FSU TEFL 120 Fall 1, 2024

     This was my last tutoring session so Mariana and I went a got a tea at calvin's coffee. It was good to focus on conversation because we had never really done that. We talk about what our future plans were for the rest of the year, and some of our dreams in the future.  She talked about how she wanted to travel and was working on getting her real estate license and I told her my plans with the tefl certificate. I really liked getting to know my tutees better so it was a good way to end it. 

  I met with Marina on Thursday, and we had a pretty productive session. First we went over her quiz results from our previous meeting. She did pretty well. It was a strange quiz, mostly based off a Mr. Bean video. She got most of the answers correct, so there wasn’t much to talk about with that. We did some TOEFL reading prep from a link I found online. After that, I read a section of a book to her and asked her to summarize it to me verbally. It was a simple short story from a Ray Bradbury anthology. I took notes as she spoke and corrected her mistakes afterwards. Then, she read the next section of the book herself and summarized that portion in writing. We looked through the paragraph she wrote, and I corrected her mistakes again. After that, we just talked briefly about her plans for the future and both of our goals to move to Europe. We had a nice, productive conversation and ended things there.  

I was able to meet with Marina again on Wednesday this week. We started by checking in about some TOEFL prep stuff. She said reading was her worst score so I looked up some simple exercises and we went through them together. Afterwards we looked at a quiz she has to take about reduced adjective and reduced adverb clauses. The quiz presented incorrect sentences and she was supposed to rewrite them with the correct form of reduced adverbs or adjectives. Honestly, I thought it was a pretty poorly designed quiz. The correct answers didn’t seem like sentences that would be used in real life very often. The whole thing seemed very forced with minimal practical benefit that would come from it. Either way, we got through it ok and ended the session with that.  Next time we plan to do more work on TOEFL prep.

 For this tutoring session Mariana and I wanted to focus on conversation. So went to a coffee shop and practiced ordering and then talked about a lot of different things. We made comparisons about American culture and Colombian Culture. We talked about some of the things we want to do in the future and some other things. It was our last tutoring session so it was good to have a conversation practice, where we could talk about things that Mariana wanted to talk about. 

 I met with Wei again and we watched a couple videos and then went over them. She really wants to learn about culture so we watched a classic american sitcom. We watched some clips from the office and then went over the dialogue. First we watched the whole video all the way through. Then we watched it and really analyzed the dialogue. We would look into certain sentences and then go off on different tangents and talk about American culture. 

     Today I met with Mariana, and we worked on grammar She wanted to talk about how to use whose, who, and whom.  First we watched two different videos, one that talked about whom and who. She was struggling with this one so we watched the video twice and we talked about the problems she was having with it. After we came up with some examples, and went over them. We then watched a video about whose and how/when to use it. We then created a couple sentences also. 

 Today I met with Wei again, and the point of our tutoring sessions is really to just practice speaking and talking about American Culture. We usually will watch video together and just go from there. Today she wanted to talk about her favorite American Films. Hers was Shawshank Redemption because it gave her hope. We continued to talk about how movies can inspire people and give them strength. After we started talking about what it means to be free and what freedom means to both of us. I am really enjoying these conversations with her and I love to learn more about her. Throughout the session she asked me questions about particular idioms and informal language, and thats where I teach her about culture or speech patterns. 

 Today I met with Mariana, we went over how to use who and whom, and the differences between them. First we watched a video that helped me explain the differences and when to use them. During the video there was a exercise that we did together. Then after the video I found a level appropriate exercise that we did together. We did this on our own then came back and when over them together and I explained the ones she got wrong to her. I asked her to explain the ones she got right to help her more. She said she wanted to practice this so I am going to look for some more videos for next session.

 Kiki and I met and working on reading and speaking. We spoke for a while about racial dynamics in America, and we compared our existing schemas of United States and European history. We then did a reading from procon.com about whether or not felons in the United States should be able to vote. Kiki read ecah of the arguments and verbally summarized then. After reading all of them, she summarized them and gave her opinion on the topic. We then discussed the different political implications and context surrounding it. I'm impressed by her knowledge of the existing U.S. political and bureaucratic landscape. This was also a good opportunity to practice less frequent vocabulary words, such as burglary, manslaughter, and arson. 

