if they're that bad. I mean I could see where they got the word for the subtitle but it changed the meaning completely. Any thoughts about what to do with subtitles?

Stan_ITA3

Yesterday evening (7/26) I linked up with Yao for another conversation. We seem to have conflicting schedules, so I am happy that this appointment worked out. It was also definitely the most fluid of our conversations yet. We started with some general small talk, and then she asked me some question she had prepared for me as her teacher had requested. The questions were regarding my experience as an American student. 


There were seven questions...let's see how many I can recall...

What are some challenges you face as a college student?

Have you ever had a foreign teacher? If so, what was your experience?

What expectations do you have of an instructor?


Ok...it's five in the morning and I get hit in the head a lot, so that's all I got! If I remember some others later I'll "edit" them in...


It seems as though ever since I have I began the TEFL program I have been constantly undergoing an interview process by all through all this cultural exchange. This has been a great process of self-inquiry. At a young age working in sales I learned that when someone asks you a question it requires you to do 3 things...think, decide, and respond. I think it also enables you to do another; affirm (perhaps this is synonymous with one of the other steps). Yes, I feel that every time I am asked a question, it has forced me to think, decide, respond...and that decisive response either affirms what I am feeling, or acknowledges my uncertainty. Again, what a great period of self-reflection. I can only imagine what my future travel adventures have in store for me.

I digressed a bit from my ITA session....

Yao and I also talked a bit about nutrition. She put me onto this Taiwanese formula called "GREENMAX" and though I am sure it's not "RAW," it still looks pretty dank. She likes to keep our conversations to a punctual hour, and at an hour and ten minutes she reminded me that it was running a little late! She said she would make it our for conversation on Tuesday and we wished each other farewell for the time being.

This skype session went much better than the last; in fact it proved to be a valuable conversation tool because we could send eachother links on the subjects we were discussing and we could also type through any language difficulties. So maybe this skype thing isn't so bad after all...

Stan_CP10-Taiwanese/Chinese Cultural Exchange

Yesterday (7/26) before class, Kari, my friend Daniel, and I went to the College of Engineering to meet some awesome Taiwanese and Chinese students. They came here specifically for cultural exchange, but they informed Candace that they had not had much of a chance to interact with American students and they would soon be leaving. Most of them are engineering students (excluding a couple automators who are on the same level). Needless to say, these were some talented, and extremely intelligent individuals! 


I seemed to arrive just in time (a few minutes late) and I quickly introduced myself and my comrade(Kari had already arrived). There were 23 students so we broke up into 2 groups of 8 and a group of 7. One American student went to each group and we rotated after 20 mins so each group would have the opportunity to ask us questions. I started with each of my groups by writing down their names and there hometown for both a reference and for my own education. I then opened the floor for questions. They were very inquisitive asking me about my age, place of birth, major, future plans, hobbies, interests, sentiments toward Asian people, and a few were curious about African American Culture as well. With the first and last group I shared a story, and with the other group I demonstrated the variations in techniques of the primary forms of martial arts I studied.

At about a quarter to four it was time to wrap it up. We took a couple group photos, and I shared my full name and email in case any of the students was interested in contacting me via facebook or email. I think we made some good friends and some good contacts. Who knows, they may be my future tour guides when I am teaching in there host country : )

Stan_TP7

Wednesday (7/25) a group of students joined me for another listening lesson. These listening lessons that started with Soufiane and Yi Li (who both expressed a desire to practice their listening) have grown quite a bit. On this occasion Soufiane, Yi, Joyce, and our newest memebers Yi Jun (for Taiwan) and David (from Colombia) joined in. Soufiane is somewhat of a marketing agent for me, because he is always talking me up!


Yi Li, who is admittedly pretty lazy with her language learning had actually done her homework! This provided the song for our listening lesson : ) She came with hand written lyrics to the song "Let me show you," by Natasha Thomas. We found the slow version of the song on you tube to stream for listening. I looked up the lyrics, copy and pasted them to a word doc, and used the "replace" feature to swap words with blanks (____). After removing about a third of the lyrics, I projected the "fill-in-the-blank" format so everyone could follow along with the lyrics. We played the song all the way through first so everybody could get the "gist" of it (yes Charlie, the gist), and then I played the song line by line as we filled in the blanks. Since there were so many students, we rotated lines so that everybody would get a chance to work(otherwise a highly enthusiastic Frenchman would happily yell out the lyrics!). This seemed to work out really well, especially since one by one, those who were challenged required me to play the lines again and again, which force everyone to listen repetitiously.

