Lora CO#3

I did my third observation on July 7^th in Victoria Davis’ 2a composition class.  I really enjoyed this observation.  Victoria was very welcoming and made me part of the class by introducing me and having me engage with the class.  They were working on sentence structures.  The class was put into pairs and one pair had to write one half of the sentence and then they would switch.  Victoria would go around the class and look at the papers and do error correction.  They also had sentences on the board and had to make corrections if needed and then they went over it as a group.  It was good to have a model to watch after making all these lesson plans including error correction and then actually seeing error correction in action to help make it clearer.

Lora CO#2

I did my second observation on June 30^th in Isaiah Kraus’ 1a reading class.  He told me that it wasn’t going to be the most exciting class to observe since this lesson plan was him reading a story to the class.  He gave me a book to follow along.  I noticed him keeping a slower speech rate for the students to follow along occasionally stopping to ask comprehension questions.  

Lora CO#1

On June 23^rd I observed Felicia Ciappetta’s 1a grammar class.  I wanted to see lower level students because I am nervous about teaching people who don’t have great command of the language yet and might still have some barriers to communicating.  I noticed how she slowed her language down and enunciated for them to follow and realized this is something I will have to work on as well as toning down my vocabulary.  In the beginning of the class they had a quiz and I noticed the three boys to the left of me cheating and trying to get the guy across the table to help and he did a little albeit reluctantly.  This was all after Felicia had told them not to cheat in the beginning.  I think it was a good thing for me to observe and to understand that this might happen and think about how I might deal with it.  I talked to Felicia about the incident later on and got some good pointers on how to be culturally sensitive and deal with the issue. 

The rest of the class we spent having conversations about what we did over the weekend and about the place where we come from using the grammar guidelines she gave.  I was partnered with a man from Portugal and I really enjoyed talking with him.  I’m glad I watched this class as I felt a little more comfortable with lower level students.

Lora CP#5

I met with Jayoung for our fifth meeting on July 24^th.  We went to Canopy Roads Café for Sunday brunch.  We had determined last time that she would be gone on vacation and wouldn’t be able to meet again before my deadline for conversation meetings was up.  I was glad that we had spent extra time to make up for the sixth session and this last visit was no exception.  She ordered the funky monkey pancakes and I wanted to have an omelette with just a little bit of pancake and she graciously offered to share her order of pancakes as she admitted to having eaten a little earlier and really would like to share.  While we waited she gave me a gift from her tourism office in Korea.  It was given in a special bag that is traditionally used in a ceremony where children ask for money.  Inside the bag was a mirror with a beautifully decorated pearl front.  It was very sweet of her to give me this gift.

When the food came I shared some of my omelette with her and she said she liked it better as a meal rather than the pancakes.  She enjoyed the pancakes but they were a little too sweet as just a meal.  I always find that interesting people from others cultures finding our cuisine too sweet and find that Americans are very much more into things sweet/bread items – I think we tend to have sweet tooth’s here in America.  I also looked over one of her school presentations and helped her with a little error correction and why it needed correction which made us go over time.  We quickly gathered up our things and headed out to my car as I was giving her a ride to her church since her and her husband share one car and I know how challenging that can be – coincidentally buying a second car happened to be one of our topics during our meal. We took a nice ride and out to Killearn and I dropped her off and she was extremely appreciative of the ride, I’m glad that small act could be that meaningful to her.   

One of the things that really stood out to me during this meeting was when we were nearing the end of our meal she said that she considers me not just her conversation partner but her friend and that even though this is our last required meeting that she would like to continue to spend time together when she gets back from vacation.  I was really touched and the feeling was very much mutual.  I am really glad to have had this time to develop this friendship, learn about each other’s culture and differences and also learn that in some ways we aren’t all that different.  

Lora CP#4

I met with Jayoung for the fourth time on July 21^st, at the community center where her daughter was going to watch a movie.  We sat in the lobby area and talked.  She brought me some traditional Korean gimbap that her husband had made and it was delicious!  She apologized that the rice was too dry but I thought all of it tasted amazing.  It was ham with pickled radish and egg, rolled in rice like a sushi roll and it was sooooo good!  We talked about me finding a restaurant for her to try with her family as I had yet to find the right one and we decided that the two of us would try the Melting Pot together next time they had a special for ladies night.  We spent time talking about her upcoming trip which we had talked a little bit about last time at our last meeting.  They had decided to expand a trip to the Smoky Mountains into a trip up to New York while stopping at places like Atlanta, DC, and the Smokies along the way.  Since I had been to NY in the last few months I shared my experience and offered some suggestions for lodging, food, etc. 

I also had asked her last time to think about a critical incident and share it at our next meeting but she didn’t know of one but she did relay her surprise about having workers over to the house.  In Korea you don’t wear your outside shoes inside and you don’t wear your inside or bathroom shoes outside.  She was amazed and I think a little weirded out when she had workers (cable I think) come to the house and walked right in with their shoes on.  I told her I could understand her surprise and how that might be a little off-putting.  Again, we spent more than an hour together and really enjoyed our time together.  

