Chris TS#15

After my adult tutoring session today I went down to the public library. I am doing my first observation today. David is the twin brother of my child tutee, Matt. Bruce from our TEFL class is one of David's tutors. 

It was interesting just being able to watch the session instead of having to conduct it. Bruce and David began with a reading comprehension passage about Amelia Earhart. Matthewand I had done this passage a few weeks ago so I was fimiliar with the material and also intrigued to see how they would handle the passage. David seems to be like his brother in that he is bright, but needs motivation to get going, especially with schoolwork. With Bruce's guidance, David read the passage and did pretty well with the comprehension questions. I enjoyed some of his inferences about what he thought happened to Earhart being that she was never found. 

Next they moved on to another passage about an explorer of the early West namde John Colter. David was getting a bit distracted during the comprehension questions and somehow Star Wars came up. Bruce said that he would show David his Yoda impression if he stayed on task for the remainder of their lesson. This incentive really worked and David went right back to work. 

David stayed really focused on their passage for the remainder of their session. He really took his time and asked some great questions to Bruce. After reading the final passage for the day, David got to hear Bruce's Yoda impression. Which is really awesome by the way! This was a good session to sit in on. I was impressed with Bruce's ability to keep David focused. I think he is a great tutor and can see him doing well as an English teacher!

Jennifer TS#13

Yesterday I had my first session with Boram. Although we're classmates, I didn't really get to know her until much later. She wanted to focus on speaking, so for the rest of the time we spent conversing. Joel came in and joined in on our conversation.

She had a few questions for me as a Korean-American who speaks two languages, so I answered her questions and she answered some of mine. Then we got into the topic of slang words and internet lingo. Joel and I went through a few words and their meanings, to which Boram laughed at all of them. Some American slang is quite similar to Korean slang. For example, like how "lol" is to ㅋㅋㅋ (kkk) or "selfie" (taking a photo of yourself) to 셀카 (selca: self-camera). I only noticed a few mistakes when she spoke, but she caught most of her mistakes and made sure to turn to me or Joel if she was saying something correctly or grammatically. 

Overall, it was a fun first session.

Chris TS#14

Today, my adult tutee, Simge, and i had our final session. I wanted to keep things light because I could tell she was tired and didn't want to overwhelm her in the last meeting. We started with some reading comprehension passages. These were a bit above her level, but she did really well with them. I had her underline words or phrases that she did not know, but continue reading. Once she finished the passage out loud, we reviewed the vocabulary she didn't know. The first reading was a bout a female astronaut who was working on the international space station. She did really great with the comprehension questions and although she needed some help with grammar, she had the main idea down solid. 

After our reading comprehension activity, I decided to ask her if there was anything she had questions about. She had a bunch of situational examples to ask me. "If someone says this to me, is it okay for me to say....?" This was the gist of a lot her questions. Mainly asking if her responses to common questions were appropriate or made sense. We also talked about when to use "could" and "would." This was something we touched briefly on last time but didn't have enough time to expand upon. 

These hours always seem to go by really quickly and today was no exception. It was bittersweet ending our last session but I was happy to have been part of her English education here at CIES. We talked a bit about if future plans on the way outside and then said our goodbyes. Good luck Simge!

Chris TS#13

Yesterday I had another session with my child tutee, Matt.

He and his brother came to CIES today for our session. Marco tutors his brother, so keeping them away from each other is crucial. Otherwise they will constantly be distracting each other. Even though we chose different areas in the same room, this still kind of happened.

Regardless, we began by finishing the essay that we started re-writing last time. Matt was to write an opinion essay about why something was better than something else. He chose to write about why the video game Call of Duty is better than another game called Halo. We had got an introduction paragraph and a body paragraph completed last time. We started with the next two body paragraphs. It's amazing how creative he is, but it seems like he needs a constant monitor throughout the process. Otherwise, he looses focus and energy and he will not complete his work or he will not do it to the best of his ability. Matt also does really well with positive reinforcement, so I give him a lot of praise throughout our sessions. We had enough time to write the conclusion today also. I asked him to add one personal sentence at the end. Something about how the game makes him feel. I was really happy with his essay by the time we had finished it! We compared it with his first draft and I know he could see the difference and seemed quite proud of his work.

