Thomas CP #2

This week was our second week of cultural workshops. We were in the same groups, minus our Chinese groupmate. We were taught about how culture has visible and invisible aspects, being compared with how an iceberg has the tip which is visible and the body which is hidden. Using this concept, we are to mingle with our group and learn about the parts of each other’s culture. We ended up talking a bit about gender roles as well as modesty and clothing. Us TEFL students learned that while in dating in Vietnam was relatively the same as in the US, in Saudi Arabia it is quite different (courtesy of Sarah, our Saudi groupmate). According to Sarah, in Saudi Arabia, weddings are still arranged by the parents and although it’s arranged, couples can still divorce at their discretion. Also, only the father-in-law is allowed to see her face during the wedding; the brothers and any other male relative is not. Saudi women are only allowed to reveal themselves at private beaches (usually owned by the rich but can be rented). Meanwhile, in Vietnam, their traditional clothing is still worn and can even be worn to work depending on their job (such as teachers). I enjoy these workshops because I can learn things from people rather than relying on possibly inaccurate web results.

Ebo Entsuah CP #1

The cultural workshops have been awesome. The first meeting we were told to speak with the CIS students and get to know them a little bit. Being able to speak to Saeed who is from Saudi Arabia and Lena who is from Russia was awesome. We went over the worksheets that were given to us and spoke about them. These worksheets essentially told us to label ourselves in words that we felt described us. When describing we were supposed to use words that were less used compared to others. Being able to hear the words that were used by the CIS students was interesting because some of their words were a lot different then ours. I look forward to the next workshop.

Thomas CO #4

I sat in Marilyn Sohan’s 1PM class for my 4^th class observation; this time it’s her speaking class. There was also another class observer in my class who doesn’t appear to be a TEFL student. For this class discussion they talked about the morality of corporal punishment. They moved tables so they face each other while they are debating and the teacher split the class into pros and cons. She gives them 5 minutes to plan their speech based on research they did before class and also goes over the rubric. The debate starts and each side opens up their argument. They take turns explaining their reasoning, examples, and experiences. Some people didn’t properly prepare their research and the teacher suggested properly listening so they can add to their argument. After the debate, the teacher asks the class how they felt about expressing their opinions and one of the debaters had a tough time because he was arguing against his experience and opinions. Sohan responded by saying that playing devil’s advocate can actually help you because you understand the opponent’s argument and can prepare beforehand in order to counter what they are going to say. Overall, this was a pretty interesting class and I felt like I learned a lot even though the teacher didn’t talk too much.

Demery TP-5

I had such a good session today! I met with Dojun Kim for the third time, and I feel like I'm finally getting into the swing of tutoring online. In our last session, he said the sentence "I got here ago." In my error correction, I realized that Dojun had never learned about time period phrases. So, for this session, I planned on expanding on the time phrases we learned on tuesday. I went online for some inspiration, and I found a great lesson that talked about the time period phrases “for," “since,” and “ago.” I started with FOR phrases. This one was somewhat hard because they can apply to different verb tenses. Dojun is hyper sensitive to saying something incorrectly, so he is always looking for the golden rule to lesson: he wants to find the one rule that he can abide by. I have to keep telling him that grammar is contextual, and the only way to find the golden rule is through practice. Learning the “since” phrases were somewhat easier. By the time we finished our hour, he said he felt really good. He said the lesson was clear, and that he learned a lot. So, yay!

Katherine TS#3

Today was the day that I finally met with my other adult tutee, Boram Kang. Today we did a brief needs assessment and I learned that her main focus is on learning more about American culture and also learning more slang/ "SAT words" to improve her overall fluency. She is definitely an advanced student. While she speaks mainly Korean, she does use English while out-and-about, like at the store. She plans to enter graduate school to teach English (ESL) and would like to polish her skills before she goes. I was personally in awe of her drive and motivation!
She found that studying English in an academic setting in her homeland was discouraging and very tough. It was, as we discussed in class, very mistake-oriented and anything that could be marked down, would be. Kang found her overall fluency (and motivation) improved through using media like movies and music to help her learn English. One of her favorite things to do is watch American TV drama series like "House of Cards" (with subtitles on just in case of course).
Unlike my other student, this tutee likes to read for pleasure; one of her favorite authors is Nicholas Sparks. I had brought some books along with me to help gauge reading skills (A Wrinkle in Time, Flash Fiction Foward, and Reading Ethics) and she immediately went for the flash fiction book. She read two stories from it and we were able to discuss a lot of interesting words and language usage as well as differences and problems between our cultures. When discussing after we had finished the pieces, she automatically tried to use the new words she had learned (like "crusty" to describe a person). I think I will implement this in my own learning of Japanese and try to make my other tutee do this. The challenge here will be to find enough material to cover and finding good, engaging discussion points.

Katherine-TS#2

I met with my Hispanic student for the second time on Tuesday and we started in on "actual tutoring." We read a short story called "A Temporary Matter" which is a critically acclaimed piece written by Jhumpa Lahiri. It was among my favorite short stories that I studied as an undergraduate so when my tutee couldn't decide what he wanted to read, he went with my suggestion. It was slow going and he became discouraged quickly. It wasn't from the difficulty level, but rather it stemmed from the fact that he simply hates reading (and also writing which happen to be his weaknesses that he wishes to improve). As he joked with me, reading makes him "want to fall asleep." Sure enough, the further we went along in the story, the more he began to yawn and joke around. It took a lot of patience on both our parts to keep him focused on the story: comprehending it, pronouncing words as written, and tackling unknown words. Between each "pause" in the piece, I would ask him comprehension questions  and for his opinion to make sure he was following along. He has trouble pronouncing many words properly like correct syllable emphasis and a large amount of sounds (th, j/v/b, among many others). To try to make it a little more fun, for words like "the" or "jewelry," we isolated the sound and practiced it similar to a choral warm-up with sounds he could make: "jya, ji, jyu, jyeh, joe." He actually really liked this and started to do it as he read, like "she liked jya, ji, jyu-lery...jewelry." My tutee told me that he liked the story, but just hates reading so much that, despite the fact that he is embarrassed by his current skill-level and really wishes to improve, his hated of it seriously prevents him from doing so. I told him to try to find an article or two (online or otherwise) on a topic that really interested him and that I would bring different books/articles on topics of his choice for next time. We unfortunately did not get to writing this round, but plan to next time. What a session! I wish he had told me in the needs assessment about his total reading aversion!