When we finished filling out the lyrics sheet, we moved onto what seems to be the more difficult portion of the lesson, correction. I took Yi's hand written lyrics, and wrote each verse on the board just as she had written them on her homework assignment. Then we went listened to her lyrics again, and corrected any "beautiful mistakes" that she had made. I think this is more difficult because the absence of lyrics surrounded by the correct lyrics (as in the fill-in-the-blank), is easier on the eye and ear than incorrect lyrics that sound close to what the artist is really saying. This is great because you can actually observe the students improvement. Many times Yi would correct her lyrics as soon as she heard the line play, but other times she would state "it still sounds like that to me." I don't blame her for feeling that way, because even when her appraisal was incorrect, the sound resembled the artist's mumbles.

We reached a good stopping point and I closed the lesson with some kind of philosophical wisdom as I tend to (though I can't quite remember what I said right now). I asked everybody if they would like to do this same exercise again, or if they would like me to prepare something different for next time. They said that they would like to do it again, and I agreed that we could do one more song. I asked David to bring the song for the next session, and I have a feeling that because of his nature, he will bring something very challenging. I look forward to it : )

Stan_CP9

On Wednesday (7/25) I awaited my conversation group as per usual. I advised them that I would like to start doing tutoring instead of conversation at 3pm, and though they seemed enthusiastic about it initially, I guess after a long day of studies it just doesn't seem so interesting. Soufiane however, is faithfully present. He was there with a Columbiano named David (Daveed), and a Espanola named Mireia (aka Lara). Since the rest of my group was not present, I decided to just hand out with these three and await my tutoring session with Yi Li and Soufiane at 5. 


Mire is from Madrid, Spain. She likes to party within reason(never drinks to get drunk), but she says that she is also very studious. She is friendly, and slightly bashful.With her blonde hair and fair skin, you may not guess she was Spanish until you spoke with her. Though she is a first session CIES student, she has very good English. She is studying International Affairs and will be returning to Madrid to finish her undergraduate shortly. 


David is from Cali Colombia. He says that the most beautiful girls in the world come from Cali. He is somewhat of a clown, but he is definitely a lot of fun. He too is a first session CIES student, but also speaks English very well. He bikes almost an hour to class from Killearn everyday! At the end of this session, he will also be returning to his country of origin to finish his undergraduate.

The four of us had a great conversation about US college life, clubs, and Tallahassee adventures, as well as our travel experiences. It has been such a pleasure to get to know so many beautiful and diverse people through this program.

Stan_CP8

On Tuesday (7/24) I met with Soufiane before class. I typically meet my conversation group at very least on Tues. and Thurs., though we have gotten in the habit of meeting Mon-Thurs. On this occasion however, Soufiane was the only individual in attendance. Perhaps the others were at the Ramadan lesson...

Just before Soufiane got out of class, I had the pleasure of meeting Clay, a former TEFL student. He was standing by to see if anyone would be interested in conversation. It was pretty "slim-pickins" so he joined Soufiane and I for conversation. Soufiane was all hyped up about one of his countryman, Cheick Kongo, a UFC fighter that had just competed over the weekend. He knew the outcome of the fight, but he didn't get a chance to see it because it was a Pay-Per-View. Clay is a also a fan of the "fight-game" and I guess you could say I am somewhat of an expert. I just so happen to know of a couple of websites where you can stream copywritten material, and so I figured what better way to enjoy a conversation with a couple of guys then to stream some fights on a big screen.


 Taking advantage of CIES's facility and resources, we found an empty classroom, fired up the computer, and watched a couple of fights via projection. We only watched a few fights, but I can honestly say it was one of the best fight screenings I have ever attended. Chill atmosphere, no hooligans, no intoxication, large viewing screen, no cover charge. Definitely a good time. Soufiane is big into sports and I could tell he was watching and listening intensely. When the commentator said something he didn't recognize he would often inquire about it. I think it was also good for him to watch and hear Clay and I converse. He had mentioned to me previously after Claire and I had conversed that he like to observe the fluidity of our dialogue. 


Most of my conversation sessions have been more intensive because my typical conversation group has varied levels of understanding which is very challenging. This session was pretty laid back and though I have enjoyed every session, this was a much needed break.

