FSU TEFL 120 Fall 1, 2024

Today, Kiki and I tried out listening activites that I learned from the reading. First, I read her an article about the Hippie movement in the 1960s while she took notes on the major points. I then asked her questions about the reading and had her answer them as well as summarize her main takeaways. We then watched a TedTalk so she could practice listening with visual aids; I wanted her to focus more on note-taking, so watching a video rather than just listening to an audio eliminated some of the challenges associated with listening, allowing her to focus more on note-taking. I wrote confusing sentences onto the board and discussed strategies with her for how to understand the general idea of unfamiliar phrases. I then read her an article that discussed the two sides of the Keystone Pipeline debate. She took notes on the main arguments for each side, and I wrote her points on the board. She then guessed what happened with the Pipeline and explained her reasoning. My goal for this lesso...

 Today, September 30th, I met up with Nejoud after a week and half of not having tutoring sessions because of the hurricane. So todays session focused on speaking and reading. First part with speaking, I wanted to hear all about what she did with the hurricane. Having her practice past tense with her storytelling of her trip to New Orleans. The second part, we reviewed the homework I had given her a week ago of the story of "The Little Mermaid", where she needed to read it out loud and highlight the verbs. She only finished half of it, so we read out loud together the rest of the story. We did popcorn reading, with her reading one sentence and then I read the next sentence. While also having some comprehension questions to make sure she understood the reading. Highly recommend to popcorn read, as it made it more for a reading activity. 

 Today I sat in on Dr. Rios's grammar class. He started the class by reminding the students what they learned last class; he summarized the basic rules of when to use definite or indefinite articles. He then gave them a worksheet with 32 questions where students had to fill in the blanks with a definite article, an indefinite article, or nothing. The sheet had a brief overview of the rules associated with articles. He gave them about 10 minutes to do it themselves and was available to answer questions, though no one had any. They then went over all 32 questions. After every question, students were asked to explain why they answered the way they did (regardless of whether they were right or wrong). Dr. Rios wrote their answers on the board. The class has a quiz tomorrow, and he spent some time telling them what to expect. He informed them which sections and topics are 'fill in the blank' or multiple choice and how may questions to expect. He also told them about the speaking...

      Today I visited Dr. Ciapattas speaking class for beginner level students. It was a smaller class and there were only two students. The main focus for this class was pronunciation so she started with talking about how it was very important for both students to really focus on it. The exercise today was a reading exercise where we read aloud as a group through the article. First the teacher read it at a pace that was appropriate for the skill level and then the students took turns reading one passage at a time. When the students messed up on a word she would help them through it and do so in different ways. First she would try to use the repeat after me method and if that different work she would focus on the specific sound they might have been struggling with. Something I noticed this class was this was a really hard thing for some of the students because they felt demoralized when they couldn't figure it out. But Dr. Ciapatta reminded them that the only way to learn...

 Today, I lowered Kiki's affective filter by talking to her about norms in China. We talked about the ideological reasons for media control in both China and the United States. I also learned more about the grading and schooling system in China, and Kiki talked about what she enjoys and dislikes in Chinese and American teaching systems. This helped me to understand more of her educational background and the kinds of teaching she is comfortable with. I also taught her more about the culture in American high schools. We then practiced listening skills as she feels she has the biggest need for growth in this area. We used TOEFL online practice to listen to audio clips and answer questions. I feel that Kiki would benefit from taking notes while listening to the audio, so we practiced the best ways for her to go about that. She also expressed that she has trouble identifying proper nouns, especially people and places, when listening to audio clips. We went through some segments of audio...

      This tutoring session Mariana wanted to focus on listening. So to start we choose a song that she picked, I think this a great way to start the sessions because it is something that she is interested in. We went over the vocabulary of the song as well as the meaning of it. Then we went over a listening exercise that I found on BBC English. It had a vocab section so we went over that first. I printed the pdf so we could look at the text also, and then we took notes on he listening exercise. Then I wrote 4 comprenhesion questions and we went over them. After she had a questions on the differences between through, though, throughout, and thought. As I explained the difference we both came up with a sentence. I felt like this was something that helped her a lot because she was really confused at first, and then started to understand it. I felt like it was a good natural way of teaching and it was really fun. 