Lora CP#3

I met with Jayoung for the third time on July 14^th.  This time we met at Books-a-million as we had discussed last time.  She felt silly saying it but she loved the smell of books and I understood what she meant and so we agreed that would be our next meeting place as she hadn’t yet been there but wanted to go.  When we were there we talked for a bit in the café and then she wanted to find something to read that she would find interesting.  I took her to the magazine section to get an idea of what she might like since they have it sorted by interests and the stories would probably be fun and easy for her to understand.  We determined that she wanted more of a book and wanted something nonfiction probably with short stories.  I asked for help from the sales clerk in recommending something along those lines but the ideas didn’t quite seem to fit.  I thought about the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and took Jayoung over to them.  Once we got in that section and saw the types of books where there, she said how she really liked reading things about positivity and inspiration and I knew we were in the right place.  She said that they had the Chicken Soup books in Korean as well and were familiar with the series.  She made note so she could order it off of Amazon when she got home.  We again enjoyed ourselves and ended up spending over an hour together again.  

Lora CP#2

I met with Jayoung for the second time on July 7^th.  We met at a Starbucks near her house.  We talked about all sorts of things like what a typical American evening routine looked like and what hobbies I liked.  We talked about what an evening routine looked like in Korea.  We talked about married life and found we had some similarities and common ground.  We really enjoyed ourselves and spent just a little over an hour and a half together after both realizing we had other obligations to attend to we went our separate ways.

Lora TS#14

I had my third session with Astin on July 29^th.  We met at the main library this time and he was super excited as he loves coming to the main library (we met at his house and the Stone building previously).  I think it was a good choice to choose a place that made him excited and I think we should continue to meet here.  His mother had brought some new workbooks for us to work with.  We spent the first half doing phonics work and he seemed to struggle with knowing the sounds – he could sound it out but when deciding that it was a short e, i, o, etc he seemed to feel unsure about it.  We will continue to work on this in the future.  The second half I let him pick out a book and he wanted me to read to him.  I read to him while he followed along and stopped and asked comprehension questions every so often.  There were a few moments throughout the session that he seemed to want to unfocus but I was able to bring him gently back into focus or redirect.  He seemed to engage in our session and I think the keys to keeping him engaged are to gently redirect or refocus him when needed, take his input into consideration and allow when able (so it is a two way street and he feels part of the team), and to notice when it is time to shift focus to another activity before he shuts down.  I really enjoy working with this sweet and enthusiastic boy.    

Lora TS#13

I met with Ahmed for my 6^th and final time on July 24^th.  I was sad about it being our last meeting as I had thoroughly enjoyed my time working with and helping him progress with his English learning and just getting to know about his background/culture and him in general.  For this last session we worked on some exercises for perfect modals and gerunds that seemed to click with how, when, and why to use them and cleared up the confusion he was having.  We also worked on future perfect vs continuous perfect, he was able to have a better understanding it really seemed to solidify for him.  Overall our sessions together were varied but quite often involved grammar usage.  He seemed to understand things quickly once I found the thread to pull it all together for him.  I feel like he had improved in many areas during our time together including speaking as well as feeling more comfortable with speaking to native speakers.  I was glad to be a part of that process.

Lora TS#12

I met with Sylvie for my 5^th and final session with her on July 24^th.  I was so sad this was our last session as I really enjoyed my time with her.  It was such a wonderful experience overall and I will miss it and her.  For our last session we went over her vocabulary list and I quizzed her.  She wanted to hear me pronounce the word and then she would say the word herself to get the right pronunciation, then she would tell me the definition and I would help make the definition clearer for her.  This seemed to help solidify the understanding of the words for her as well as the correct pronunciation.

Lora TS#11

I met with Sylvie for the 4^th time on July 16^th.  During this session we did some work with some online pages for minimal pairs and continued the pronunciation work on the h/th/t sounds.  She has really improved in this area and I was glad because it was one of the things she was really worried about and was counted off for in her course work.  I continued to overemphasize the tongue placement and worked on her getting used to the muscle memory of making those sounds and I think this is what really helped solidify this for her.  We also worked on a and an as we had noted last session to do for this one.  We worked on some online worksheets together to really help solidify when to use a, an, or nothing at all.  She seemed to have a better understanding after we finished.  

Lora TS#10

I met with Ahmed for our fifth session on July 16^th.  We worked on perfect models, gerunds, and infinitives.  I was struggling to find information on this topic originally but we looked at it and where what exactly he was getting tripped up on.  The infinitives became clearer for him by the end of the sessions but we made note to come back to the models and gerunds for next session.  

Lora TS#9

I met with Astin for our second visit on July 15^th.  I had bought some phonics workbooks as we had determined last session that is what we needed to work on.  We sat down and worked on a few pages.  I chose one and then I let him choose what he found fun for the next page – which was a word search.  The third page was another word search and in the middle of it I found that he was starting to check out and was done with this activity.  I quickly shifted gears to get him reengaged and we started reading the book I had brought with me.  We took turns reading every other page and I stopped and asked him questions about the pages I read.  His mother had to stop us as we had gone a little over time.  She commented on how he doesn’t usually do that and how he is usually done with tutoring and usually asks to stop.  I’m glad that I could keep him engaged and entertained.