Kari_CP6

This afternoon Stan and I went to the college of engineering and had a really cool experience talking to a large class of Taiwanese and Chinese students (23). A lot of the students were really interested when they learned I was from Orlando and it was actually kind of funny to watch their reactions, because at the same time, they all went "Ohh!!" and got really excited. They asked me about the theme parks, especially Disney since that is where they are going next week. Mostly they asked me what it was like growing up in America and why stores were only open until 9 and opened late the next morning, or why girls in America dyed their hair. Some of the girls were curious about makeup and fashion, but a lot of them were actually really fascinated by my toe rings. One thing about the students which was culturally different, or at least to me it was, was that the students really loved using their cameras. They took pictures of everything and anything. Maybe it's just because they're in America and it's the whole, "Whoa! We're in America! This is all so different!" attitude, but man they really enjoyed taking pictures of my toe rings and threader earring, and also were really keen on recording my conversation with them.
I asked the students what the biggest culture differences or culture shocks were for them and most of them said the amount of people and the food. The students who were from China said that it was a really nice break not having so many people around and that it was significantly less crowded than it is in China, but at the same time, they said that they preferred the amount of people that China has. And of course the food, most of them said it was too sweet or greasy. They also said that Americans use potatoes waaayyy too much and that they were surprised how often we use them. Like for potato chips, fries, or in stews. The Taiwanese students also said that our food was always cold, and that they are much more used to hot things, like hot tea, hot soup etc. Also, seafood is the main staple in Taiwan, and in China it's very popular to have soup before supper. Many of the students were curious whether I had eaten Chinese food before, but I told them the only Chinese food we have in America is typical Chinese American like you find in shopping plazas. Again, the automatic response was, "Ooohhh!!" and they immediately said that the American Chinese food was nothing like authentic Chinese food, and that many of the items that are sold in American Chinese food shops aren't even real Chinese foods, like sweet and sour pork.
Another thing they really, really wanted to do while they were in Tallahassee but didn't have a chance to do, was go to a nightclub. They wanted the experience of going to a club in Orlando, but a lot of them were actually afraid to go out, even in groups because they had heard that it wasn't safe. They were also afraid of getting lost and not knowing what would be socially appropriate. But I told them that while they were in Orlando, they would also get a chance to go to a club called the House of Blues, which is very close to Disney and could get them a similar experience to any other club in Tallahassee.
Overall, this was really fun and the students were super friendly, and I would love to do this again.

Jennifer_CO3

Today I observed a Group 2C Speaking class with Victoria Davis. I was running late, so I literally ran to class and managed to get there right before class started! Victoria introduced me to the class. She explained how today was a mixed level (Group 2 Level 3 and 4 students) and today was an unusual class. Apparently one of the teachers is sick, so the class was combined today. Victoria split the class into groups of three or four ( there was about 3 groups of 4 in total). Victoria told the class today was a casual speaking class, where each group would get a topic with ten questions on it. There would be one group leader per group, who would read the questions to the group. Then the group would discuss the question. I sat at the same time every time, and each group rotated different people about every ten or fifteen minutes. I would sometimes chip in during the conversation or help if they didn't understand a vocabulary word. Some of the topics were interesting, such as the USA, the movies, etc., but some topics the students really hated, such as recycling and gardening. It really helped me see how motivated students can be when the discuss something they like. They would sometimes go off into tangents about the questions too, which wasn't necessarily bad because they were still practicing and using English. Ultimately the goal of the day was to help with fluency, and I could tell just making the students converse really helped.

Claire_TP10

Last night, I met up with Mahmoud for another tutoring session. Before we started, he and I discussed Ramadan for a long time. I told him how I had attended that presentation at the CIES on Tuesday and showed him the notes I had taken about the holiday. This is Mahmoud's first Ramadan without his family! He seemed a little homesick, but I think talking about his religion and and answering my questions made him very happy. We went over an intensive reading worksheet with a passage and multiple choice questions that I had assigned him to do over the weekend. He mostly had questions about guessing the meaning of vocabulary words. I explained how to use context clues and he caught on very quickly. Next, we practiced speaking. I showed him a series of pictures that told a story and he had to tell me what was happening in the photos. He did a great job! Then, I asked him a few questions that may be featured on the TOEFL. For example, "who is your role model and why"? After a few of these, he was warmed up and wanted to be timed (15 seconds to plan, 45 seconds to speak). The first few attempts he went over time, but then he started understanding how to plan and organize his thoughts effectively. He finally answered a question within the time frame perfectly and he was so excited! I had never seen him smile that much. It was a wonderful sight, seeing him feel accomplished and motivated like that. He high-fived me and said he wants to practice speaking a little bit each session now.