  I met with Marina yesterday afternoon for the first time since she took her most recent TOEFL exam. She didn’t have all of the grades back yet, but she said she felt like she did badly on it. She said she got a pretty bad score on the reading section especially. We talked a bit about her overall performance on it and discussed strategies for studying more for the next attempt. After that we looked at a persuasive presentation that she had prepared for an assignment. She was presenting the argument that we should use less plastic in our environment. The presentation looked really good. The grammar seemed pretty much correct on every slide, I don’t think I had any corrections for her on that one. Next meeting we plan to talk more about TOEFL and I will prepare some reading activities to help her study.  

 Today, November 18th, I met up with Nejoud for our last tutoring session. Since Nejoud requested a couple weeks ago to prioritize on her speaking skills, we focused this last session on speaking as well. Starting the session of discussing what she did last weekend, I had her describe everything she did and what was she planning on doing next weekend. Naturally we went on different speaking prompts like "what are you plans for thanksgiving break? winter break?" and also talked about her goals and plans for the next year. As I monitored her grammar, I would tell her to repeat a sentence with my corrections. After we hit our 45 minute mark, we went to Paint-a-Pot at FSU to celebrate our last session and finished the session there. There we talked about painting, school goals and wanting to maintain contact after the sessions ended. Overall, I am grateful to have met Nejoud through these tutoring sessions, and I concluded the session with communicating to Nejoud how much her Eng...

      Today I met with Wei and we watched some of the best scenes from a movie that she wanted to watch. The movie was Back to the Future from 1985. There was a lot of scenes that she was confused about so we went over them together and that helped her learn culture. When we discussed the movie we went over individual scenes and a lot of the conversation was based on learning slang and informal speech. This is what she really wants to focus on so we build out from there and she seems to be enjoying the lessons. We then discussed subtle difference in informal and formal speech and how Americans are very indirect in their speech patterns. 

 Kiki and I met this week and practiced speaking through conversation. We had a really fascinating talk about China and Chinese perspectives: the one child policy, general thoughts on climate change, general thoughts on our election and political system, and the narratives around the Ukrainian and Israel-Palestine wars. It was so interesting to hear Kiki's thoughts on all of this, and the ways in which her thoughts are informed by both Chinese and American media. I shared general American viewpoints with her as well, and I told her about some common practices here that she found very surprising. We spoke for about an hour and a half, and I was very impressed with how quickly and effortlessly she can respond to me. She made very few grammatical errors and no errors that impeded my ability to understand her. The pace of our conversation was much quicker than at the beginning of our sessions, as she used to have to pause much more to think of certain words or sentence formations....

 Today, November 14th, I met up with Nejoud for our tutoring session. I found a great resource called ESLVault  to have a stronger foundation in our speaking lesson. Using this worksheet as a guide to talk about fame and being famous. During this discussion, I was monitoring Nejoud's grammar and making sure that she was applying my corrections. After this discussion, we moved on to "describing an image" activity, and using key words to describe it. Again using  free resources of ESLVault, I used their images/worksheets to have Nejoud practicing and describing the image. Here are the worksheets I used, I highly recommend them. Fishing picture  Two girls outside Bull-riding Weird chess game 

 Yesterday I met up with Nejoud for our tutoring session, November 12th. As she previously mentioned she wanted to focus on her speaking skills, I planned a speaking lesson of doing different role plays. We started the tutoring session by warming up with question prompts such as "tell me what you did this weekend" and "Do you have any goals for November?". After this discussion, I introduced Nejoud to the role plays. In each role play we would act out for 4 minutes, after I would give her corrections and we would re-act it out adding my corrections. The role plays were: ordering food at a restaurant, buying a gift for your sister, calling and making a dentist appointment, returning an item to a store, and convincing a friend to go to a concert with you. 