Katherine-CP#2

I had been looking forward to this next cultural workshop after the first one. We were put into the same groups again and given a worksheet that asked us to take a hard, careful look at our cultures and decide from a word/term bank what was culturally visible and what lurked beneath the day-to-day surface. The worksheet used the picture of an iceberg to illustrate this point. My group, similar to the last time, got very swept up in conversation with one topic leading to the next. Sarah, the shyest and most soft-spoken one of our group wound up being this session's center of attention. She is from the Middle East and considers herself very traditional. She talked at great length about modesty in her culture which lead to so many interesting discoveries like beach culture (there aren't really public beaches; only the rich rent out private beaches and women can go uncovered there) and wedding traditions (only the father-in-law can see the bride's face). I did not realize that divorce is actually allowable under any conditions and a little about the process a wife can undergo to divorce her husband. She also talked a bit about arranged marriage and what she thinks of it. Much of what she said was new information to all of us and we were naturally quite curious. We also talked a bit about our cultural attitudes and how they affect promptness and the population's general conception of time. I learned so much this lesson about things I would have never even thought about.

Katherine-CP#1

I admit that I was a little nervous going into my first culture workshop class. Being in a small room totally crowded with people from all walks of life was not only intimidating, but actually a bit scary (mainly because I'm shy by nature and it can take me awhile to "warm up"). I was put into/joined a group that was more diverse than the others. One member was Min who was an intern in one of my classroom observations from earlier that day (yay! a familiar face!). The two other CIES students were both women from Vietnam and Saudi Arabia. The two TEFL students were also diverse from me. For starters, they are both male and from two different ethnic backgrounds with very different experiences growing up. It made for very interesting and valuable conversation since every single member of the group is so diverse from one another. As one of the students pointed out, it was neat to hear differing opinions on American culture. Three people, same place, very different experiences and view points. Everyone was able to find several similarities with every other person. For some, the realization that other cultures also use the lunar AND Roman calendar was very important. We all bonded over New Year traditions and the cultural emphasis on starting fresh each year. One of the students in my group was also quite shy, but all the other members were very out-going and got even us to talk quite a bit. I was impressed with how informative and valuable this short hour was. I knew going in that many of my existing stereotypes/conceptions/etc would be proven false, but no where near to the extent I experienced. Its like controlled culture shock. Everyone in my group seemed to benefit dissecting their culture(s). I am so glad I signed up for this!

Thomas CO #3

I sat in Kyle Kaminski’s 11AM reading class for my 3^rd class observation. The man doesn’t act any different from when he was introducing the cultural workshops as well as during them. He is very friendly and speaks with a loud booming voice (I would compare him to a lion if he was an animal). He also likes to joke around with his students a lot. Regarding the class material, he had the class go over a worksheet that was about candy and broke the students into groups to discuss the questions; he wanted them to pay particular attention to the second questions which was about what candy is known in their home country (I think). Right after breaking into groups, he greeted me and invited me to take part in the discussions but I preferred to take notes. He had the class build a vocab words they didn’t know and explained words such as “citric acid” and “stateside”. He did give unusual examples such as explaining that absorbing is when a pen enters his body when sponge absorbing water would have been a better example. All in all, Kaminski’s class was pretty fun and although I woke up 15 minutes before class started I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep in his class.

Thomas TS #3

I met with Father John for the second time at his house. We went straight to reciting the Roman Missal, which I learned that that’s what they use at his church, no Bibles or any other books. We recited more lines from the Roman Missal. Again, he has a noticeable accent but I can understand him without major problems, and there are words that he has problems pronouncing. I think the biggest challenge for him today was getting him to make a ‘v’ sound; I think this is because the ‘v’ sound doesn’t exist in Korean. Halfway through, I decided to change things up a bit: I would have him read a sentence the first time so I can hear his English without correction, read the sentence myself, and he would repeat after me. If there is still any pronunciation errors after that, I would focus on that. He still has problems with plurals and some words like saying ‘death’ as ‘dead’. Overall, this session wasn’t too different from the previous one and I discussed with him that I want to focus on other fields such as writing and listening.

Thomas TS #4

This is the second time I met Astin. This time around, however, he was less cooperative and paid less attention than last week. I suggested reading some of the Dr. Seuss books that I brought but he said he could read it at the library and pulled out some books that taught spelling and letters instead. I decided to play along since he was more interested in that. He kept the book to himself and said he can read it himself and I slightly chastised him, saying he has to learn to share since that’s not a nice thing to do. We read a few of the books and eventually moved over to Pinocchio. Even though he chose the book, it was too hard for him so I had to help him read the majority of what he’s supposed to read and we only got through the first 4 pages before time. His mom told me that he might have been too distracted with the TV since he was watching cartoons before I came and that she’ll do something about that. She also suggested bringing games and puzzles next time I come, hopefully it’ll keep his attention.

Demery CP-2

The second cultural workshop went by so quickly! I find myself getting lost in the sheer variety that is represented within the workshop. I was somewhat tired today, but I was so happy that I got to sit with Ankita and Hassan again. Although Hassan seems to be the more talkative of the pair, Ankita is incredibly verbose as well. We spoke about our cultures and went more in depth to the root causes of why we do things. Ankita told me about her 85 year old grandfather, whose punctuality has him up every day at six AM. Hassan told me about the mandatory nature of Islam in Saudia Arabia. Finding the connection between Hassan and Ankita’s holy month was really interesting. I may have been so engrossed with the cultural conversation, that I forgot to do error correction today. I need to find a way to balance constructive criticism with cultural exchange. 

Demery CO-1

On June 28th 2016, I observed my first classroom lesson. I wanted to view a class that taught listening skills, because my tutee has expressed that his job requires him to have good listening skills. The listening class was very interesting to sit in on. I wasn't really sure what I was getting myself into. It turns out that there is a really great website which provides many TEFL lessons that have different learning levels at learningenglish.voanews.com. The instructor also used a youtube clip for the main lesson. The lesson consisted of an english speaker talking about the history of ceramic art. There were multiple fill in the blank questions on the board about the spoken information. It was up to the students to fill in the blanks. It was interesting to see the student’s dynamics within this setting and the ways in which they interacted with the assignment. Some students were confused, some were engaged, and some seemed disinterested and checked out. I feel as though I learned so much more through observing the students in the classroom, and I was able to identify with the beautiful struggle of learning a new language.