CIES-TEFL Summer II 2012

Stan_CO2

Yesterday (7/24) I observed Travis' speaking class(Group 1b). The previous day I met with Travis because he wanted to discuss a game plan with me for his class on Tuesday. He had some vocabulary words that he wanted to cover, and asked that I pick a few to discuss with the class. Travis said he would be making a power point with his respective vocab words. He showed me the list that he had already attached to a word searched, and I chose about 10 of them that would fit into a "scheme." I saw words like cartoon, brave, fight, fierce, save, etc...and I immediately thought of one of my favorite animations of all time, "Dragon Ball Z!" 


When I got home Monday evening I got to work creating a powerpoint that I was sure was going to be a hit! On every slide I put one of the vocabulary word with a definition, and above it I put a picture from the epic anime series. I designed the powerpoint in a way that it would tell a story. I was very excited about presenting my powerpoint to the class, and I did so the very next day before Travis had even presented his. Though I think the students appreciated the visuals, to be honest with you and myself, I don't think that much of the desired information got through. At one point, a student, looking at a picture of Goku(the main character from DBZ), asked me if his name was "brave"(because that was the vocab word that was under the image of Goku). 

Travis' powerpoint didn't seem to get through to them much either. I haven't had a large amount of experience working with students that have such a limited vocabulary and understanding of the English language, at least in groups. I am usually either working one on one with them, or in a group with mixed levels, such as my Arab partners or young Italian students in Florence. In mixed groups the more advanced students tend to help the lower level students by coaching them in their own language.

The moral of the story is something that Ramin consistent tells us...present less, model more.

Jackson TP6

Last Friday I met with our classmate Fei for our second meeting. We agreed to meet at Panda Buffet, which is up Thomasville road near Bonefish Grill. The food there looked and smelled incredible which is unfortunate because I had already eaten. We had agreed in our previous meeting to cover past participles, which is something that Fei had expressed some interest in furthering her development with. I printed her out some worksheets as well as the very basic instructions of how past participles work. She seemed to be very receptive to the lesson, but didn't really know when it was appropriate to use the passive voice as opposed to the active voice. After working with her and giving her other examples though she seemed to do a good job. Next, we worked on going over some of her work that she has submitted as part of this course (both blog posts and a lesson plan). While we were going over her blog posts it became apparent that she needed some work on the differences between Gerunds and Infinitives. Since I had already covered this lesson with my other TP, Jasem, I told her I would be more than happy to cover this grammar rule during our next meeting. We agreed to meet on Monday. All in all our meeting went really well. We had some very engaging conversation about her family as well as life in China. Fei has been a really great TP and I look forward to meeting with her more :)

Jackson CP5

Last Friday I had a very great day with Omar. We started off by getting my cultural immersion out of the way by going to the Islamic Center of Tallahassee for my very first experience with an Islamic service. While there I saw many familiar faces from the CIES as well as my other conversation partner Awad. It was nice seeing Awad because I had not spoken to him since our first (and last) meeting where there seemed to be some hostility over the very subject of religion. He was thrilled to see me and invited me to attend any time I liked. After the service, I went with Omar and his friend (and fellow CIES student) Amar to publix to buy food. While Amar and Omar were shopping for groceries to prepare that night once their daily fast had ended, we had some hilarious conversation about how hungry both of them were. It was great talking with both of them about their religion and devotion to Ramadan. After we dropped Amar off, me and Omar went and met my roommates (who Omar had previously met at Hobbit's) at Momo's Pizza. Luckily, they were finishing up their food because it smelt extremely good in there and I could tell it was tempting Omar. He discussed with my roommates everything Ramadan and, once again, he connected with my roommate Lizz, who is great in engaging people she isn't particularly familiar with. Finally Omar and I parted ways and agreed to meet later at Milano's to see Ramin's Flamenco band play. When I arrived, Brian and Claire as well as their shared CP Shaun and his two friends were there. Later, more of us trickled in (Sidney as well as Omar). We were all laughing and having a great time watching Ramin play and getting to know each other. My favorite night by far came int he form of an act of generosity from the owner of Milano's. Since Friday was the first day of Ramadan, Omar had been fasting the entire day. Since he got there a little late, by the time he had put in his order (two slices of Halal pizza) the waitress informed us that the kitchen was closed. A few minutes later, the owner of Milano's came out with two slices of cheese pizza for Omar and told him that it was on the house. I was amazed by this act of kindness and it was amazing representation of what the message of the service (as I interpreted it) that Omar had taken me to was: to do as many good deeds as possible within the holy month of Ramadan, not for yourself, but for Allah. I expressed to Omar how taken aback I was by this simple act and he seemed to get a kick out of it. All in all it was a great night filled with great music and the pleasant company of new acquaintances.