      Today Mariana and I worked on a couple different topics. First we went over the gerund and the infinitive and I tried to help her with homework. I find it difficult to describe grammar when helping the students but I think I just need to practice it more. After explanation of the rules we went over her mistakes and then corrected them together. Then I asked her to repeat the homework and try it again she got all of them right. After that we picked a song to analyze and listen to it. I asked her what she thought about it and went over vocabulary. We then practiced the new vocabulary words and finished up the session with a reading assignment where she read a passage and then we talked about it. 

  Today, I observed Dr. Rios 2:00pm listening class. He started by handing out a worksheet to the class. The first two questions were opinion based questions, meant to serve as a pre-listening activity. The questions were about defining success. They had a class discussion about what everyone answered. Dr. Rios asked each student leading questions about their response, prompting them to use synonyms and elaborate with more vocabulary words. At some point Dr. Rios used the expression “take it for granted”, and he paused to explain it to everyone. The entire discussion served to casually enforce and enhance their language learning. He used soccer players and other real life examples to illustrate the difference between “effort” and “talent”. After a thorough pre-reading conversation, he gave the class five minutes to read through the rest of the questions on the worksheet. They were all short answer listening comprehension questions. After that, he played the video, a TED talk titl...

 Today, for my last class observation I went to Olivia James' listening class. She focused reading out loud different articles and would go sentence by sentence asking the students what percentage did they understand with what she said. Each article, she would ask students different questions about what she was reading, either asking the meaning of a word? or asking follow up questions. She chose articles relating to topics that her students had talked about in other sessions. Olivia James would select some words from the article and ask the students what do they think it means? and she would make visual aids on the white board to explain. But overall, would explain everything orally to work on the student's listening comprehension. 

 Today, I sat in on composition with Professor James. The students completed independent practice using commas and asked Professor James for help when they needed it. She often had them explain why they did what they did before telling them if it was correct or not. Like Dr. Rios, she would correct a student's grammar when they were speaking in casual conversation. Students completed worksheets for the duration of the class, and Professor James explained to me that this was a part of the scaffolding approach. The class started with learning the verb structures in previous classes, and now they are practicing free writing with prompts. They plan to eventually practice free writing with no prompts. 

    I met with Marina yesterday afternoon, 9/16. She had written an essay that was yet to be submitted for grading, so we focused on that for most of the session. The topic was “the Weirdest Things About the USA”. I wanted to get an idea of how strictly her professor was grading, so I looked at her previous essay feedback from Dr. Flemming. It looked like he is grading for almost 100% accuracy with their grammar but not super worried about spelling. We went through her newest essay and it looked pretty good. The main mistake reoccurring throughout, was that she kept leaving off the “s” or “es” at the end of words that needed it. There were also a couple spots where she was confusing “than” for “that”. I just underlined all the mistakes I saw and then asked leading questions to prompt her for the right word. She said that leaving off the “s” has been really bothering her, so we talked about that in depth a little more and I found some tips online that I emailed to her. ...

 I was planing to meet at CIES with Marina on Friday, 9/13, but the timing didn't work out for either of us. We ended up going out for drinks later on that evening and I think it was very productive! Marina lives alone and has no family here. She has told me a few times that she feels like her English learning stops as soon as she gets home from school because she doesn't interact with many people outside of classes. She had also told me that she wanted to go out and explore more of Tallahassee but was a bit unmotivated to do it alone. We got together with another one of my friends and hung out for a few hours. We played cards and stopped frequently to explain words or phrases to her. The friend I was with is minoring in Italian and recently studied abroad in Italy, so she was very sympathetic to the plight of being a second language learner in another country. It was a lot of fun and definitely lowered both of our affective filters for our future sessions. 

     Today I sat in on Dr. Rios's reading class. The class began with an intensive acitivity. Students were shown sentences with new words, such as "roar." They then had to use context clues to figure out which of the multiple choices options was closest to what the word meant. When one student answered, Dr. Rios asked the other students if they agreed. He then had them write down what type of context clues they used (such as synonyms, antonyms, prefixes, etc). I am not familiar with asking students to explicitly name grammar conventions, but I could see how this made the acitivity clearer for students. When trying to decipher the word "inaudible," he encouraged students to remember and consider prefixes.      The class then read through a short story that had blanks in place of some words. Sentences would read something like: "My room was messy and (not organized) _________." This indirect activity was designed to teach students how to use prefixes. ...