Demery TP-4

On June 28th 2016, I met with Dojun Kim for the second time. He had mentioned previously that he wanted to work on his listening skills, so I devised a listening activity for him. Sadly, Skype is a weird medium of connection and the listening lesson didn't exactly work out. I had planned on us reviewing the audio clip together, with me pausing a certain points to help him out. Because he needed to exit out of Skype to listen to the clip, we couldn't listen to it together. The lesson was about the recent events in the UK with the Brexit. My plan was to discuss the current events in the UK and then to watch a news clip about Britain’s reaction together. Because we couldn’t watch it together, I had to re-devise the lesson plan. I ended up doing informal error correction on his grammar. I also have begun sending notes from our session for him to work on. Many of the errors I correct are things he is aware of. He just isn’t used to using them in his everyday speech. I’m gonna send him some review materials. 

Ebo Entsuah CO #2

For my second observation I was able to listen in on a upper-level listening class. Students were given a series of stories to listen to and to understand. After listening to the story students were told to talk about the story and obtain a better grasp on the information given. Students were then given a worksheet with multiple questions that had to do with the story that was read. Students took the rest of the class time in order to answer those questions (in English and in complete sentences) and were done for the day. I noticed that while students were able to understand for the most part, being able to put their thoughts to pen was the tough part. They usually had questions on how to say certain things and how to put words into action.

Selene TP-4

My third session with Soongyu went well. We decided to begin meeting in a smart room in Strozier rather than the noisy coffee shops of our previous meetings. For homework, she wrote a summary of the Newsela article we had read together the previous session. Her writing ability was significantly lower than I expected. Since she is an FSU Visiting Scholar and her reading aptitude is very good, I thought her writing skills would be more advanced. Her summary was very unsophisticated in nature and had quite a few grammatical errors. The way she structured her paragraphs was very formulaic (to begin with, first, second, to conclude) and she repeated the same points a few times. It's obvious to me now that this is the area where she is weakest and thus we should focus on it more. However, the only activity I have come up with so far was writing the incorrect sentences on the board and talking through the mistakes. I think she felt this was beneficial but it is not my strongest suit since I have not studied grammar in a long time.

Selene TP-3

This was my first tutoring session with Matthew Hong. It did not go as smoothly as I had hoped. Matthew and David Hong are twins and they seem to have acquired some pretty bad habits. Although Matthew was more cooperative than David, he still did not hesitate to display his annoyance and dislike towards having to be there with me. He groaned and moaned at any suggestions we made (Jamaal and I attempted to group-tutor the twins, even though were were warned over and over this was a bad idea), and resisted any activity we set up for him to the bitter end. When I convinced him to pick out a book he liked, he chose a Star Wars picture book with hardly any writing. I conceded on the condition I dictate to him the words in the character's depictions and he write out my narration. He begrudgingly did so, acting as if the exercise was far beyond the scope of his ability, all the while begging me to abbreviate every word so he wouldn't have to write it out. Tutoring Matthew will be a challenge but I think separating him and David will go a long way in terms of increasing productivity in future sessions.

Selene CP-1

One of the things that really struck me about the cultural workshop was how multi-layered the instructors' approach was. They were able to achieve many different levels of English practice for the CIES students as well as cultural education and teaching practice for the TEFL students. We were able to get a very natural, interesting conversation going in our group and form some new friendships as well. The format seemed to work very well with little or no input from the instructors, which I imagine is really helpful as a teacher when you are working full-time. Another thing I liked was the playful, lighthearted atmosphere that the instructors brought to the classroom. I think this really does facilitate learning. When we learned about this phenomenon in class it made sense in my head, but seeing it in practice has really cemented the importance of student comfort and confidence in the context of their learning experience.

Ebo Entsuah #TS 2

I was able to sit down with my student and work on reading, comprehension, and writing today. I gave him 5 different new words that he had never seen and told him to learn them and remember the definitions. I then went over simple exercises in order to help him understand the words better. I would show him the definition, synonyms, sentence structure, and a paragraph with the word in it. By the end of the exercise, he was able to precisely tell me about these words and what they mean. He was also able to use them in different sentences and identify different synonyms that were presented with the words. I gave him homework and told him that he would need to write a paragraph about these words and effectively use them in a different context.

Ebo Entsuah CO#1

For my first Classroom Observation, I was able to watch the foundation level speaking class. The students in this class do not know how to speak English well and were slowly learning. Although you could tell they were struggling, they were extremely energetic and eager to learn as much as possible. The instructor was working on sentence structure, consonant pronunciation, and verb skits and examples. Students were put into groups and told to create a dialogue using certain vocabulary words. This is where i noticed some difficulty. Students liked to go on tangents and started to talk about things that did not pertain to the task at hand. They would talk to their friends about other things and not about the work. In the end however, they all got their work done and were able to finish and learn. One of the main things I learned while observing is that explaining is EVERYTHING. Being able to properly voice your lesson plan to your students is key if you want them to learn.

Matt Zanis CO #1

          For my first classroom observation, I went to a Group 2A Grammar class taught by Isaiah Kraus. The first thing I noticed was how small the class was. I asked him about it after class and he told me part of it had to do with the fact that it was summer but even despite that the max class size is normally 15 people. For this particular class, the topic was Definite and Indefinite Articles. He used the Inductive Teaching method as he first quizzed the students by asking them to place the correct article in the missing spot in the sentence. He did this through a really cool website called Kahoot.com. The students were able to log in through an app on their smart phones and respond electronically. If I'm in a teaching situation with the resources to use this site, I definitely will. He finished the class by lecturing the various rules and passing out a paragraph in which the articles missing and asking the students to fill in the blanks. Throughout the lecture I also really noticed the emphasis he had on using hand gestures and visuals to assist in communicating to the students. They really seemed to respond to the additional information provided and appreciated it. 

Matt Zanis CP#1

         For my conversation partner requirements, I have been taking part in the cultural workshop organized between both the CIES and TEFL programs. Outside of the three fellow TEFLer's in my group, I was joined by Maria from Columbia, Naumann from Pakistan, and Salem home country seems to be escaping my memory at the moment but I will be sure to include in my next post. The first thing we discussed was just the simple greeting and the differences across cultures. When talking about it with the group it seemed to me that the American greeting was much more impersonal. Just a simple hand shake and "how's it going?" with no real answer expected. As in the other cultures the greetings were accompanied by either a kiss on each cheek, or simply cheek to cheek. The other difference we spent a lot of time talking about was the trend for American children to leave their families at the age of 18. It was something I had never really thought of as strange but our fellow group members were astounded by it. I really enjoyed the first work shop and look forward to next Tuesday.