Lora TS#8

I met with Sylvie for the third time on July 9^th.  During this session we looked over a questionnaire she had to design for her course.  We went over it and looked at the errors and I looked for patterns of where she was having trouble as well as making corrections as we went along.  We noticed that she had trouble with a and an and made note to work on it next session.  We also continued to work on her pronunciation especially on the h/th sounds and the t words like tank - we were able to make good progress with notable improvement.

Lora TS#7

I met with Ahmed for the fourth time on July 9^th.  We worked on his presentation for the entire time.  He had a new direction for it as the parameters he originally chose didn’t really work for what the presentation was to be about.  We went over the slides and looked at the errors and I helped him understand why the errors were incorrect further solidifying correct grammar usage.  I also looked at the content and the message and we worked on making it clearer where it needed to be.  Overall he did a good job and I think that working on the presentation I was able to work with the patterns of his problems. 

Lora TS#6

I met with Astin, my child tutee, for the first time on July 5^th.  I found the needs assessment to be a little more challenging with a child as they aren’t completely aware of where they struggle.  He did tell me that sometimes people can’t understand him and he seemed sad about it.  I asked him what he does when they don’t understand and he says that sometimes he uses other words.  To assess where he was skill wise, I did a variety of activities.  He wanted to draw something and I let him and we ended up turning them into boxes where I had him write answers to questions that I asked him such as what is your favorite food, color, birthday, etc.  He struggled with writing his letters backwards which I think is in part due to him learning Korean at the same time.  I also had him read from one of his workbooks and answer comprehension questions.  Due to how he read some of the words it was determined that we needed to work on phonics next session.  His mom relayed to me at the end that he watches cartoons and that she thinks that might be part of the reason people don’t understand him is because he models things from the cartoons.  

Lora TS#5

I had my second tutoring session with Sylvie on Saturday.  We went over her presentation that is due this Tuesday and mainly worked on pronunciation.  We went slide by slide and I had her read it aloud to me.  When we found words that were troublesome, we stopped and spent some time working on them.  Due to her first language, which is French, she has trouble with th sounds and h sounds.  She also has trouble with words like bill with the double l’s.  I was glad I had a background in French so I was able to recognize where her first language was interfering with learning English.  I over exaggerated the tongue placement for the th sounds and made mention to the kind of tongue placement she is used to with her first language.  This seemed to help her and she seemed to be able to better pronounce the sounds.

Lora TS#4

I met with Ahmed for the third time on July 2^nd.  We talked about the presentation topic that he needed to work on for class and I helped clarify what it was he was looking to do.  He wanted to talk about how the religion of Islam, his religion and family connect and potentially relating it to America.  He showed me some sources that he was using to site his sources and I discovered that they weren’t really the right sources for what he wanted to convey.  I helped guide him in the right direction and then we spent the rest of the time working on speaking and developing his fluency.

Lora TS#3

I met with Ahmed for the 2^nd time on June 25^th.  We determined last time that he needed help understanding the contraction I’d.  I printed out some sheets with the guidelines on when it was I would or I had, etc.  He found those very helpful.  We also did some exercises online for I’d and he seemed to grasp them and have a better understanding of when and how to use I’d.  We also worked on his pronunciation of words and helping him have a better understanding of past perfect.  All in all he seemed to have a better understanding of everything we worked on and felt more comfortable with the topics that we went over.  

Selene TP-14

Matthew and I had a great session today. Our lesson was based on metaphors and similes which is fun for me because I really enjoy poetry. Also, I think these re great because they encourage the student to think creatively and get a little silly. Matthew hates writing but adding a component of fun and creativity makes it seem less like work. He came up with some really awesome metaphors and similes and we joked that he might become a famous poet someday. I think these sessions are becoming less like a chore for him which was one of my goals. I worry that he might be a little overworked between summer camp, swimming, and multiple tutors. I brought in some stickers to give him as a reward, which he loved. His brother was very jealous. Today we were able to have fun while also practicing grammar and writing.

Selene CP-2

The second cultural workshop was very interesting. We were given a worksheet with a picture of an iceberg which represented the different layers of culture. We talked about which parts of culture are obvious to the naked eye and which are not. We also talked about the layer that is deepest within the iceberg: the reasons why. This is the most interesting part of talking about culture to me. I love discussing with the CIES students about why they think certain customs are the way they are. I've found that, even though I usually have a guess in my mind, it's usually wrong, i.e. not the same as what the native person believes. A lot of misconceptions have been shattered throughout this session and I have been able to form some friendships which would have otherwise been unlikely.