Jackson_TP5

Last Thursday I met with my tutoring partner Jasem once again for a grammar lesson on independent and dependent clauses. Tutoring Jasem has been very interesting, particularly because he has already taken and passed his TOEFL exam. As a result of this, he isn't really interested in practicing the different elements of the exam, and is instead interested in learning as much grammar as he possibly can. Jasem is a very receptive learner and hasn't had any trouble with our previous lessons but he seemed to struggle a little bit with constructing clause phrases on his own. He understood fully that a dependent clause is "dependent" because it doesn't function on its own as a sentence, but when he was trying to combine sentences on his own he seemed to struggle. We continued to work on them using "games" that I had found through google as well as video examples on Youtube. I told Jasem that we would continue working on clauses during our next lesson and asked him if, for our next session, if he would be willing to write me two paragraphs on something important to him. I plan on going over his writing with him and showing him how to alter his sentences into complex clause phrases. I will let you all know how this strategy works the next time we meet!

Jennifer_CP5

Today I met with Yi-Jhen and Joyce, my two conversation partners, during Tea Time. I thought it would be cool to see the presentation on Ramadan together. It turns out Joyce had already seen the presentation in her speaking class yesterday, so I talked to her for a little bit and she stayed behind to do homework while I went to the presentation with Yi-Jhen. The presentation was very informative and talked about the religious, cultural, and fun parts of Ramadan. It was interesting because apparently there are commercials for Ramadan in predominately Islam countries, kind of like there is commercials for Christmas in America. They also talked about the specific types of food they eat after the sun sets, and Yi-Jhen was very interested in the different types of food and kept asking me if they were good or not (not that I really knew haha). After the presentation we met back up with Joyce and discussed the presentation a little. Yi-Jhen could not believe that Muslims went all day without eating even though there was food all around them, and boldly asked one of the Muslims students  "How can you sit there and not eat the food in front of you?!" when we went back to the lounge. He replied "self-control!" and I agreed, having fasted before many times myself. Yi-Jhen is not afraid to speak her mind, even if it is in a rather bold statement, but that's what makes Yi-Jhen herself! It was really great learning about a culture neither me nor my conversations partners were familiar with and discussing it afterwards.

Kari_CP5

This afternoon my tutee Minsuk and I practiced speaking with the SPEAK test because he is getting really nervous and apprehensive about the TOEFL exam, which he is taking this Saturday. Under normal circumstances, Minsuk is actually a very good speaker, but when I put the pressure on him and told him that each of his responses were timed, per the test's instructions, he found it really hard to concentrate and gather his ideas. I've been in his situation before from when I took Spanish so I understood how he felt. To help him practice, we would go through each question about 3 times, just so he could get a grasp of how to organize his thoughts and to get him comfortable with speaking in a certain amount of time. Towards the end, I did notice he was improving because he was giving me direct, short answers and even made his argument or opinion in the time allotted. Whereas at the beginning, he was having a hard time thinking of how to express his opinion and spent most of the time thinking of the words, rather than actually speaking, which meant that when he finally did speak, he only had 15 seconds or less left, which wasn't enough to really express himself.