Matt Zanis TS #1

         For my first tutoring session I met with David Hong at the Leon County Library. The first thing I did was have a short chat with his mother to discuss any specific points she wanted me to focus on. The one thing she mentioned was reading comprehension, so to start I had David select a book that he found interesting and had him read it to me out loud. For the most part, his pronunciation was good, only struggling with the occasional word but every time I pointed out a mistake he was immediately able to fix it with little to no help from me. To work on comprehension, we would stop every few pages and I would ask him questions to ensure he was understanding the book rather than just simply reading the words. The one issue I did notice is that David really does not like to elaborate on his answers but rather just short responses barely answering the questions. To work on this next session, I will be showing him short video clips and have him either write a detailed description or have him write a passage describing what he thinks will happen next.

Katherine-CO#3

On Wednesday, after my speaking class observation, I also observed a level 2A listening class. The teacher jumped straight into the lesson which was to take Cornell style notes on a listening passage. He slowed the audio down by 10% and took notes on the board in said style while the students listened and double checked their notes. At the end of the audio, he went over some common English note-taking abbreviations like "w/" and "&" as well as how to use bullet points and arrows, etc to connect ideas. Many of the students were frustrated with the difficulty of the listening assignment and how their notes didn't match a lot of what he had taken. He replayed the audio and asked a few questions about it (like how to summarize vs describe the passage) and some questions from the book(true or false questions, going over crucial vocabulary). After this, the students began to fret over being quizzed on it the next day. One student said that without the teacher's notes he would not be able to answer anything. The teacher tried to be encouraging, stating it takes a lot of effort and time to become fluent, it was the first assignment of this new level, and emphasized how far the student(s) had come. The teacher decided to change the quiz from the listening assignment to an easier listening passage that had been the final exam for the next level down. One thing I really liked about the class was that essential vocabulary words were listed on Quizlet with pictures, definitions, and example sentences. I can see how it would be such a great study tool!

Katherine-CO#2

On Wednesday, I did my second classroom observation. It was of a level 2A speaking class. I noticed many of the things we have talked about in class such as Asian students talking less often, but more accurately, and more Hispanic/Middle Eastern students talking more often and confidently. I also noticed that (at least in this class) the women talked much more than the men. The teacher intentionally slowed her speech and simplified it a little bit. She often asked the class questions about what words/phrases meant and tried to give ample speaking opportunity to all of the students whenever she could. The entire class was supposed to start on a presentation about an aspect of their culture so most of the class was spent discussing the project instructions and also analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of an example presentation done last session. In this class, only a few students were really attempting to speak often-basically two girls-and with the exception of the teacher walking around helping students decide on their presentation topic, most of them simply sat and listened (although one was always on the phone and she was always having to tell him to put it away). For a speaking class, it seemed strange that most of the students were content not to participate for whatever reason. I'm not sure how in a classroom situation I would deal with this. The teacher in this class kept giving opportunities and only the two students were taking them. I wonder how to get around such a problem?

Demery TP-3

I met with Astin for my second time on June 24th, 2016. I was prepared for the talkative boy I had met last week, so I was surprised when he acted quite shy when we met. It might have been because we met later in the day, or because he had already met with Tom earlier. Regardless of reason, Astin was quiet to begin with. My lesson today was a simple reading lesson. I brought the giving tree, and Astin and I read it together. Astin is so good at reading words he already knows, so much of the book was easy for him. The book does have words of higher difficulty, such as “whispering” and “gathered.” I made sure to read those words, but I also managed to sound out each word before saying them. I also quizzed Astin on these words. At the end of the book, Astin and I went through the pages and wrote down each new word he could now read/pronounce. We made a list of 11 words, and he was so proud! Next week, I’ll probably incorporate writing into the lesson. 

Demery CP-1

On Tuesday June 21, I attended the first session of the cultural exchange workshop. It was kinda funny because the whole class was there. So, I assume that the students might feel somewhat overwhelmed by the sheer mass of english speaking TEFL students. If they were overwhelmed, they didn't show it. I sat in the middle with Ankita and Hassan. Hassan was such a talker! He had information about Saudia Arabia, and he said that he normally gets 24 hours of sleep. I don’t know if I believe him, but I’m not one to judge. When I told him, I was lucky if I got 6 hours of sleep, he said that was a measly nap for him. I still can’t get over that. The workshop itself was very enlightening, especially when it came to how our culture’s differed across the world. It was also kinda hard to correct everyone’s grammar. Correcting someone is so engrained with rudeness in our culture. I have to put that behind me at our next session. 

Thomas TS #2

I met with Astin Kim, his mom Boram Kang, and Astin’s grandparents (who I mistook as his parents) for the first time. Before meeting with them, I checked out some Dr. Seuss books from the Goldstein library. I wasn’t too sure of his English level but I felt that Dr. Seuss books would be appropriate since this is what I used to read when I was his age. We read The Cat in the Hat today. Although he hadn’t read it before he had seen a copy with French as well in the library at his school (which I also saw when I was at Goldstein). I was impressed by his reading skills and there were only a few problems such as him mispronouncing “saw” and arbitrarily replacing words in the story. He was fairly cooperative, although there were points where he didn’t want to read a page because he had just read the one before or he ended up skipping lines. I had to regularly compromise with him by reading the page after or splitting the page in order to get him to read, but I think I might need another solution. Thankfully he was really talkative so it was easy to make some small talk and crack some jokes with him and he even gave me a hug after the session (my 5-year old niece would never do that). Oh, and Demery, I didn’t see his ferret nor did he make any mention of it. I guess it might have been upstairs sleeping or something.

Thomas CO #2

I sat in Candace Warmka’s 9AM grammar class. Compared to my first class observation, this one feels much simpler; for one, the work done in class was all on PowerPoint slides rather than worksheets/textbook pages. She starts class off with a bell ringer activity (a term I haven’t heard since middle school) which was to identify the infinitives in a list of sentences. After giving the students time to work on it, she goes over them and also identifies other parts of the sentence such as the object, subject, and predicate. Next, she introduces gerunds and does an activity which involves completing sentences with gerunds. She then demonstrates the different usages of gerunds, such as as a subject and as an object and afterwards challenges her students to convert a list of infinitive sentences into gerund sentences. Candace’s teaching method seems a little more advanced, but not that far up. Throughout her lecture, she really goes in depth with all the sentences and how the grammar rules fit into them. One thing I noticed was her speaking speed was a little faster than Marilyn’s which could possibly result in difficulties in the students understanding her. However, aside from that, I feel she does a good job at teaching grammar rules.

