FSU TEFL Certificate 2021 Summer 1

  Date/Time: June 30th, 2021 Location: Zoom Topic/Skill: Sarcasm  Feedback provided to tutee: For this tutoring session, I provided feedback mostly on Hang ah's pronunciation and grammar in use. To begin the lesson I asked an introduction question and then we watched a youtube video for our activity,  After, we went over what we learned in the lesson and I corrected her pronunciation throughout the time.   Lessons about tutoring and/or tutee you learned:  Hang ah found sarcasm to be very funny and often questioned whether sarcasm was too mean. It was interesting to see how different to the two of us sarcasm was from a cultural perspective. 

Date/Time: 07/20/2021 10:00 p.m. Location: Conversation over Line Topic/Skill: Roleplay activity, Free talk Feedback provided to tutee: This meeting Tina and I started by doing brief roleplay activities. In the TOEIC speaking test there is a section in which students will be given a hypothetical situation and are expected to respond accordingly. Sometimes they are asked to provide a solution to a problem they have been given, at others they have to answer questions as if they responding to survey questions. Along with these scenarios we also practiced several others. Tina was a bit slow to start, but after she picked up a bit of steam she started doing pretty well. She still has problems determining if some nouns are countable or uncountable, knowing which verb form to use, and fully expanding upon her ideas. However; her fluidity of speech, while not by large margins, has improved. She has become more willing to talk during our meetings but still remains the most talkative a...

Date/Time: 07/16/2021 10:00 a.m. Location: Conversation Over Line Topic/Skill: TOEIC Prep, Articles, Conversation Practice Feedback provided to tutee: Since I was unable to go over them during our last meeting, I started our session by going over articles. Similar to the verb form activity we tried last time this activity had a number of sentences each with blanks where an article should go. It started relatively simple with more obvious examples such as "A dog or an apple". However; towards the end I tried to use less obvious words, ones that start with vowels that make consonant sounds or vice versa like "A university or an x-ray". Tina conquered the first few with ease but she did get tripped up with the later words. After explaining a bit more about difference between words starting with vowels and starting with vowel sounds she started to improve a little. After that, we practiced some of the TOEIC sample speaking questions. Her pronunciation  and sentenc...

Date/Time: 07/1/2021 10:00 a.m. Location: Conversation Over Line  Topic/Skill: TOEIC Test Prep, Speaking Feedback provided to tutee: Since Tina would like to improve her English  for the sake of passing the TOEIC test, I prepared a number of questions similar to those found on the TOEIC. The TOEIC is structured  a bit different than the TOEFL, at least in the way that it tests the students understanding of English. The speaking test starts with simple read aloud questions but eventually move to asking the test takers to express their own opinions. I really like this method of testing because  it starts by just testing simple things like pronunciation and intonation, but  as the test ramps up in difficulty so do the grading criteria.  There are a number of different question styles, the one we  started  with was pictures. I had collected an assortment of stock images and had Tina describe them to me the best she could. She did fairly well but...

 <TS Blogs>  Date/Time: Friday, June 2, 2021 8:05 AM to 8:35 AM  Topic Skills: Speaking, Listening, and Grammar Skills  Feedback provided to the tutee: This was the last tutoring session I had with my tutee. It was sad considering how quickly all of the tutoring sessions went by. Despite how quickly time fled, all in all, I could really tell how much his English knowledge and skills grew from the first session. In the first session he was limited to what he could say and understand; however, by this meeting, even if he could not understand certain words or phrases I said, I could tell he had enough of a grasp to understand what I was saying. He has made so much improvement. It truly was such a great opportunity to be able to watch someone's skills grow so much in a short amount of time. I hope that he grows a passion for learning languages, as I did when I was learning foreign languages. Most of the tutoring session was spent reviewing everything we covered in ...

 <TS Blogs>  Date/Time: Wednesday, June 30, 2021 8:10 AM to 8:40 AM  Topic Skills: Listening and Grammar Skills  Feedback provided to the tutee: This tutoring session we branched off from the last meeting we had on Monday. In order to evaluate what he learned in the last session, we did an activity that relied more heavily on listening skills. With that being said, I would tell him to draw different family members. This required him to recognize vocabulary learned. I also thought it would be valuable to incorporate drawing activities into our lessons because of how much he enjoys drawing and painting. After reviewing these concepts, we transitioned into learning newer material. This material focused on descriptive adjectives. Hence, words used to describe nouns. In order to reinforce these new terms, I would follow each word and example by asking him a question. These questions focused on seeing if he would describe him or a family member with these terms. We a...

 <TS Blogs>  Date/Time: Monday, June 28, 2021 8:05 AM to 8:35 AM  Topic Skills: Grammar Skills  Feedback provided to the tutee: This was the first tutoring session we had together in quite some time due to a communication error; however, my tutee still had a lot of the knowledge from the lessons we had in prior sessions. I was worried he would be a little rusty when it came reviewing some concepts we went over in prior sessions. Despite this, he knew everything and continued to be a quick learner. In this session, we went over vocabulary and phrases related to family. It was important for me to review these concepts with him because I know he had some knowledge of this through diagnostics I ran in the beginning of our first couple sessions together. First, I went over basic family-related vocabulary terms with him to reintroduce them to him. After, to evaluate his understanding, I tested him by showing him different pictures of family members. Then, we did an a...

 Emily CP#6  Date/Time: Friday, July 2nd 11:15 Am to 12:00 PM  Location: Zoom  Topic discussed: Fourth of July, Family, Research, Conferences  Cultural and/or linguistic topics you and your partner learned: This conversation partner meeting was with my usual partner. We mostly spent our time talking about Fourth of July. We talked about our plans and how he has a three day weekend. We also talked about his wife and her experience living in the United States. She took a course at CIES this past year! I suggested the beach; however, the crowds are probably quite large to see the fireworks. He has a research conference in the Fall time that he is working towards, so we also discussed presenting at conferences. This past semester I presented my research at three different conferences so we discussed how nervous it can make us. The aspect that we both agreed made us the most nervous is the discussion after presenting our work. It is the time where individuals in the ...

 Emily CP#5  Date/Time: Tuesday, June 29th 6:15 PM to 7:15 PM  Location: Zoom  Topics discussed: FSU, Culture in Panama, American Politics  Cultural and/or linguistic topics you and your partner learned: This conversation partner meeting was with a different partner than my usual meetings. This time, it was with one of my friends who is an international student at Florida State University. She lives in Panama and goes to school at the FSU Panama campus; however, she has been to the United States a swath of times before. Most of our meeting we discussed FSU, as she is attending the main campus (Tallahassee location) in the Fall for the first time. She just visited the campus early in June and loved it. Other than discussing future plans in the Fall, we also talked about cultural differences. In Panama, the communication pattern typically follows giving all of the details of the story and then the last point being the main point. In contrary, Americans follow the ...