Because he had worked so hard, I decided to reward him with a fun activity. He loves to play hangman, so we did this with some of his vocabulary words. I will give him a synonym to his word as a hint and he has to guess the word before his stick figure man gets "hung." He was pretty distracted by his brother most of the time, but he did manage to guess a few before he ran out of guesses. Before I knew it we were already at the end of our session. I think Matt and I will both be proud of his work over these past 7 weeks, even if he doesn't immediately realize how well he has been doing.

Dylan TS#14

Wednesday, July 29th I tutored Nayun. We have one more session and I will be sad to see her go. We have built a good relationship and she even acknowledged she had a good time with me today when her father asked her. This is a big step for us because no matter how good of a session we had she would always tell her dad she did not like it.

We went over clock times today. I incorporated new vocabulary related to telling time, as well as a worksheet involving adding the long and short arm to a clock. She liked the activity, but she begged to play cards again. We ended up playing cards after we did a certain amount of problems. We continued this pattern the rest of the session, which seemed to have a positive effect on her learning. She is a very intelligent child and each week I am surprised by how much knowledge she has on every topic I introduce.

TV TS#15

This was the session after the session at my house with Astin, we met at the library.

This session was held at the library. I brought my lined book for Astin to practice writing in also, but Boram asked me to focus on manners this time so I wrote some words and phrases such as, "please" and "thank you."

To my surprise, Astin pulled out three or four workbooks that Boram had made for him. How lucky for me! I started with the polite words for him to trace. Then I asked him some questions about how to behave in order to be polite. He knew how to ask permission, but I had to explain what permission was. Boram said that in the last session she noticed Astin being impolite with me, but I didn't notice that at all. The only thing I tried to ingrain into him was saying please. He would say, "can we get a book now" without saying please. I had to keep reminding him, but he didn't throw a fit when he had to say it.

With Astin, balance is key. Make him do a little bit of work, then let him look through a book and read to him some snippets about the animals in the book.

Pam TS # 8 adult

If laughing is a universal language, then Ghadeer, Ayah and I were all speaking the same language for our last session on Tuesday.  

We were playing Scrabble when Ghadeer put down the letters- T-A-N.  I asked her to pronounce the word and then tell Ayah what it means.  She looked at me and said she didn't know.  Ayah immediately looked over and asked, how she put that word down and yet didn't know what it meant.  Then we all looked at each other and laughed hysterically.  I explained what TAN meant and Ghadeer said, yes, like sun cream which made me laugh inside.   

But then I questioned myself, is this receptive or productive vocabulary.  Does she know this word from seeing it on TV or ads in papers so in context?  Will I ever look at the English language the same way again?  Have I been ruined for life to just speak with someone.  It was a bittersweet way to end the session but again a learning experience for me on how others learn our language.

TV TS#14

This tutor session with Astin occurred a few weeks ago, but I never blogged about it.

We met at my house. I had a couple animal books to look at, but he also came prepared. My animal books were very old so they didn't have much color or shiny pictures. Astin had an amazing animal book that we ended up looking at. 

I bought a dotted line writing book for Astin to practice his handwriting in. I drew up some dotted letters and words for him to trace and practice writing letters. He is so good at taking my suggestions into account. He has a lot of trouble writing an "s," even when just tracing. Due to the fact that he's left handed, I have a lot of trouble helping him and guiding him. One thing that I noticed from some of my left handed friends is that they do things the opposite way I do. So I used this knowledge to help Astin. He often writes the "s" backwards, so I told him to start from the bottom, maybe it will be easier for him. 

He did this once and it worked! He struggled with it the rest of the session, but if he really focused he could do it. I could also tell he was very happy when he was able to write it correctly, which made me very happy.

TV TS#13

Tuesday, July 28

My meeting with Nayun went VERY well this session. Last session, Nayun asked where all her work was. I thought she was talking about the old papers we had done together, but she meant new work for her to complete. So this time, I came with pictures for her write sentences about. She wanted to draw the picture. So separately, we drew pictures to write sentences about. This was her favorite activity, not that she ever said so. It's just the only activity she wants to do.

