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.