Selene TP-13

Lu Zheng and I met on this day because she needed help with her speaking presentation. She made her presentation about marriage and couples and ways to improve one's romantic partnership. It was a very cool and interesting topic but her sentence structure and grammar were not very good. At times, it was hard to understand what she meant. Other times, I thought there was a simpler or clearer to convey what she meant. I tried not to nitpick at everything because I know she is only a beginner, but it was hard because I knew her classmates and teacher would have a hard time grasping her point if she didn't change some things. I made some suggestions, which Lu took really well. I spoke with her after the presentation and she said her classmates loved it and it went very well.

Jamaal Gill CP #6

This was two days after we had final cultural workshop. There were many students that didn't show up today from the CIES classes. I think this has something to do with how religious holidays fall on the calendar. Anyways, we had to work on our project for our countries. Actually, the TEFL students helped the CIES Level 3 Speaking classes with their projects. It was something that only the students from Leslie and Kyle's class were doing. I was under the impression that all of the Levels had to do some final project but it varied between classes and the teachers' preferences. Unfortunately, we had to remove Saudi Arabia from our project because one of our students left early. I was really looking forward to seeing that one but thankfully there are still other people from Saudi Arabia. We made the preliminary progress on trying to figure out which of the projects we wanted to do. How we want the poster set up and if we wanted to add pictures. We meet again next Monday and students present it next Tuesday in the conference room. I'll definitely be there to see their final work.

Jamaal Gill CP#5

Today, I came in a little late but later found out that we have been given group projects. The main thing I was worried about here was the attendance of everyone because that's the main issue with group projects. We had to figure out what exactly was going to go on the project and the different behaviors that are expressed through our cultures. Our countries were Burkina Faso, USA, Vietnam, and Saudi Arabia. The one that really piqued my interest though was Saudi Arabia. It was an extremely surprising experience and it has been because learning about Saudi Arabian culture is just so different from ours. They view the world a little more extremely but are so nice when you actually talk to them contrary to what our media portrays. I hope to be able to learn more about their culture so that I can spread the idea that they are not so different from us. Throughout the entire cultural workshop, Sara who is from Saudi Arabia, has given us all such a different outlook on life. Even Ahmed, my tutee, hadn't told me about the different cultural norms and behaviors over there. This was all possible due to the cultural workshop presenting good topics for us to talk about and learn more from each other.

Selene CP-6

This was the last time I met with the CIES group. Our goal was to finalize the presentation poster and we more or less accomplished that goal. Fortunately, all of the group members were present at the last session, including Hanaeh. We merged her culture (Saudi Arabia) with Sayyid's (UAE) because she showed up so late in the process. They both assured us that their cultures were similar enough and we would not be remiss to put them together. Since Lina was the one in charge of finding and printing the pictures for the poster, we made sure that she understood what each of the words or phrases we outlined on the poster board meant. This also ensured that the other group members were on the same page and would be able to communicate the concepts to people on presentation day.

Selene CP-5

On this day, our group worked on creating the outline for the presentation poster. Since we had already had plenty of discussion over the topics for the presentation, putting everything together was easy. The topics we focused on were Education, Religion, and Greetings. We decided to mimic the format of a previous poster that Kyle showed us. This consisted of a three-part venn diagram. Ours comprised the countries of United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and United States of America. We jotted down key aspects that our cultures had in common as well as some differences. Because Lina and Hanaeh were absent, we had some difficulty recalling facts about their countries. We determined that their task would be to find and print the pictures to go along with these words in the venn diagram. I think this was an excellent way to cap the workshop series because it allowed us to use the skills we used throughout the session and come up with something tangible.

Jamaal Gill CP #4

Now today we talked about behaviors in the classroom which tend to be very similar to American cultures. There was one exception, Saudi Arabia. Between Burkina Faso and Vietnam there tended to be many more similarities to America culture, but Saudi Arabia was a different story. The schools there are separated by gender and the behavior in the classroom tends to be much more formal. People work alone in Saudi Arabia and there's less group-oriented work which is gives a very interesting perspective on the mindset of the contemporary Saudi Arabian. One of my other tutees, Ahmed, who is from Saudi Arabia, believes in the work of individuals. We've talked at lengths about how it's difficult sometimes to empathize with the problems of the west because the cultures are so different. Yet, at the same time, Saudi Arabia is becoming more westernized every year he tells me. So the different variations of perspectives you can learn about are so vast. I actually felt a little ignorant by how little I know about other cultures. Then in Vietnam, the kids in primary school have to raise their hands in a very formal manner. However, this isn't used again later on in Vietnam higher education. America which embraces diversity doesn't really make the effort to teach the public about all of these other cultures.

Jamaal Gill CP#3

So today I was absent from class due to a motorcycle accident but I was told what we did that day. We basically talked about stereotypes that people have about certain groups of people from different cultures. It didn't seem like my group talked that much about this though probably because I wasn't there. I tend to be the more outgoing and fearless one when it comes to starting controversial conversations (I'm just an open person). Anyways, one thing I can talk about is my assistance with the CIES students with their projects. Katherine and I worked together with them decorating their projects with pictures of America, Vietnam and Burkina Faso. Then the CIES students are going to talk about the many behavioral and stereotypical differences there are between our cultures. It was a very rewarding experience.