I start by writing a sentence about my picture and we trade, going back and forth a bit. I also was able to find a weakness of hers! She is normally SO good at everything I try to teach her and today I asked her to write the date. Low and behold, Nayun has trouble writing a letter "J." Honestly, I think she knew, she just had trouble with it one time...

This session went well because she was able to open up more about camp and what she enjoyed or didn't enjoy.

TV TS#12

Monday, July 27


Nayun and I met at the library again this afternoon. Her father told me that she had been in summer camp this week, so I used that as a topic of discussion. Speaking is no problem with Nayun, because she grew up in the United States. She's very comfortable speaking in English. After asking her about camp and getting nowhere, I asked her to write some sentences, but she refused that also.

I went back to what I knew: drawing. I started coloring a picture and she began coloring also. To be completely honest, I have no idea how it happened, but she instantly was opening up about camp. I have no idea what I said or did, maybe she just felt more comfortable, but I started learning all about her camp activities.

She ate cheese pizza, had lemonade, played on the playground...

I used this to draw a picture about her time at camp. When she came over to look at it, she corrected me, asking where the table was. I then had her write a few sentences about camp, modeling first, how it's done. "Nayun ate pizza at camp."
She started writing and if she dared spell a word without knowing if it's completely right, she'd look up at me right when she finished asking for approval. If I shook my head, she would instantly shake hers and erase the word, correcting it.

Mistake/error correction with Nayun is very simple because she often knows the correct spelling of a word, she just second guesses herself.

Bruce CO#3

Today I observed Ms. Ciappetta's listening class. They mostly did testing, but I got to see Ms. Ciappetta's techniques in administrating a test. She would play a sample from an audio clip, and have the students look at the questions they are to answer. She'd set a timer for about two minutes, and after it was up, she would play the clip again, and then set the timer for another two minutes. Each time, the students got to listen to the audio clip three times. Sometimes some students didn't understand what a word meant, in which case, Ms. Ciappetta explained. The word didn't give away any answers to the questions, but helped explained the context. For example, a student asked what "wallet" meant. Ms. Ciappetta attempted to explain that women tend to use purses, and men tend to use wallets. I looked at her pointing at my wallet, and she said it was okay for my to show it to the class, so everyone got to see my nebula-themed space wallet.

Chris TS#12

Yesterday I met with my child tutee Matt. We began our session by going over his homework. His assignment from last Tuesday was to write the first draft of his opinion essay. I was a bit disappointed in what he had completed. In our last meeting we had worked out an outline for his full essay. It had each of the five paragraphs outlines and the content that each one would would cover. Instead of writing five paragraphs, he just wrote on big one with no details or supporting details. We spent the first part of our session editing and re-writing his draft. It was interesting how well and detailed he wrote when I was there. Obviously just an issue of motivation. We got about halfway through the draft, and in the interest of time, we moved onto a new topic.

Next we did another one of our reading comprehension passages. Matthew was really engaged today so he read through the passage fairly quick and finished his comprehension questions without any mistakes. Next we played hangman together to review his vocabulary words. I would give him a synonym for his vocab word and he had to remember what it was before I drew the hangman. He did pretty good but I was surprised that he didn't get them all correct because he knew them so well last week.

At the end of the lesson we reviewed the remainder of the book I assigned him to read, 'Call of the Wild.' He was able to give me a decent summary of the events that finished out the story. For the rest of our session, we discussed some of the themes in the book, especially animal abuse and treatment which the book deals a lot with. We also talked about how Buck must have felt to finally get away from the captivity the humans had kept him in for so long.

Bruce CO#2

I observed Ms. Ciappetta's speaking class. On that day they were doing Powerpoint presentations the students made about their home countries. The students incorporated a lot of humor in their presentations through funny pictures of angry teachers or pictures of students sleeping. They practiced their speaking skills, with the aid of the written powerpoint. I imagine, eventually the Powerpoint would be removed so they could practice their speaking without the aid of written words in front of them.