Today, Kiki and I worked on her listening and speaking skills. We discussed the cultural differences between Japanese story-telling and Chinese story-telling, as well as the presence of Gods (but not religion) in China. We then used the TOEFL website to listen to audio recordings. I would pause them every 30 seconds or so and ask Kiki questions about what we heard. Whenever they said a specific phrase she didn't know,  she would try to infer the meaning and we would discuss it. Kiki explained to me that phrases are harder for her to infer when listening. For example, someone in the audio said, "I can't move without my roommate complaining about me." By this she meant that everything she does bothers her roommate. Kiki and I practiced focusing on the overall context and not getting too sidetracked by trying to understand the meaning of new phrases. We did this with several audios. 

 Today, September 16, Nejoud and I started by reviewing the homework from last week, as I told her to finish highlighting the verbs and reading the story. We went over it by having her read out loud each paragraph and making sure she comprehended what was happening in the story. Plus reviewing her pronunciation on tricky words. After I asked what did she like and not like about the activity, to get her feedback. For the second half of the session, I had 4 prompts for conversation with follow up questions. (shown below) If you could meet anyone from history, who would it be? (what would you ask them? what would you want to learn from them? What animal would you like to be and why? ( what qualities do you like about this animal?) What would you do with a million dollars? (how would you spend or save the money?) What is your dream vacation? (describe the place, activities, and people you would like to bring with you) After we conversed each question, I let Nejoud pick one for a free w...

 Today, Friday the 13th, I met up with Nejoud and we focused on reading comprehension. But first, I spent the first 10 minutes asking questions like "describe me everything you did yesterday?", where I added follow up questions as she told me about her day. After that, we did the reading activity which I had printed out an intermediate story version of Cinderella. I picked Cinderella  because I wanted to select a story that Nejoud would be a little familiar with. So we would go paragraph to paragraph, having Nejoud read out loud and have her ask any questions about any words. I would have my laptop opened so I could search the words for her and use Google images for her to make the connection. After reading it out loud, I asked for her to highlight all the verbs in the paragraph. Lastly, I would ask her questions of the paragraph to make sure she comprehended the text. I really liked this activity because I was able to analyze pronunciation, grammar and reading comprehension....

       Today I observed Dr. Ciapatta's Reading class, it was really and individual work day so they did not go over anything. Maybe because its a higher level and they need less instruction but also they were working on a long reading assignment with multiple levels of comprehension questions. The first were asking about the text and then they progress to write a summary about certain parts of the text. During the break I talked with some of students from the class about their homes in english and I really enjoyed getting to meet them. This was a example of a student center class as the Dr. Ciapatta acted more as a guide and kept the class on track and was also there to answer any questions. The work took up a majority of the class but the activity combined multiple parts of reading skills, like being able to comprehend the text but also some vocabulary questions. I think it was a combination of extensive and intensive reading that was needed to complete the question...

       This was the first tutoring session after completing the needs assessment. First we started off by going over how and when to use the gerund and the infinitive. We then practiced this by going over a couple quick example before jumping into the activity. The activity was to write a short paragraph about a given prompt and to use the infinitive in the sentences. It was a free write activity so I set the timer for 10 minutes and we both wrote a paragraph. We then exchanged and corrected the mistakes and I tried to explain them best I could. Something I have noticed is that the students look for a detailed explantation so it is important to practice explantation of the rules and further our explicit knowledge. We then started to revise some of Mariana essay she had written, as well as tried to add more details as that was one of the teachers main request. 

  I met with Marina for another session this afternoon. Last time, she told me she was having trouble differentiating when to use “do” and “make”, so I printed out some examples and tips to help with that. We tried making some example sentences with using both words and that went pretty well. She also read a short section of a story that I printed out for her, and we discussed the vocabulary and idioms that were used in it. We got kind of sidetracked talking about words like “y’all”, “ain’t”, etc., but it was a fun conversation. She was also having trouble with prepositions, so we looked up some exercises for that. She was confused about when to use “through” versus “across”, so we focused on that for a while and looked up some tips. I made a little drawing of a hallway, carpet, tables, and doors, and used that to make example sentences using “through” and “across”. At first it didn’t seem to work but I think she understood a little better by the end of it.  