Jennifer_TP10

This morning I met with Youyoung, the Korean mother I tutor at the library. I wasn't able to meet with her last week since she couldn't get a ride to the library and when we rescheduled I was sick, so this was our first time meeting after a week and a half! I decided to work on reading since we had focused exculsively on listening and speaking so far. I prepared two reading exercises that were similar to what would appear on the TOEFL, since she will take the test in late August. I first had her skim through the passage for three minutes and try to describe what the passage was about. Then I had her read the questions and answers so she would know what to look for in the passage. Then I gave her fifteen minutes to actually read the passage and answer the questions. Youyoung got nine out of ten questions correct, a huge improvement from the 50% from the practice TOEFL! The next artcile was slightly harder and talked about psychometric tests and interviewing. I had her guess what psychometric testing was, which she guessed was a mental disease. Then I asked her how that could relate to interviewing and she immediately understood what psychometric testing was. I again had her skim the passage for three minutes and try to exaplin the main points, read the questions, and then read the passage and answer the questions. She got eight out of questions correct - still a big improvement from the practice TOEFL! I think reading the questions first to try to get the keywords and main points really helps her look for the correct answer and understand the reading better. At the end of our session, I asked her if she knew the Tallahassee Baptist Korean Church since I was thinking about doing my Cultural Immersion Project there (I noticed she wears a ring with a cross on it). She stated a freind of hers goes there, but she herself is actually Roman Catholic and goes to a Korean Catholic Church in town. It was very cool learning about her and her religion. Overall there was some great progress at our session today!

Stan_TP6

 Last week I met with Soufiane and Yi Li to work on their listening skills as requested. For the session I chose a song (Something by the Beatles), and I created a listening lesson to accompany the song. When we finished the lesson, I told each of them to choose one of their favorite American music pieces, listen to it, and try to write down the lyrics as we did in class. I asked each of them to bring in the hand written lyrics, the name of the song, and the name of the band/artist so we could go over the song together Monday at 5pm.

Yesterday (Monday 7/23) I met with Soufiane and Yi for the follow-up listening assignment as we discussed. Yi also invited Joyce, a good English student from Taiwan, to join in on our lesson. Yi, who is admittedly lazy with her language learning, didn't do the homework assignment (this actually proved to be beneficial, because it took us an hour and half to finish the song that Soufiane brought in!). Soufiane however, who is a very eager learner, brought in a song as requested. Just as we had done on the board the week earlier, he wrote the lyrics on a sheet of paper, creating blanks for any words he could not figure out. The song he chose was "I Need a Dollar," by Aloe Blacc, a bluesy-hip-hop song with a lot of poetic elements. It was perfect for our purpose. Instead of using the whiteboard for this lesson, I used the computer and projector. I looked up the lyrics online, copied them and pasted them to a word document, and removed words putting blank spaces in their place. Then I dragged the document over to the projector screen, and played the song on the monitor via youtube. We filled in the blanks while listening to the song, mostly sentence by sentence, replaying sections as needed. When we finished a verse, I would ask them what the meaning of the verse was and we would discuss the artist's intention. This often took some time because of the "poetic elements" of the song, specifically metaphors and phrases like "what you sow is what you reap," and "all that glitters is gold"(the artist actually negated these phrases).

At almost exactly an hour into the session we finished filling in the document. I told them to reserve 5pm-630pm for our tutoring session, so I knew we still had some time left. I figured this would be a good chance to go over the lyrics that Soufiane had prepared in advance so we could learn from all of his "beautiful mistakes." I closed the document that we had already completed, and we again listened to the lyrics as we went through Soufiane's initial appraisal of Aloe Blacc's artwork. This proved to be a great way to solidify what we had learned together. It was definately a challenge, but I could see light-bulbs igniting as we worked through the lyrics a second time; this time with the new challenge of correcting errors. We were just about finished working through the lyrics at 6:30 when Li's ride arrived and Maria politely kicked us out so she could lock up.

I thanked them all for the great lesson and asked Yi to have a song prepared for us on Wednesday at 5pm, so we could practice this listening assignment with the song of her choice. She bashfully agreed as we all walked out together. I think one more go at a lesson like this will be enough before we move onto something else...

Stan_TP5

Today (7/23) I met with Amr, Samer, and Soufiane for grammar tutoring. I decided to use the grammar lesson I proposed at the beginning of our session. In this lesson "An Intergalactic Lesson in Grammar" I have students restructure Yoda quotes taken from scenes of the epic "Star Wars Saga." For those who are unfamiliar with Star Wars (shame on you), Yoda delivers his messages very wisely, and yet grammatically incorrect(at least by our standards, that is Milky Way English). He tends to mix-up parts of speech. For example:

"When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good, you will not, hmmm?"

vs.

"When you reach nine hundred years old, you will not look as good, hmmm?

The students will be engaged in an activity in which they "correct" his sentences so that they make sense in our time and solar system.