There was one issue I noticed Ms. Ciappetta handle superbly. At the end of the presentations, there was always one student who made a cat-call whistle. Ms. Ciappetta addressed this cultural issue firstly by not naming the student. She explained step-by-step that in the USA, the cat-call whistle could be interpreted as a form of sexual harassment. Then she broke down the term "sexual harassment" and gave examples that are more obvious examples of it. It turns out, in Argentina, one woman said that the cat-call whistle is a form of congratulations people use at the end of presentations. It means "good job," and is equivalent to the non-verbal gesture of a "thumbs-up." In her country, there is no sexual connotation. However, because Ms. Ciappetta took her time to explain how this cultural gesture is interpreted in America, her students now know better.

Bruce TS #3 Marco

Today I observed Marco working with David. He focused on tongue-twisters. Although David’s speaking skills are excellent, he needs work with his depth of vocabulary. By using tongue-twisters, such as “Can you can a can as a canner can can a can?” Marco asked David what each usage of “Can” means in the sentence. By drilling him using tongue-twisters, David’s depth of vocabulary was able to go up. I was very impressed with the creative idea. 

Then Marco focused on drilling David with vocabulary cards they had been using for the past few weeks. He asked David for the definition and an example of the word in a sentence as Marco read out what the words were. When David couldn’t figure out what a word meant, Marco kept on giving him examples of how the word is used in a sentence, and let David infer the meaning of the word.  I think if a student infers the meaning for himself, the student can learn all the better, as he has to “work” for the learning himself, instead of just receiving without thinking about it.

Pam TS # 7 adults

Who is teaching whom seems more appropriate for my tutoring session with Ghadeer and Ayaha during today's lesson.  We played the Scrambled States Game but unlike the two children who played with me earlier, these adults had questions and lots of pronunciation issues.  Connecticut became Con -ect-eecut, Montana's capital became Hell-en-ie, the list went on and on as we continued to run through the various states.  How would you know where to put the accent? It reminded me of the name Cairo, Georgia which is pronounced totally differently from Cairo, Egypt though they are spelled the same.  You just have to know the word from hearing it spoken by a regional native speaker.

The game was a success for them.  They enjoyed learning new states, looking at the map and learning about the United States.  The setting afforded me an opportunity to teach them some new word too.  Maine is the "Pine Tree State" and though they are surrounded by pine trees here in Tallahassee, they did not know what a pine tree was.  I was pleased they enjoyed the game and session, but I learned a few lessons myself about the English language and how difficult it can be for others to learn it. 

Marco CO#2

I sat in Vicky's foundations class. Her TA Robin was quite helpful with the students. Vicky is a very high energized, soft spoken, smiley teacher. She seems very eager to teach and educate students. She paired off students and asked them to answer questions from a workbook and to fill them with each others' answers. The classroom was filled with posters, many of which were lists that were handwritten. I noticed then that certain words that the students were presented with that they may not have understood she put on the lists and then reviewed them with the students. Though she had a concrete plan set for the students she managed to adapt to many difficult situations, focusing on something a student may have been having trouble with. The other thing I noticed was how much she encouraged the students to speak out loud and repeat what they said no more than a couple times to ensure clarity.

Jennifer CP#5

Last night, I got together with Joel, Sean, Jacki, Bruce, Yuma (Joel's tutee and Jacki's CP), and Nedal (my CP) and we went to go see the Minions movie. It was fun going in a big group. The movie was adorable and everyone had a good time. I'm glad we got to see a movie together that was easy to follow for Nedal and Yuma. They both enjoyed it as well!

Chris CP#4

Last Thursday evening, I met with my conversation partner Abdulla. When we met previously, he was still fasting for Ramadan, so we only talked about food. He told me he really likes pizza and had only had Momo's since moving to Tallahassee. Momo's is pretty good, but I told him he needed to try my favorite pizza spot: Gaines Street Pies.

Gains St. Pies just recently opened a new, much larger location at the corner of Railroad and Gaines, so we met there. We each ordered a few slices and sat down to talk. Abdulla had just got back from Minnesota, where he was visiting family. We talked about his trip and our food came to us. I got two slices: one with basil and pineapple, the other with mushroom and artichoke. He got two slices as well: one with cheese and jalapeno, the other with fresh mozzarella which he said was his favorite cheese.