 I met up with Nejoud, September 11, 2024, and we focused today's session on speaking, listening and ended with a writing activity. I had prepared different questions for Nejoud and I to discuss such as "If you had an extra hour every day, how would you spend it?", or "if you could visit any country, where would you go and why?", and other random questions. After we did an activity where Nejoud would describe these stock pictures that I presented to her, with simple questions like "what is happening or who is in the picture?". After that she asked for recommendations of what videos she can watch in her free time to help with her english, I was able to find videos like TEDed videos and this channel that teaches english through TV (  Link to youtube videos ). But we focused on watching a TEDed video, and after working on summarizing the information from the video. We finished the tutoring session with having another free writing activity, where she answe...

 Today, I observed Ryan Flemming's reading class on September 11, 2024. It was very interesting to see it was more focused on vocabulary, and he told me he was going to try something new using AI. He got the idea from one of his students since he uses AI to study and practice English. The activity was translating sentences from each of the student's native language into English. In each of the sentences, there were specific vocabulary they were learning. All the students enjoyed the activity, and learned a new way of utilizing AI to study or getting more practice. 

      Today I met with Mariana for the the first time and it when really well. We went over the needs assessment and talked about some of our interests. I asked her about her life before she moved to Tallahassee, as well as why she moved to the United States. It was really exciting to learn more about her life, and share parts of mine. During the needs assessment I found out about what Mariana would like to work on the most, which was grammar and pronunciation. We also talked about the different types of learning styles and we talked about what worked best for her, so I can find out activities that best suit her needs. Lastly I did a short diagnostic which was a writing activity asking her about what she did over the weekend, and then we went over the grammar mistakes and worked through them together. 

I met with Kiki yesterday. She took the TOEFL exam last Friday and she found the listening and speaking sessions to be the most difficult. We watched a video together from the movie Frozen, and I paused the video and had her summarize what was happening. We practiced learning basic idioms, such as the phrases: "a piece of cake," "jump on the bandwagon," and "read between the lines." We first discussed the definitions. We then moved to moderately controlled practice in which she filled in the blanks using these phrases. Kiki then said sentences aloud using these idioms. The goal of this activity was for Kiki to practice both speaking and vocabulary skills. My goal was for her to understand these idioms and then apply them by using them in context. When she was speaking, I wrote down some of her sentences. We went over her responses and corrected some of her grammar usage. 

       I observed Dr. Rios’ listening class today. The class was covering a reading on “The Legend of Evangeline”, which was projected on the board. Dr. Rios started by reviewing the highlighted vocabulary terms, calling on the students to provide the definitions. Anytime that a student provided a definition that did not apply to the context of the reading, Dr. Rios paused to clarify. Another vocabulary term was “crossed paths”. No one in the class understood that one, so Dr. Rios broke off into a brief discussion about idioms, providing further examples. The class took turns reading the last section of the story out loud. When they got to the end, Dr. Rios shifted the focus from vocabulary to content. The class went back through each paragraph of the story and summed up the main themes of each paragraph. They had a brief opinion based discussion about whether the story had a sad or happy ending. The next half of the class, they listened to recording about the histor...

  I met with Marina again yesterday afternoon. We spent most of the session going over a section of writing that she had turned in for an assignment. Her instructor noted all of her grammar mistakes and then she had gone back through and tried to correct everything. Some of her corrections were spot on, but there were a few that needed to be fixed again. I tried to ask leading questions, prompting her to answer with the correct word, but I don’t think I did a very good job. She was still having a hard time figuring out the right corrections, so I gave her the answer for the ones she couldn’t get and we spent most of the session talking through those answers. We talked about proper use of “different”, “difference”, and “differences”, and came up with a few example sentences for each one. There was another sentence that read “As humans, we have to decide if deep sea mining by worthing the consequences”. We spent a lot of time on this one and I was having a hard time explaining why ...