I started the lesson, with a video (attention grabber) in which Yoda instructs Luke on the ways of the force:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YkbgvRMpW0

Some of the quotes I used in the lesson were taken directly from this scene. After the video I asked the students if they knew what this scene was from. One quickly replied "Harry Potter," this caused a great disturbance in the Force. Another said Yoda, and I said yes, Yoda is the character, and finally Soufiane said "War Stars." I said close, but the other way around. Realizing his error he corrected himself and said, "ah yes, Star Wars!" I said yes, "Star Wars." I told them that this scene came from "Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. This followed with a brief discussion about the Saga, the creator, his intentions in creating these characters and the relationship between Yoda and Luke/Teacher and Disciple. I asked them what they noticed about Yoda, and they shared their observations. Amr pointed out the manner in which Yoda speaks is different than what he is used to. Now it was time for the "real" (active) lesson to begin...

I gave them all a handout I created with Yoda quotes from the Star Wars Saga. It includes instructions, a cool graphic of Yoda holding "Grammar for Dummies,"(seen above) and an example of what is expected. Since there were three students, I gave them each a handout and told them that they could work together, but I wanted each of them to write the "new" sentences on their respective paper. I told them to keep in mind that there may be multiple solutions to each sentence, and they could add or remove words as need, but to try to grasp the meaning that Yoda intended. 

They worked hard together for about 15mins and eventually decided to work individually. Amr was starting to get frustrated with the assignment because he was stressing over the "tense" used in each quote. I encouraged him to continue by informing him that his English was very good and advised him not to worry about the formalities. I explained to these three fledgling language learners that because English has many derivatives, no single rule always works. The most important thing is that they focus on developing their communication skills right now. I explained to them that the more they converse with native speakers and read, and practice the lessons they are learning at CIES the greater their understanding will be. For this lesson, I explained to them, they should just focus on the meaning that Yoda was trying to express. 

They continued to work individually for a bit longer. When they were all about 3/4 of the way through the handout, we went over 5 or 6 quotes together, correcting any "beautiful mistakes" that they made (each of them had some sentences that were impeccable), and giving different examples of each.

In the beginning the lesson, after watching the video, I wrote the dialogue that closed the scene on the board:

Luke: I don't believe it!
Yoda: That is why you fail.
Luke: I don't believe it!
Yoda: That is why you fail.

To conclude the lesson, I reminded them of my intro and the dialogue we had discussed. I told them that no matter what endeavor we engage in, if we don't believe we have the capacity to succeed, then we are sure to fail. I wrote one last quote on the board, but this one was by Henry Ford:

"Whether you believe you can, or you can't, you are right!" 

Fei-TP-1

After taking TEFL program, I realized that it was not as easy as I thought, Our instructor is a really nice young man, he allowed me to have a tutor because English is my second language. Jackson, another really nice young man volunteered to be my English tutor. We have met three times so far, he is a really gentle, polite and very knowledgeable about English, also he has a very open mind and likes all different culture and customs. We talked about the differences between America and China, and a little bit about Japan and China history. I am a little bit surprised that Jackson has no idea about what happened between Japan and China. I introduced him to a movie called " the Children of Huang Shi" which is also based on a real story. It was directed by Roger Spottiswoode, and played by Jonathan Rhys Meyer, Radha Mitchell and Yun-Fat Chow. Please do not get me wrong, I did not mean to encourage hatred and war, to get to know other countries background will help you understand more about their cultural. Jackson, Thank you so much for helping me.

Claire_TP9

This afternoon, I met up with Michelle in the CIES lounge for our tutoring session. I had brought materials, but Michelle wanted to go over a vocabulary test that she had not done well on. The test featured a list of words the class had discussed and they had to name the part of speech, define it, and use it in a sentence. Michelle said that her professor had emailed a powerpoint to the class featuring study material for this test, but Michelle had not received the powerpoint. She was very upset about her grade, but after we went over and corrected the test together she seemed at ease. It was funny how part of the exam was naming the part of speech because that is what I had brought for Michelle to practice today! I gave her a sheet with a word bank at the top followed by boxes representing verbs, nouns, and adjectives. Michelle did very well and also learned some new vocabulary along the way! To finish up our lesson, I had Michelle read a short story to me so she could practice her speech. She has a difficult time with pronunciation, but after our sessions I feel like she enjoys getting all of this extra practice. Today's session with Michelle went really well.