Jamaal Gill TS#16

As the last session with David, I decided to reward his "hard" work with a session of fun. So I let him watch a movie on my laptop, and he had to take notes on that and write a summary. This was quite easy for him to do since he liked action packed movies like any other kid his age would. I let him watch some clips of Fast and Furious 7. He enjoyed it more than I thought he would. Now, why would I show him such a violent movie? Well, if you've actually spent some time with David, he plays and watches so much more violent shows than that. So I didn't feel as if it weren't age appropriate either. However, I have noticed that with many kids his age now, they have become very desensitized to violent movies or derogatory music. I think that's just the change of social norms. As time goes on, more socially unacceptable things or behavior become more accepted (gays, women's rights, civil rights, and so on). Although, even after accepting all of these things, there were still social issues but at least now people had more control and freedom over their lives. The last thing I told his mother was that he has so much potential but he needs to learn to try and motivate himself to get his work done. Also, I told her about his love for computers or rather just video games. So, I suggested to her that he try and learn how to code. It's something that's become trending among kids his age. Many current computer programmers and large tech companies are making large strides in trying to reach as many kids as possible to teach them how to code. Coding is going to be such an integral part of our society in the future and I believe it's best that David starts young. That's only if he is interested in it though. Anyways, at the end of our conversation, his mother asked me if I could tutor him again before I leave. I couldn't help but say yes, she's too nice!

Jamaal Gill TS#15

I met with David today and we watched a few nature YouTube videos. He was particularly "tired" today, and wouldn't stop behaving so cranky. I don't understand how he can choose a video to take notes on and then feel so unmotivated to work. His notes today looked intentionally bad as if he didn't care whether he was writing properly or not. Anyways, I made sure to practice his note-taking skills but I think that it's pointless unless he's motivated. He hasn't really been motivated for many educational material which is understandable at that age. I wasn't too interested in school at that age either but at least I got my work done in a timely manner. I worry for him a little too much maybe. He's taught me that I need to have patience when dealing with kids his age. I feel like teachers have a higher tolerance level than most parents would care to admit.

Jamaal Gill TS#14

I met with Ki Woong Cho again today and it was another rewarding experience. We have decided to keep meeting every Friday morning over Skype in order to keep practicing his English skills. He comes back to America a little later in the year around September/October but he wants to really improve his pronunciation with these lower frequency words. We had another talk today about the overall state of affairs in Turkey with the military trying to overthrow the government. As usual, I am surprised by the perspectives of people from different countries. When you look at history, it's written by the winner usually. So, that leaves so many different views and versions of the same story that I've been hearing since I was young; "America is the greatest country in the world" or "America must always be the number one country". So, I tried to explain to him how our history is taught over here and after much discussion we came to a mutual understanding. He also explained much about the South Korean government and that the history is very similar to America's history due to the amount of influence we have had on their society.

Jamaal Gill TS#13

Today, Ahmed taught me about the political and social structure of Spain. It is something else! So I always knew that Saudi Arabia was ruled by the Saudi family but I didn't know that there are only 23 families that make up the true Saudi population. Ahmed told me about the issue of interbreeding over there and that it became such a problem that blood tests had to be involved. The person second in line to the throne is the nephew of the current King. I wonder how much animosity there must be for the King's real children. I can imagine there's always so much controversy and drama surrounding this royal family. I think that's something that not many contemporary countries can empathize with. There's not many King's left that are still actually ruling their country. All of the rules and laws of the land comes from this family. There are no different laws for different provinces or cities. There is only one. That's too fascinating for me where we have so many different little laws or regulations per city that you travel to in America. I wonder how easy or maybe how difficult it would be to enforce the same rule structure throughout all of America. So far, most Saudis can't complain with the ruling of this family because they have tended to be leaning towards progressive policies and are starting to become an integral part of the international community. It brings me great joy to see the happiness Ahmed has for his country and its future. I'm not sure I've ever felt that way about America.

Demery TP-11

On July 14, I met with Astin at the Stone building. Astin seemed distracted, and not so interested in learning today. I asked him if he was tired, and he responded that he had met with his other tutors that day. I could tell that he was tired of doing the same repetitive lesson. This has happened multiple times; I have prepared a lesson for Astin, and I unknowingly plan the same lesson that his other tutors have prepared as well. On top of that, by the time that I meet with Astin, he is already burned out from the other tutoring lessons. Luckily, I was able to improvise and find something that Astin would find interesting. I had a worksheet that dealt with writing skills and reading comprehension. Astin had to guess what the picture was and then write down the word that he believed it to be. Even though he was tired, he seemed engaged with the activity.