Selene CO-3

For my third class observation, I sat in on Angel's Listening class (4A). I was very impressed with the high skill level of listening comprehension that Angel's activity required. To begin with, Angel quizzed everyone orally and individually on vocabulary they had previously learned. These were sophisticated words like "favor", "competitive", and "property." After that, students listened to a set of about 10 questions on the topics of economics, free enterprise, and intellectual property. They were asked to jot down key words in the questions and then find out the answers in their textbook as a group. Once that was done, they were to go to the computer lab and submit the answers to Blackboard. Angel said he grades the answers based on content, not grammar. Similarly, on several occasions he passed up the opportunity to correct speech errors. As I understand it, this is because at this level/class the focus is on listening and comprehending the larger concepts rather than having perfect grammar. He also explained that, as a teacher, you have a lot of things going in your head at once during a lesson, and it is not always practical to correct every error.

Demery TP-2

On Thursday June 16th, I had my first Skype meeting with Dojun Kim. Due to the time difference, we met at 8:00 am. Meeting over Skype was somewhat difficult due to connectivity issues, but we made it work. As Professor Kim said, he is incredibly eager to learn. He has studied English in high school as well as some classes in college. I spent the first meeting simply trying to test his productive/receptive skills. He seemed to understand everything I said, only stopping me once to clarify an idiom I had used. His job requires him to have good listening skills and comprehension. He also stated that he wanted to work on his grammar skills on “constructing a perfect sentence.” I’m attempting to devise some good activities that can occur over the internet (worksheets are somewhat out of the picture). I’m thinking, due to the nature of his job, listening sessions will be really helpful for him.

Thomas CP #1

Cultural workshops started this week. I can tell that the cultural workshops will be a fun way for the TEFL and CIES students to meet and learn about each other’s cultures. I enjoy this rather than the International Coffee hour that I used to go often, as people would often gather with people that they already know and this kills the purpose of the event. The cultural workshops have worksheets with ready-to-ask questions for the CIES students as well as a web chart for us to fill out about ourselves. In my particular group, I was with students from Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, and China. Although we might have done the activity differently than what was instructed, we got to know each other and my only complaint was the time constraint. I was surprised when I learned from the group members that Saudi Arabia uses the Lunar Calendar. I had already known Vietnam and China used the Lunar Calendar but I didn’t know that a country in the Middle East also used it. Another surprise was that unlike Vietnam and China, Saudi Arabia doesn’t celebrate the New Year. I hope to learn more new things like this from these events.

Thomas TS #1

I met with my adult tutee Father John at his house this morning. Maybe this is common for people in a foreign country, but he seemed somewhat shy for someone much older than me. I didn’t have anything planned as I wanted to scout out his English skills. We formally introduced ourselves and we made some small talk in his kitchen. From our conversation, I learned that he had moved to Tallahassee a few weeks ago and his level is either HE or AE, however I can tell he is a very motivated man. He is also from Kwangju, South Korea and he has 2 siblings and both parents. Afterwards, he wanted help reciting the Roman Missal. We recited the text together and I felt he did a good job. Despite a thick accent, I can understand him well enough and I focused on the more obvious pronunciation errors (“supper” instead of “suffer”). He also doesn’t pronounce plurals sometimes, either because he forgets or it’s tough. Overall, he seems better at reading than speaking English. So far, this is a unique and interesting experience and I enjoyed my time with Father John. I foresee good things in our future sessions.

Thomas CO #1

I sat in Marilyn Sohan’s Listening class. She introduced me as well as a new student and after that, she asks the class how to navigate to BlackBoard and perform tasks such as submitting homework. She speaks slowly enough for the international students to understand and the students do their best to answer her questions. She also goes over a listening log assignment where the students are supposed to watch an American movie and answer some questions. She then goes over the lesson material with the class. For this particular lecture, the topic is related to soccer. Before jumping into the exercises, she goes over the vocabulary very thoroughly. She asks the class what each of the vocabulary words means, such as retiring and each student tries his/her best to answer. The class then listened to an audio clip and she broke students into groups to answer questions. She also makes sure to get students focused on English by encouraging them not to use their native language in class. This class was very interesting and I feel Marilyn Sohan is a good example of what an EFL teacher should be like.

Sofia CP #1

Yesterday was the first cultural workshop! It was a great experience I enjoyed meeting the CIES students in my group. The class was a great way to connect with students and help learn more about new and different cultures. There were many things I learned about greetings in other countries, specifically in India where if you great someone who is your elder you should touch there feet and you would receive there blessing. And in Saudi Arabia where two men who are very close would great each other by touching there noses together. Overall it was a great experience and I look forward to more class meetings.

Sofia CO #1

Class Observation 1


Today I observed my first class, it was a group 4a speaking class. Coming into the class I expected a high level of fluency. Also I learned so much more than I expected too! When the class first started I thought it was great and should be accounted that the teacher, Angel Rios, started the class by speaking about an assignment that the students had recently completed. Giving encouraging feedback and praise to the students assignments and great effort. Then he moved on to giving an explanation on a new assignment that the students have to turn in. A power point presentation on there passion or passions, I really admired that he allowed the students to choose to speak on a topic they enjoyed rather than one assigned to them. This class was a really relaxed setting as well, it was an intimate class with there only being 12 students, who attended that class and the teacher. Some of these students previously had the teacher in other courses and were comfortable addressing him by his first name. With all the students being college age and older I think this connection between a teacher and students is important. Overall it was a great experience and I enjoyed observing the class

Gabriela CP#1

Yesterday was the first cultural workshop. I really enjoyed meeting Rosana, Ahmed, & Mohammed. The questions we were given to discuss were interesting and helped shape the group discussion. Having to answer specific questions provided a good environment for getting to know others and learning about other cultures. I've had several conversation partners before and while it was a great experience, I also enjoyed the structure of the cultural workshop as a change. The only thing I would change for next week is to have less TEFL students in the group. There were 4 TEFL students and only 3 CIES students and so I think that we ended up talking a lot about American culture, and I would have liked to hear more from the CIES students. It was a good experience, though, and I'm looking forward to the next one. 