Fei-ITA-1

I finally got my ITA contact information and contacted her last night. It was interesting to meet someone who is from same country as I am, and how we have to speak in our second language which is English of course. She is a current PhD student at FSU and trying to build up her English speaking skill. In my opinion, she should get someone who speaks English as their native language, but since i am taking this program, I have to do it and it also gives me an opportunity to learn more about English and a chance to build up my English skills, too. We messaged each other about Ramin's play last Friday. I asked her if she was interested in coming to him play. She asked me if the show would be interesting and what the price of the ticket is. I said the show is free and I do not know if she will like it or not if she has never seen someone play didgeridoo. Anyhow, we ended up rescheduling the time to next week. I am really looking forward to see how we will help each other. Go!!Fei!!!!!

Fei-CP -1

Coming back to the CIES again, I still remember the first time I was there. I could not even speak in complete sentences just as the conversation partner that I am helping now - Minsuk Song (he prefers to be called MK). We met each other a few weeks ago (I just found out that somehow he is also Kari's CP), and I took him to my ballroom dancing party, also with his friend who's name is J. MK is from South Korea and planning to get his sports management degree from FSU. He was just married two months ago and his wife also a CIES student. Talking to MK just reminds me of how I was and how I went through all the difficulty of talking to people.

Annalisa_CO3

Today I observed Marilyn Sohan's Group 4 speaking class. It must be some kind of universal plot against me learning about how speech is taught across different levels of english language learners, because today Group 4 was doing a group presentation which was my second time observing presentations in our class observations. This class was drastically different though. Group 4's group presentation was about Ramadan (which you'll get to see a more polished performance tomorrow at tea time!). It seemed to be a sort of dress rehearsal for tomorrow. The class invited other classes to sit in on their presentation. Room 214 was pretty crowded! The presentation covered why Ramadan occurs when it does as well as for how long it takes place as well as the end of Ramadan (Eid al Fitr!). Also, they talked about the importance of Ramadan and why Muslims fast. The group talked about when fasting occurs and the circumstances of when one can break the fast. They also talked about the kinds of foods one eats during Ramadan (between sunset and sunrise). That section of the presentation was met with a lot of groans by the Muslim students seeing pictures of really delicious foods (it made me hungry too)! One thing that I didn't know about Ramadan was Qerqean, which happens in certain countries, like Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain. It is kind of like a mix between Halloween and Christmas caroling. Children dress up in traditional dress and go around from house to house and sing a particular song and they are given candies and other sweets. At the end of the presentation, the group opened the floor for questions. They answered each question quickly and very effectively. I thought that it would be the hardest part because the students don't know what questions will be asked and cannot really prepare to answer them before hand. Speaking in front of your own class is one thing, most students seem very comfortable with their classmates, but speaking in front of many people some you may not know, is vastly different. The class really did an amazing job! Everyone contributed to the presentation and seemed to not be very nervous when speaking. After class, one of the students asked me if the presentation was good and if I had any additional questions. The class really impressed me!!

Brian_CO3

This morning I observed Vicky Ledbetter's reading class. She was very kind and took the time to explain to me what she had been doing with the class. She informed me that this was a very low level 1 class, and she had modified some of the lessons to make them easier. The class opened with a quiz, but before she began, Vicky took the time to write - and clearly pronounce while she was writing - the date as well as what the class would be covering today. After the quiz, the students moved on to answering comprehension questions about a passage they had read the day before. Following this, the class worked on pronouns for the remainder of the time. Vicky kept the students involved, asking them to read the bullet points from a powerpoint she prepared. Throughout the class, she had to repeatedly ask one student to pay attention and put his phone away. This student seemed to be struggling more than most, and the teacher often went over to help him personally. This obviously seemed like a good idea, but I wondered, like I have in other classes, how much different a small class like this one is from a large class that we may find ourselves teaching.

Brian_CP3

This past Friday I had the pleasure of hanging out with my CP Dohoun, his other CP Claire, Sydney and Jackson from our class, and two of Dohoun's friends from South Korea. We all sat around a big table outside at Milano's and listened to Ramin and his band play. The bigger group was a cool dynamic, and I had a great time. Dohoun told us more about South Korean culture, making it sound like a tempting destination at which to teach. He also told us that he was biking 100km in a marathon the following morning at 6am. This earned him the title of "bad ass," a title he accepted after we assured him it was a good thing. Whenever I get the chance to hang out with a diverse group of people, I'm always reminded that humans seem to share a fundamental similarity, and cultural differences never seem to get in the way of friends having a good time. I can't wait to do it again soon.