Jamaal Gill TS#12

Ahmed and I met again for the fourth time and we had another talk about politics. He seems to enjoy it a lot and we can cover so many different modes of learning. We can read the article and then write something about it. For instance, I had him give me notes of the first few paragraphs and then write a summary using those notes. He could listen to me as I read it to him paragraph at a time so as to not overwhelm him down with too much translation. Then we could both read the article and then talk about it. This option tends to be the best in my opinion because it keeps him on his toes the whole time. He has to reply to my questions in a timely manner while at the same time making sure to respond with the correct grammar or verb tense. That's something I will say Ahmed is really good at. I have noticed his speaking has gotten better. He is understanding more automatically than having to interpret everything he just heard. I can tell it's a much faster response than before.

Jamaal Gill TS #11

Ahmed and I met for the third time today and we went over some newspaper articles again. This time these news articles were about more Trump issues that were in the news. Like I said before in the past session with Ahmed, but it surprises me how he views many of our policies over here. He thinks that Americans would be similar to how they are in the movies. He broke a ton of stereotypes he had of Americans that many other Saudis still have. I tried to explain to him that America was similar to Saudi Arabia in the way they approach stereotypes. Maybe that could've been attributed to all humans. Anyways, the lesson consisted of him reading this newspaper article and asking me questions about it. There were words he didn't know or certain expressions he's never seen used in context.

Thomas TS #16

I met with Astin for the last time. Because of my busy schedule I didn’t have too much prepared for that day but thankfully we were meeting at Astin’s place so I was able to much use of the material he had at his place. We read a book called Cats’ Night Out which is a counting book for someone around Astin’s level. Throughout our session Astin learned some basic phonics rules and he learned how to read the words for numbers such as eighteen and twelve. Behavior wise, he was a docile but he was shown to be distracted rather easily. However, I managed to keep him attentive with some interesting definitions of some of the words that he didn’t know. At the end of the session, he gave him a final reward for being cooperative throughout our sessions; a strawberry-flavored hard candy. I kind of wished I had focused on writing and reading comprehension today but I have a lot going on my plate this week.

Thomas CP #6

For our final cultural workshop, the CIES finished their projects and they held their cultural fair in the conference room on the first floor. As a spectator, I floated around and read each cultural fact that the students listed for their country. I saw a lot of information for different countries such as Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Ireland, India, etc. It was a very interesting experience because I learned a lot of different facts, such as the fact that the north of Saudi Arabia is mountainous and snows compared to the arid south and that the majority of Indians speak Hindi regardless of their religion. These type of experiences help open our eyes to foreign cultures and the CIES students get to be able to test their public speaking skills on a topic that they know so much about. Six of us met up with Kyle at the end of the event and we each gave our opinions of the event and he thanked us for coming out.

Ebo Entsuah CP #6

For the last culture workshop everyone met with their groups in order to go over last second changes in the CIES students projects. I was able to help my bring pictures they could use for their project. Saeed was also tasked in bringing pictures as well but he forgot. Everyone got along really well and was able to get most of the work for the project done. I was not able to make it to see the final presentation so I was not able to see. I really hope the presentation went well and they did a good job. I've been really impressed with how far my group has come since the beginning. I hope they will be able to take the things they have learned here and use it in the real world.

Ebo Entsuah TS #14

Today for our last tutoring session Ahmed wanted me to come and watch his cultural presentation in the cultural workshop. Watching him explain his culture and speak on Saudi Arabia was incredibly interesting and enlightening. Learning the difference between his culture and ours was something that gave me incredible insight and would help me to acclimate better in the instance that I would find myself in Saudi Arabia. I have had the greatest pleasure of teaching with Ahmed and I will be keeping in touch with him when he leaves for Ball State.

Katherine-TS#8

Yesterday, I met with my Hispanic tutee again. He had requested a war story so I brought along the only one I had in print called Kattekoppen. It has a lot of technical military language (howitzer, lieutenant, etc) and some Dutch words/accents in it as well ("goot" for "good," "hoeffer" for "however," Kattekoppen). Its a very sad story with many layers of meaning that go beyond just the surface of the war going on. During our session, we got about halfway through the story (about 10 out of 20 pages, but the print is somewhat small). We had to stop frequently for word pronunciation and meaning. It was definitely on the more intensive side of things, but my tutee was very engaged with the material and didn't seem to mind. To help prevent fatigue, I would read chunks of the sentences first, then have him read after me. It helped him preview how a word was pronounced and hear it in context before tackling it himself. We also worked on minimal pairs with words like "variety" and "thus" as they come along in the story. I think it was due to his engagement in the story, but for the first time, he actually stopped me to ask questions and summarize things instead of the usual, other way around. I did not have to pull teeth this time; he seems to finally be starting to enjoy reading. I keep telling him that he just has to find the right things to read, and reading will be fun. For "homework," he is supposed to write a small summary of the story so far, keeping in mind what we reviewed the last time he wrote (no random capital letters or commas for the most part). He has his incorrect and corrected draft of the previous piece he wrote for reference, and said that that would be helpful enough for him to use as a guide. Next lesson, we will finish the story and discuss it. If there is time, I will correct the writing sample with him during the session.