 Today I met with Wei and we focused on culture. After discussing our plan for action Wei would like to focus on culture when meeting with me. She said that she can practice the toefl on her own but cant learn about culture as much on her own. So we watched a snl clip and analyzed it deeply. We went over different slang meanings and talked a while about Las Vegas. I tried to explain to her the phrase "what happens in vegas stays in vegas" because they said it in the snl video and she did not understand it. I also helped her pronunciation and some other common American phrases. 

 Kiki and I met on Friday and worked on reading and listening. For the first half of the lesson, she did a reading practice test in the allotted 18 minutes. We then went over her answers and discussed patterns to look for and strategies to use. For example, she practiced eliminating wrong answers when she couldn't figure out the correct answer; before, there were some questions where she was looking for a long time for the right answer, to no avail. For the second half of the exercise, we did a listening activity that we did early on in our sessions. Kiki liked this as she noted that it was much easier for her this time around. We also discussed strategies for the test, such as noting the repeated emphasis on years in nearly all TOEFL listening practice tests. 

      I met with Wie for the second time today. We went over a lot of stuff today and dove deep into the waves were are going about studying for the test.  We made a plan about what we will focus on. We then talked for about five minutes to practice some conversational skills and responding. After we took one of the practice toefl exams that I found on youtube. It was a listening exercise with comprehension questions. We separately answer the questions and then went to the next exercise to simulate the exam. After we looked at the answers and went over them. 

     I was supposed to meet with Marina today at 12:00pm. I texted her to let her know I'd be a couple minutes late because of the parade traffic. I got there at 12:03, waited until 12:25 and then left because she still hadn't showed up or responded to me. She texted me a few minutes after that and said she had overslept. I am counting this as a session. 

 Today, November 7th, I met up with Nejoud. She shared with me that she wants us to focus more on her speaking abilities for the next couple tutoring sessions. I provided different prompts like " Do you enjoy trying food from other cultures? which ones?", this led to a conversation of one of her presentations in class recently that she needed to do a survey and interview students to collect data relating to my question. She kind of gave me a mini presentation of her study, and I made sure to admire her use of some advanced vocabulary. This led to a discussion about food and food from different cultures. While she was describing and talking about this topic, I was monitoring her grammar and correcting her when necessary. Making sure she repeated the correct pronunciation and grammar form. 

 Kiki took the TOEFL exam this weekend and had the most room for improvement on the reading section. We discussed the test and looked at certain rhetorical devices that are commonly used in American school systems. We then did some practice reading tests for TOEFL and she answered the questions in the alotted time. I went over the answers with her one by one and helped her realize what she got wrong. For example, one question asked which of the following were not present in the native civilization that was mentioned in the reading: administrative centers, gridlike roads, industrial centers, and public spaces. All were mentioned in the reading, but the reading said "an administrative center," making it incorrect to say that there were multiple administrative centers. This question was helpful for her in realizing that the multiple choice options are very specific and often designed to trick you. She is used to skimming the passage, but today we focused on how you should never ...

 Today I met up with Nejoud, November 5th. We first discussed how was her experience at the football game on Saturday, which went well and she described it as a fun experience. Continuing, I had different speaking prompts to talk about such as "what is something you've learned recently that you found interesting?", and also "what is your favorite way to spend a weekend?". After some discussion, I started teaching her about idioms, I started by explaining their literal meaning and what they actually mean. Providing visuals and using sentence examples of each idiom, after she would write them all down and she made examples using said idioms. While practicing idioms, I realized that Nejoud kept mixing up B and P. We finalized by reading some minimal pairs and explaining to her that P has more air in the pronunciation. We finalized the tutoring session by reading together minimal pairs with our hand in front of the mouth, to help her understand the difference in the...

Kiki and I practiced writing again yesterday. She practiced the short form of the TOEFL writing section. She read a professor's statement and the comments of two students and she wrote her own comments on the discussion within the 10 minute timeframe. We did several of these practices. She is taking the TOEFL exam today, so instead of critiquing little grammar mistakes we focused more on composition and repeated phrases. She practiced using phrases like "In agreement with...," or "All in all," or "One counterargument states..." These phrases will help the structure of her writing and make sure her answer follows a logical sequence. After producing each writing sample, we also went through the logic of her argument and discussed ways for her to still craft a response when she doesn't fully understand the subject.