Gabriela CO#1

I observed Andrew Wilson's Listening Class for Group 1 students. During the class time, everyone talked about what they like to listen to, and Andrew encouraged them to listen to English movies and music in their free time to build up English skills. The lesson was about the W questions. First, Andrew went over the five W questions. Then we listened to a dialogue. He assigned each student a W question and they had to write down the who, what, etc. of the dialogue. He introduced the concept of main idea vs supporting details. Then we went over some new vocabulary and watched a video several times that used that vocab. There was a fill in the blank worksheet, and the students tried to fill in the dialogue from the video. As class ended, Andrew stood by the door to collect the worksheets and asked students a question before they could leave, to see if they understood the lesson. It was helpful to see how all the concepts and examples that we have been discussing in our class play out in a real classroom setting. Andrew was a good role model of how to engage all students in classroom participation. 

Selene CO-2

My second class observation was of Rebecca Turk's grammar class (3B). The class consisted of a very fast-paced review of verb tenses. The lesson was much more jam-packed than my first CO (Reading 2A) and Rebecca covered an entire chapter's worth of material within 50 minutes. Her teaching style is very energetic and she focuses on high speaking volume and enunciation, pausing frequently to engage students and introduce any low-frequency words that may be unfamiliar. This was the last class period before the students had to take an in-class quiz on the material so she explained the format of the test in detail. She was very explicit in which components would be present and encouraged students to take a picture of the verb tense formulas she wrote on the board in order to do well on the quiz. Throughout class, Rebecca had students formulate sentences in small groups to practice verb tenses. She then wrote the sentences on the board and the class discussed what the errors were. The students' grammar and spelling proficiency was inconsistent and my impression was that her quiz must be very forgiving. Otherwise, it seemed like the class's average might be very low.

Dennis CO#3

            On my way to the 2:00 Listening Class 1A, I greeted Mr. Andrew Wilson in the hallway and introduced myself. After briefly meeting him, he politely asked me if I would mind sitting at the middle desk so I could engage with the class, and I happily obliged, quickly meeting several students from a variety of nationalities. Mr. Andrew started off the class with a recap from an earlier page of the text. The lesson started with a thought-provoking exercise where students were encouraged to think about what they do before they listen, while they listen, and after they listen. Then they were asked to discuss as a group, and Mr. Andrew wrote suggestions from the students on the whiteboard. The next activity really showcased Mr. Andrew’s teaching ability. He told a simple story of what he did over the weekend, including many specific details sprinkled in that he quizzed students on after the story was over. It was a simple story but the questions were just difficult enough to provide an appropriate challenge for their skill level.

            An interesting strategy he used to motivate students, keep a level of interactivity, and lower affective filters, was to let a student ring a desk bell when the class was moving on to a new item on the agenda. It woke everyone up a bit and gave the student ringing the bell a simple moment of joy. The next activity was about meeting someone new, and we discussed common questions that people ask. New vocabulary words were introduced, such as the interjection “Amazing!” and the phrase, “to look forward to” and “appreciate your effort”.

The last activity was Active Listening, where an English speaker was heard from a recording. The recording was played twice so students could listen once, and then take notes on the second time around. Towards the end of class, Mr. Andrew went over how to log into blackboard and view grades and the syllabus, which was briefed over for students who were new to the class. Students were given a chance to read sections of the syllabus, and the expectations for the class were repeated. It was so nice to conclude my third class observation with another exceptional teacher who cared for their students, and who demonstrated great patience and diligence, as well as educational expertise. 

Dennis CO#2

           I sat in on Leslie Wagner’s Speaking Group 3A and she had me introduce myself to the handful of students in this section. She started class by going over the Agenda Notes, essentially the syllabus for the course. Ms. Leslie reminded everyone of the Cultural Workshop the next day, and she had the students discuss –in pairs– the discussion prompts. She encouraged the students to not just think about the surface of the question, but rather, explore the deeper cultural reflections and share a diverse range of traits that make up one’s identity, including their goals, personality, family relationships, food-preferences, habits, and life pursuits. I took the time to write out my own answers to these questions to better prepare for the cultural workshop. For about 3 minutes of writing answers, the class had about 3 minutes of discussion. Ms. Leslie took notes and corrected spoken grammar mistakes and fielded questions about proper phrasing.

            Some questions were more difficult than others, and when discussion slowed down, Ms. Leslie came by to push them to think a little further and a little more critically. She encouraged them to ask why? Do greetings change with gender? Family role? She reminded them that they may have to explain what the issue is if they have differing cultural expectations, and that some cultures have a stronger ethnic identity than others. She of course modified her speech to be clear and understandable, being careful not to use idioms or complex speech patterns. Like Kyle, she was very kind and afforded everyone respect and received it in return.

Dennis CO#1

My first class observation was at 11:00 on Monday, in Kyle Kaminski’s Reading Group 3B. When he first entered the classroom, he greeted me and several of his students with a friendly rapport that brought down the affective filter of the class, and made students feel more comfortable with engaging in conversation during the class period. He started off with a quick recap of lessons from the week prior, a reading log that students would update daily. Mr. Kyle asked a student when the reading logs should be due. I found this tactic to be interesting, as it gave one student the responsibility to choose a fair due date for the logs, and it turned out to be a reasonable timeframe for the assignment.

            He passed out vocabulary worksheets to go along with the reading, which came from Great American Short Stories. First we discussed a picture from the story selection “The Romance of a Busy Broker”. Students would follow along and stop him when they came across an unfamiliar word. One of these was “dug” and he explained the simple, past, and past participle of dig, dug, and dug. He was very enthusiastic when moving from reading, to question, to correction of the question phrase, explanation of the word, and back again to the reading. He asked students questions about the story, and plucked vocabulary from the text. He would correct small mispronunciations plainly, and he helped coach students to figure out the words by inferring from the text. He was a great teacher, and had a great, respectful class.

Katherine-CO#1

Today I went to my very first class observation and I learned so much more than I was expecting to! The class I observed was an advanced level reading class taught by Professor Flemming with the help of his intern, Min. Perhaps it was due to the class being at an advanced level, but the philosophy we have been learning in class that teachers should be more like coaches was fully demonstrated here. For the most part, this reading class was based on partner work. It made the class very interactive and I could see that all of the students were engaged and interested in the material because of this conversation/discussion component. Instead of focusing on the mechanics of the piece, the teacher facilitated discussion about the topics and encouraged students to express their opinions and thoughts with one another. The assigned reading was on bio-criminology so very interesting questions like nature vs nurture were open for debate. I learned about the SQ3R method of reading-survey question and the 3 R's (reading, reciting, review). The value of recitation was emphasized in the class as it serves like teaching someone else; the best way to learn something is to teach it. All of the students found value in this process and were eager to discuss it in class. The teacher and his intern would circulate during the discussions, offering help through context clues and "stirring the pot" with questions and points made by other groups with other groups. I liked how both the instructors would offer vocabulary definitions by showing the students how the word was working within the context of the article and through examples over giving a dictionary definition. Facilitating conversation seemed to be the main goal of the class and it seemed to be very effective with the students and created a comfortable, friendly learning environment.