Katherine-CP#6

Our last culture class met on last Tuesday. Our group spent most of the time simply planning the project. On a piece of paper, everyone discussed what they would like to cover for topics. These included customs involving romantic relationships (engagement practices, PDA), community (how close everyone is/sense of community), classroom behaviors (raising hands, getting the attention of the teacher, etc), as well as guest/hospitality customs. We were supposed to originally have three CIES students in our group, but it wound up being only two. I went to help them on both Thursday and Monday with the poster board. On Thursday, we gathered more information on what they would like to talk about, plotting the board layout, and finding pictures. On Monday, they were supposed to have typed and written out their topics for us TEFL student to review, but they had unfortunately not started on the written part yet; they had only found more pictures over the weekend! We spent Monday frantically cutting out pictures and titles, then gluing them to the board. I glued what remained down after the two CIES student had left for class as they were running behind. I really hope they were able to finish the project on time and that they did well on their presentation!

Thomas CP #5

We had our penultimate cultural workshop on the 19th. Kyle briefed everyone on the project that the CIES students would be working on. Apparently, our respective groups are supposed to showcase cultural differences, which can be classroom culture, romance, hospitality, etc., between our countries and the CIES students are to present in a career fair-type fashion. We received an outline on how the project is supposed to be made and after a few minutes of figuring out what to do started listing topics on what to talk about. Our countries are Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Burkina Faso, and the US and as we went through the list we asked the CIES students something that is particular about that certain topic to their culture, such as the 90 degree hand raising in Vietnam and serving tea in Burkina Faso. The brainstorming activity was really fun and it allowed us to get an objective perspective of our own culture.

Ebo Entsuah TS #13

Today, Ahmed and I went through homework that I had given him previously. I had him watch a video on genocide that was going on in the east between Buddhist monks and Muslims. He had asked to do this subject because it applies to his major, political science. I made him watch a 45 minute video on the video, transcribe as much as he could, write a paragraph on the main point, and write another paragraph on his opinion and what he felt could be done to solve the issue. I was extremely impressed, not only was he able to properly transcribe the script of the video, he wrote an immaculate paragraph describing the summary and although the opinion portion had some errors, the main idea was incredibly detailed and resembled work of someone who had prior experience in the English language.

Ebo Entsuah TS #12

Me and Woo went over the homework that was given. He brought me various articles linking football and CTE together. We decided to look over these articles, speak on them, and then I had him write down paragraphs about the main idea of the article. I also told him to use quotes from the articles and cite them as well. He was able to write a couple summaries explaining why there may be a link between repeated head trauma from football and CTE.

Ebo Entsuah TS #11

Today me and Woo did various writing exercises in order to get his creative juices flowing. I gave him various scenarios to talk about how he would react to them. These scenarios varied from how he would prepare when having to talk in front of many people. To conducting a interview. I made sure to let him know that he had to use business language when writing and not write like he was talking to a friend. We did this for around an hour before I gave him homework and told him to find an interesting sports article to me.

Ebo Entsuah TS #10

Today me and Ahmed did some political reading and tested reading comprehension. We took a look at various articles that talked about the recent coup attempt in Turkey. I gave him a bit of a time limit to read each one and had him find main points in the articles and other information that he thought was relevant. He was then instructed to write me a paragraph on the main idea of the article and then another paragraph on his opinion of the incident. After we had a short discussion about different political issues that were going on in the world at the moment.

Jamaal Gill CO#3

Students are preparing for their projects that they'll be turning in. This is a level 4 class though so they are doing a different project than we are working on in the Cultural Workshop. These level 4 projects are much more challenging and somewhat equatable to a college assignment. It's given to prepare students for moving on to English universities around America. Pokemon-Go was a major topic of conversation amongst the students in this class. It seems many of them are going outside and meeting many other people through playing the game. In the process, they get an opportunity to practice their English skills with other native-English speakers. After observing all of these classes, it's starting to become apparent to me that one can learn a language at all ages! It doesn't matter what age people can learn a language at. It all depends on the amount of time and effort they put into learning it. That's clearly seen on many students that I've seen here at CIES.

Thomas TS #15

I met with Father John for the final time today. This time, it wasn’t at his house; it was at Panda Buffet as we arranged. Ross also joined in as he was also Father John’s tutor. We both entered the buffet and got our food. While eating, I told both of them that I go there often because my child tutee Astin lives close by so and I was surprised that Ross has didn’t know about this restaurant until now. I was curious about one of the dishes on Father John’s plate and I asked what it was; he cut it to show me it was egg foo young, which I got for seconds. Ross and I asked Father John what he was going to do now that we are no longer going to be his tutors and he said he will try to practice more. To thank us for helping him, he gave us each rosary beads as a gifts. In addition, he paid for both of our meals. I followed the Asian protocol of refusing a few times before accepting (Ross was in the restroom at the time). After finishing our food, we said our goodbyes and I thanked him for the lunch before parting ways.

Sofia TS#4

For the fourth tutoring session with Chi  we went over sounds that are commonly mistaken by Vietnamese English language learners. We went over word examples from these sounds and discussed pronunciation. A specific example was clams, climb, and claim. all which were more difficult to pronounce. the goal here was not to ease an accent, because the goal to learning English should not be to erase your accent, but to be able to distinguish between sounds to have words understood.