       Today I observed Mr. Flemings grammar class. To start off class, we continued an activity from last week that focused on forming sentences from sample prompts. The teacher then let the students work on their own to form some of the sentences. The students then got into a group and shared the sentences and as they did this Mr. Fleming wrote them down. After that we went over them as a class and Dr. Fleming explained the mistakes. After that we went over a plan for the week and talk a little bit about the quiz that will later this week. One student asked a question on the past perfect and the past perfect continuous. He was having a hard time deciding when to use the two different tenses. Mr. Felming went over the tense briefly, and when and how to use them. He asked the students follow up questions as well as provided examples and help the students understand the concept. He finished up with multiple follow up questions to make sure students felt confident with...

 Today, September 9, we met up for the tutoring session and focused on the PTE exam. Nejoud had informed me in the first session how she wanted to take the PTE exam that her friend advised her on taking. Both of us not being familiar with the exam, I researched practice examples and the layout of the exam. As the PTE exam is divided in three parts: Speaking and writing, reading, and listening. I showed to Nejoud the layout of the exam, and we did some reading comprehension practice examples while she practiced reading out loud. 

 I got to observe Ryan Flemming's speaking class with intermediate students on September 9, 2024. It was very nice because I got to watch some of the student's presentations. Mr. Flemming presented very clear instructions in the beginning of class for students to feel prepared. We got to see Luhsi, Raya, Marina and Yara's presentations on their top 3 things in whatever subject they picked. From actors to movies to mythological characters, it was super cool to watch their presentations with the rest of the class. At the end, Mr. Flemming had questions for small group discussions to wrap up the class. 

 After our first tutoring session where I got a better idea of what we need to work on, Nejoud shared she wanted to improve on her listening skills and how she is good with writing skills for our next meeting on Friday, September 6, 2024. We started the session by watching a clip of  Friends where Monica is helping Chandler work out, I picked this clip because I like the comedy plus Nejoud had mentioned how she likes working out. We watched the video once all throughout, then we watched it again and I paused it to ask her questions about the clip and character's actions. After that activity, she mentioned how in one of her classes they are working on telling a story, so we did a free writing activity for 7 minutes with the prompt of " Imagine you woke up with a superpower, what is it, what did you do in that day?". I told her to not focus on grammar, and to just prioritize on writing. So after the 7 minutes, we went back and corrected the grammar, while talking about the ...

 I observed Olivia James' Friday speaking class with group 4, on September 6, 2024. I got to talk with the Group 4 students about their projects and what they were working on. They discussed how and why they wanted to learn more about their topic, so it was very interesting to hear. The class mainly focused on working on their projects, so I was not able to observe that much lecturing from Olivia James. It was still very nice to meet more ELL students in the program. 

 Today I observed    Dr. Ciappetta’s speaking class. It was with group 1 and 2 with Nejud and Miguel. They were presented a presentation with slides and focused on speaking. After the presentations Dr. Ciapetta and I gave feedback and we went over some "beautiful mistakes". First Dr Ciapettta let the students go over the mistakes in pairs and then we discussed them as a class. Something I noticed that she did was she set a timer during the activities in pairs so it did not take up too much time. When we were going over the mistakes she used word and that seemed to work really well as a visual aid to help teach the students in different learning styles. 

     This afternoon, I attended Dr. Flemming’s Speaking class. He started the class by going over the schedule for the next few days. During the previous class, they made written outlines for the upcoming oral presentations that each student will be doing. Today, they were tasked with recording themselves as they gave a practice presentation based on their outlines. Before having anyone start, Dr. Flemming thoroughly reviewed the assignment by showing everyone his own presentation about Jazz songs. He provided his own outline, a recorded version of his presentation, and a transcript for them to reference. I thought it was great that he completed his own sample presentation, outline, etc. for the class to refer to. Instead of using an example from an outside source, he made it more personable by doing every part of the assignment himself. He also showed them a bunch of simple phrases to help with introductions, transitions, and conclusions, using real world examples for ea...

  This morning, I observed Dr. Ciappetta’s Reading class. She introduced the classwork for the day, then she announced that everyone would have additional homework this weekend, but did not specify what the homework would be. It seemed like many of the students were planning on finishing their classwork over the weekend until she mentioned the additional homework they would be having. After that, they seemed more motivated to finish their assignment in class today. The class assignment was based on an article about FSU parking garages. The students were provided the article ahead of time and the class assignment focused on answering a set of relatively detailed questions. I thought this was a great method for teaching reading because the class not only had to read the article, but they also had to read and decipher the detailed questions before being able to answer. This was not a test, so the class was allowed to work in groups and ask questions. Most students chose to work on it ...