Lora TS#1

I met my adult tutee, Ahmed, for the first time last Saturday.  I have to say that I was quite nervous about the impending tutoring session from the moment I had scheduled it with him earlier in the week.  I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to help him or answer his questions, I was afraid of my lack of knowledge on specific grammar terms would be apparent, and I was nervous that he might be a lower level student and not be able to understand me very well - you name it and I was worried about it. 

On Saturday, I looked over my needs assessment handout prior to our meeting and decided that I was not going to allow my fears to overtake me and just try to remain present.  Upon meeting him I explained that I was brand new to tutoring and asked if it was ok during the session for me correct him, to which he was agreeable. I began asking him questions from the needs assessment and let my genuine curiosity come out as well as my desire to help and just like that, my worries and anxiety started to melt away.  I had a wonderful time getting to know Ahmed as well as helping him. 

During the session we went over his weaknesses and things that he would like to improve upon.  Creating this list took some of the pressure that I had felt off of me because now I had a direction to create lessons for our future sessions.  I had learned through the course of our conversation that he didn’t speak much English outside of class so, for homework I gave him the assignment of starting a conversation with at least one person outside of his English class. 

Overall, I was impressed at how well he spoke English after learning he had only been studying it for the last eight months.  I did notice that he struggled with verb tenses and I was able to correct him and he usually understood why it was wrong rather quickly.  Some of the grammar correction just came naturally to me, such as when he would use the wrong verb tense and I, with no premeditation, asked “excuse me?”  And some, well, let’s say did not come naturally and I had to resort to looking it up on my cell phone.  I really appreciated Ahmed’s patience with me when I needed to look things up or take my time explaining something to him.  It gave me a sense of confidence realizing that I, just like Ahmed am learning and that it will take time to build this skill and that just as Ahmed was being patient with me, I have to be patient with myself.

Jamaal TS#2

I met with Ahmed yesterday for the first time. He's at FSU only to learn English, and after, he'll go to a university in Indiana to get a Master's in Political Science. He is pretty knowledgeable about current events but reads the news in Arabic. So, I've already decided one of his first assignments is going to be reading a newspaper article. We spent most of our time learning about each other and our backgrounds. He explained his weaknesses in English so I gave him a confidence test in order to capture how he feels about his own English skills at this moment. He definitely underestimates his current level of English but I believe that's a normal feeling people have when they're learning a new those required pilot courses. However, he plans now to get his Masters and go back to work in Saudi Arabia. The courses he takes at CIES are Group 3 and above so there's plenty of evidence to say he has an intermediate level of understanding English. I look forward to our future sessions and the progress he'll make.

Jamaal CO #2

I observed Candace Warmka's Listening Group 1b class earlier today after the Speaking class. It was interesting to see how she changed up the lesson. They initially went over the syllabus and then started a dictation warm-up. The dictation warm-up turned out to take up a good majority of time as students had trouble listening to unfamiliar words. Candace remained attentive to students questions and comments throughout the whole class. Prior to starting the dictation warm-up, she went over vocabulary words that students had started to study from the past week. The warm-up involved listening to a clip of Kung Fu Panda and filling in a worksheet with vocabulary words the characters would use within the context of the script. At first, she didn't use visuals and only used audio. This allowed the students to focus on listening rather than processing two streams of information at once (visual and audio). We didn't get to Chapter 1, which was the next topic on the class schedule, due to time constraints. After class,  I asked how she came up with vocabulary words for the students to learn and she said that she used words that she herself knew come up often in text and conversation. I thought that she was both insightful and intuitive at the same time. Overall, the class was awesome and definitely a great learning experience.

Jamaal CO #1

I observed Candace Warmka's Speaking 1B class today and it was definitely a learning experience. The first thing she did was start a class discussion about what students did over the weekend. I really enjoy her style of teaching because it's very direct and dynamic at the same time. She makes a ton of hand movements and speaks very clearly to make sure students understand what she's saying. She also went around the room and made a note of students' errors so that she could go over it with them later. The schedule for today was:  warm-up activity, discussion about culture, partner interviews. However, we never got to the partner interviews due to the rest of the activities taking up too much time. All of the students participated in class, which came as a surprise to me, since I assumed they'd be nervous to speak English. They blew away all assumptions I had when they engaged in some deep conversation after class. It was a truly a refreshing experience.

Jamaal TS#1

I met with my tutee, Ki Woong Cho, a little over a week ago. He seemed to be well-versed when it came to vocabulary and the correct verb tense. He had to go back to Korea for a short-time so I'll be continuing my sessions with him over Skype. While talking with him, I noticed that his pronunciation was off on more than a few words. It's difficult for him to pronounce "l" and "r", but that seems to be a very common problem for Asian learners. He wanted to become a teacher ever since he was in middle school. When he became one, he learned that the prestige of being a teacher isn't as much as he had expected. So, he decided to go back to school and focus on Public Administration. Ironically, he was an English teacher but in South Korea, he told me their main focus was grammar. It was difficult to practice speaking when scoring high on tests were critical to a student's future success. He wants to become a professor now and hopes to make a larger impact on students' lives. I hope that my help can allow him to achieve his dream.

Ebo Entsuah TS#1

Tutoring Session 1

Friday I met with my adult tutee for the first time to assess his skill level and what he needs help on. Ahmed did a really good job with speaking and reading especially since he self-assessed himself as being maybe 40% comfortable speaking English. I asked him to answer questions I asked by first saying them in sentences, then writing them down. I would then look at the sentences and make notes on whether or not they were correct. He did really well but I noticed that spelling some words were tough to him. I believe this is due to the fact that some words sound the same but are spelled differently. For instance spelled weakness as weaknece. I gave him homework and told him to find 5 Academic words he did not know and to write 5 sentences with them and learn the spelling. Looking forward to meeting with him again.