Over pizza we talked a lot about travel. Places we had been and places we still wished to visit. We talked about our families and where they currently resided. He asked me a few questions about different dialects in English because he had experienced a different in speech when he went up north on his trip. I love food, so I ended up asking him a lot about the food that his family made when he went to visit them in Minnesota. He said that he felt like he was back home in Saudi Arabia because his grandmother cooked him all his favorite dished while he was there. I'm happy for him that he has family in the states. I know a good home cooked meal can really soothe the soul!

Chris TS#11

Last Thursday I met with my adult tutee Simge. We began our session with a few questions she had for me. She was a bit confused about when to use "would" when talking in the future tense. I gave her some examples and explained when she might use it. I told her that I would bring some practice exercises to our next meeting so we could get more in-depth.

Next, she wanted me to help her with a writing assignment she had for homework. She was to write a short essay on one of the best trips she had ever been on. First I asked her to explain to me what her essay was about so I had some background knowledge. We then read her rough draft together. I read what she had out loud that way she could hear how it sounded with a native speaker reading it. She immediately caught her grammar errors. I think she did this more by hearing how the mistakes sounded rather than knowing the rules for usage. I took this opportunity to review some grammar rules with her. She sometimes has trouble with prepositions, so we focused mainly on those. She had 2 of her 3 paragraphs written and I thought she was off to a good start. She did a lot of self editing as we read through and I think by the end of it, she had a really solid essay.

We then did an exercise I had brought in which she had to read a sentence that was in the present perfect tense. There is one extra word in each sentence and she has to decide what word does not belong. This activity gave her a little bit of trouble because a lot of the mistakes in the sentences were ones she was currently making. I helped her through the task and by the end of it, she seemed to be getting the hang of it. We then did another editing exercise in which the sentence had one grammatical mistake and she had to find it and correct it. I though this was a great way of reinforcing the self-editing that we had started our session with. She must have been warmed up by this point because she did awesome!

Dylan TS#13

I tutored Andy and his cousin, Gilbert, on July 26th from 2:00 till 3:00. Gilbert is traveling from South Korea, and his parents wanted him to practice his spoken English while he was here. It seems common for Korean families to have their children study and take classes on vacation. This is very interesting to me because I would have thrown a temper tantrum as a child if I was told to go to summer class on vacation. None the less, I met Gilbert and was surprised by his English skills instantly. We played go fish again because I wanted Andy to be comfortable with the game while I tried to teach Gilbert. They seemed to like the game and getting Gilbert to speak English was very simple. The game did get a little hostile as the two relatives picked on each other and Andy almost cried multiple times. The session was good because the cousins spoke English the entire time and I got to teach Gilbert some new words. I don't know if I will ever accept a sibling tutoring session again because things got out of hand quickly, multiple times. I think both of my tutees were to comfortable with each other, which raised a lot of problems.

Marco TS#4

David and I met at the public library a week after the incident. He finished his chapter in the Giver and even did his homework of finding words he didn't understand. The entire session we looked up the definitions to the words after trying to figure them out using context clues. We then worked on some of his workbook problems. I told him which ones were wrong and now his assignment is to read chapter 2 of The Giver, find 10 more words and correct his work in the workbook. David seems to start taking his work more seriously and I feel he has a greater sense of respect for me and the assignments.

Jennifer TS#12

Friday evening was my last session with Rina. Pam and I decided to get together to have one last fun. I got there a bit early with Joel so we pulled out the whiteboard and wrote another story again. I don't recall exactly what it was about, but I do remember being turned into a ghost turtle(?) that knows tae kwon do, haha!

When Pam arrived, we all practiced some nursery rhymes and it was amazing how articulate Zoe was. Rina did well too. For the last activity, we played the States game once more before Pam handed them a crossword puzzle quiz to fill out. Zoe finished first, but Rina was able to complete hers as well.

Finally, Zoe and Rina gave us a presentation on all of the places they traveled to, showing us pictures from brochures and souvenir pins. They had a whole stack, so we could only go through a couple, but it was cute how organized Rina tried to be and how professional Zoe tried to be as well. It was a good way to end our last session.

We all got together to take a photo before we said our goodbyes.