  This morning, I observed Dr. Rios’ Grammar class. They were taking a quiz today, so Dr. Rios started with a review discussion. They went over past, present, and future verb tenses. It was mostly a verbal review, and Dr. Rios made sure to ask students to provide their input before he gave them any correct answers. He did a great job of providing additional context through funny anecdotes that illustrate real life grammar in-use scenarios. Dr. Rios showed me a fill-in the blank review worksheet that he had given everyone the previous class. He said this quiz would be the only one that focuses exclusively on fill-in the blank questions. Future quizzes will have more writing and short response style questions. Before starting the quiz, Dr. Rios introduced a new weekly homework assignment. Each week he will provide a list of difficult to pronounce words for each student and they will record a video of themselves saying the words out loud. Afterwards, he will create a personalized resp...

     I met with Marina on Wednesday, 9/4. We started by going over the academic/non-academic questions and got to know each other a little bit. She is in the upper-intermediate CIES group. I asked what she needs the most help with and she said that reading and writing are her two weakest areas. She wrote a couple short paragraphs for me about living in the United States, then we went through and corrected the grammatical errors together. At some point, we got into the subject of orcas/whales, so we decided to incorporate them into a future study session somehow. Marina has to give a spoken presentation about her favorite mythological characters next week, so we are going to make that our main priority when we meet again on Saturday. She seemed really enthusiastic and motivated, which is awesome. I'm looking forward to our next meeting!

 Today I met with Kiki for an hour! It was really enjoyable. She was in the class I sat in on, so I had a good idea of what level reading she was at. I learned more about her goals for English (TOEFL exam and eventually an MBA) as well as her experience living in Tallahassee. I learned what she enjoys from English tutoring: she finds writing stories to be the most helpful learning tool, and she enjoys grammar the most.  We watched a clip from Beauty and the Beast and I had her summarize what happened. We then went over some sample grammer questions from the TOEFL exam. I practiced all twelve future, past, and present verb tenses with her, and she only needed help with one. We then went through a TOEFL sample reading and I helped her use context clues to figure out what words me. She was already in the habit of using root words to guess. I helped her learn multiple meanings of some words and taught her some common phrases. She is excellent at grammar and very proficient at read...

 I was able to meet with Nejour on Wednesday, September 4, 2024.  For our first session, my goal was to get to know her and have a better idea of what she wants to improve on. Additionally getting to know what are her strengths and weaknesses to figure out what should we spend more time on. Using the tutoring guide, that we were given in class, I got a better understanding of Nejour with using the non-academic and academic questions. I was able to observe her grammar class earlier so I had an idea of what to review with her, but I also asked what are some things her other classes were working on. One of her classes was focusing on working in telling a story, so for next tutoring session I want to focus on practicing how to tell a story with listening exercises. 

 I was able to observe Olivia James' beginner grammar class on Wednesday, September 4, 2024.  The class focused on reviewing simple present and present continuous, with have exercises and constant talking to review. James emphasized the importance of practice and becoming consciously aware of mistakes. She also started the class with a game similar to 21 questions to have students practice the verb tense while asking questions. Overall, students were presented with activities to practice out loud while being corrected or they correct themselves with the verb tense. 

CIES Class Observation, September 4th, 2024 I sat in on a reading class with Ryan. He began the class by finishing a short story they read the previous class period. Before reading, he showed them a focus question and had them guess about it before reading (inductive teaching). He showed a list of vocabulary words and asked students if they had any questions. I found the words to be very advanced; for example, one word was 'canon' as in the phrase 'canon of literature.' Whenever a student asked a vocabulary question, he would explain it as well as google an image of it to give them a visual aid. After reading, they took a quiz together about the story and answered discussion questions.  During class conversation, there was ample discussion about the students' cultures. Ryan also used a lot of common, informal phrases during the class, likely to familiarize students with everyday speech. For example, he used the phrase "an adult way to do things" several ti...