Sofia TS #1

Tutoring Session 1

Today I meet with my adult tutee for the first time to assess her skill level and what she needs help on. She is in both group one and group two classes and is more of a beginner student. She communicates great through messaging and her vocabulary and writing skills are very good. Were she wants help on is in compositions but I tried to stress fluency. She does well in comprehending but needs more practice in conversation. We read an essay from previous material, where she read it out loud, and I am looking for articles for us to review next week and ask comprehension questions on.  
Overall it was a great tutoring session, and we made plans to go bowling this Friday, for a chance to interact in a non academic setting.

Katherine TS-#1

Today I met with one of my adult tutees to assess his skill level and discuss what sort of weaknesses he would like to address in his sessions with me. He is an advanced level student, able to communicate clearly and effectively with little accent as well as understand topics well beyond the scope of daily conversation. His reading is choppier than he would like and he struggles with reading some of the bigger, less common words. While he can comprehend what a given piece is saying, it takes him longer to read it than most and it is still a bit of a struggle. Unlike his speaking, or even reading skills, his handwriting is illegible and he struggles to form letters, spell words properly, or use  proper grammar. As he says, "once I pick up the pencil, it all goes out the window." To help with his reading speed and smoothness, we have decided to select several passages from two flash fiction books I own. Flash fiction is a very short (a paragraph to several pages long) genre that is often more artistic and poetic than the typical short story. This will help challenge his reading comprehension, introduce him to new vocabulary words and new, innovative ways of using words he already may know, and help provide the practice he desires. To tackle his beginning writing skills, we will be using a beginner writing book that will help him practice forming letters and spelling out common words.

Gabriela TS#1

Today I met my child tutee, Seoha, for the first time. She was very shy and quiet, but seemed to understand most of my conversation. Her mom said that speaking and writing are the areas she thinks Seoha should work on. Seoha is only five but she already knows the alphabet -- she easily and accurately identified all the letters I showed her, which is  pretty good for any 5 year old, native speakers included. Even though she seemed to understand most of what I said to her, her productive vocabulary seemed much weaker. She answered every question with only one or two words, though it was hard to tell if that was simply because she is shy. I asked her a lot of questions to see how much she could understand, and then I read her several books, pausing to ask questions about the story or to test her comprehension. She seemed to enjoy the books and was very attentive. She is a really sweet girl; I think the biggest challenge will be finding ways to draw her out and get her to talk. 

Juliana TS-1

     My first tutoring session was last Thursday with a woman named Soonkyou. We met at a Starbucks and chatted over fruit and tea. I did not have any specific lessons planned as I just wanted to get to know her and decide her level of English speaking skills. I was surprised by how fluent she is. There were minimal mistakes in her usage of the language. Her pronunciation needs work but other than that, she is a very strong speaker. I am excited to get writing samples from her and compare those with her speaking skills.
     I'm not sure if this is relevant for these blog post assignments but I would like to share that I like her! Soonkyou is a cool lady! I was impressed by how accomplished she is. She has a good job in South Korea working as a professor in Social Welfare. She is very knowledgable about an array of subjects and she is very sweet. I personally find her life fascinating. I'm excited to have this opportunity to make international friends. I am constantly learning from my tutees while I am tutoring them, which is awesome.
     We have plans to meet next Thursday and I am going to go over verb tenses and some American cultural norms with her. yay!

Selene CO-1

My first classroom observation was of Victoria Davis' Group 2A Reading class. I found it extremely helpful and interesting to be able to watch an ESL teacher in action. Victoria's class inspired the activity I did with my adult tutee later that day and both her and I really enjoyed it. Victoria taught the students the SQ3R method (Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review) for reading comprehension and then had them put it into action. The activity consisted of reading a short passage on the topic of mummification in the SQ3R sequence. She first taught the class to look for key terms, which were signaled by bold or italics lettering, and then had them implement the steps of SQ3R. Throughout the class she clarified questions on content as well as vocabulary, writing any new words and their definition on the white board. She was very engaging with the students throughout the class, asking them about their daily lives and making conversation. She made sure to enunciate very well when doing this, asked students for clarification when she did not understand them, and did not hesitate to gently correct them when they mispronounced something or made any grammatical errors.

Selene TP-2

My second tutoring session with Soongyu consisted of a reading assignment. Since we are both interested in social welfare and class inequity, I searched online and found this article which explores the effect that surrounding neighborhoods have on low-income teenagers. I explained the SQ3R (Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review) method to Soongyu and then I asked her to read the article. I gave her one minute to skim the article and then I asked her to formulate any questions she might have about it at that point. Since she is a social studies researcher, her question was whether the study was done in a scientifically correct way, and what the findings of the study were. She then began reading the article in its entirety, pausing when she did not understand something and discussing it with me. She did not have much trouble with the reading and pronounced it to be an "easy" level for her. I found the article on Newsela, which allowed me to choose the level of difficulty of the reading. I picked 1070L, which is equivalent to "medium" difficulty (7th grade, 849 words) because I thought it would be better to begin with something that is too easy rather than too hard. Next time, I will increase the difficulty of the exercise.

Selene TP-1

My first tutoring session with Soongyu consisted of getting to know each other and finding out what her interests and goals were. I asked her questions that let me know what she hoped to gain from our sessions and allowed me to plan our time together accordingly. This interaction led me to find out that she has a high level of understanding of written English, as she is a visiting scholar at FSU, but she feels weaker in the areas of listening and speaking. She is highly educated and her area of study is social welfare, specifically class inequity. I also learned that she does not plan to stay in the United States long-term but intends to move back to South Korea with her husband. However, her husband is American and she finds it frustrating not being able to speak English with the same level of proficiency as him.

Demery TP-1

I had my first tutoring session with my child tutee, Astin on Monday June 13, 2016. I met both him and his mother before working with him. We read from his textbook and did some reading comprehension exercises. Astin is very smart, and holds his knowledge with pride. I learned that this pride tends to stand in the way of being open to learning new things. If Astin ever encountered a word that he did not know, he would substitute it with one that he did know. I am trying to devise a way in which me correcting Astin doesn’t make him feel bad. I found that breaking words down into their simple components was helpful. Astin didn’t know how to say the word INTO, so I broke the words down into IN and TO, and I think he understood. I did the same thing with AFTERNOON. Astin is also very talkative, and it’s hard to keep him on track. This is something his mother specified was necessary for him to learn. Also, he has a ferret, he is very proud of said ferret, and he will rub said ferret on your leg (fair warning Tom).