Sofia CP5

For the last cultural workshop we helped the CIES students organizing and planning there final project. This capstone project encompassed all the aspects we discussed through our cultural workshops and discussing the differences between countries by making a poster board. and having to discuss it during a poster board presentation.

Sofia CP#4

For this cultural workshop we spoke about academic behaviors and customs. We discussed differences in the classroom; the make up of the class, students and teacher behavior. In Saudi Arabia many classrooms are split by gender. Where as India and America that's not very common for public schools. and we discussed how in India there's more of a child shaming culture in the classroom. My group member Ankita discussed how in class the teacher would have students stand on the desk for interrupting the class.

Selene CP-4

Today we helped the CIES students come up with an outline of what their poster will be like. We picked a few main concepts which we want to outline in the presentation. Education, religion, and greetings were the three concepts chosen by our group. These were topics we had previously discussed in past workshops so it was easy to recall some takeaways and outstanding facts from before. We talked about the similarities and differences in our respective cultures and why those are the way they are. We have a very diverse group and it has led to a lot of rich and positive discussion. I never felt like anyone was offended or uncomfortable, which one might expect in a situation such as this. We will begin working on the physical posters on Thursday and the following Monday. I think we will be able to share some interesting insights at the presentations.

Selene TP-12

Matthew and I's tutoring session today consisted of a couple of grammar worksheets with one break for riddles. We worked on adverbs (positive, comparative, and superlative) and, helping verbs, and irregular verbs. I think the content is level-aproppriate for him, as he usually gets about 50% of the answers correct if he is completing the work on his own. Having a fun break in the middle has been ver helpful, especially because Matthew's mom wants us to do full 60-minute sessions and that is a very long time for a 10-year-old with a wandering mind. Matthew complains that his brother David gets to watch youtube videos, so I will incorporate something fun like that into his next lesson. That way, he can't complain that his brother is getting special treatment. An activity where he summarizes a video will be good for him because he definitely needs to practice his handwriting.

Selene TP-11

Since my original adult tutee is no longer available, I met Lu Zheng, a Chinese CIES student for lunch on Monday. The meeting was very informal and she brought her husband along with her. Lu's English fluency is very limited and I can tell she doesn't like to speak in English much. However, she gave up a very good job in China to come to the U.S. with her husband and she wants to improve her English as much as possible before they go back to China. They expect that a greater level of proficiency in English will provide her with a job even better than the one she gave up. Since Lu and I will only have two more sessions together (three in total) I think our time will be best used practicing her speaking and listening skills. When we meet again, I will have her listen to a recording - probably a short audio clip on current events - and have her answer some listening comprehension questions. We will then do error correction for content-based problems as well as grammatical and spelling mistakes.

Sofia CP#3

For this third cultural workshop we discussed stereotypes and generalizations. We discussed the differences between them; stereotypes being an automatic application of information we have about a country or group where as, a generalization means using a diversity of experiences and interactions about a group to form a hypothesis. We discussed stereotypes and generalizations that are in our own cultures and asked each other questions. I asked ankita, an Indian CIES student in my group about the caste system in India because of the negative stereotypes of it. And our Saudi Arabian student asked me and the fellow TEFL students in my group about American culture of drinking. Asking why do Americans drink till they are drunk. Overall it was an interesting workshop and I really enjoyed it.

Sofia CP2

For this cultural workshop we were again separated into our previous groups and the topic for this lesson was cultural icebergs. In societies we see cultural traits that are visible in society on the surface or above the icebergs, the things we can visibly see. Then there are also things below which may be the cause for what we see above the iceberg. This discussion focused on how we dress, religious beliefs, customs, beliefs about modesty etc. And how those things intertwine and affect one another. Such as how beliefs of modesty can affect the dress of people in specific cultures. It was interesting listening to the perspectives and opinions of my fellow group member and learning about cultural differences from here in America to India and Saudi Arabia.

Thomas TS #14

I met with Father John again. I emailed him about a schedule change due to class and he also wanted to update me on a change in location since Ming Tree isn’t open for lunch. We chatted for a bit and he brewed some puer tea which I liked despite not being a tea person, apparently it’s a cultural norm to serve tea to guests that come over in Korea. We had a nice chat over tea; one of the topics we talked about was how old we were; he was surprised I was a young 23-year old (which I thought was old) and I was surprised he was 49-50 years old but I didn’t show it obviously. We also talked about the alcohol cultures and apparently the legal drinking age in Korea is 18 but people as young as 15 drink; he also said that soju goes well with a Korean dish where you wrap a meat with a lettuce leaf, something I’ve had before when I went to Korea. He asked me about what my goals were and I told him about my latest job offer from Interac and that I want to be a translator. He told me that I would be a great teacher and translator. I wasn’t sure if he was sparing me my feelings or if he was honest but I appreciate his kind words. He wanted to know if I was born here and I told him all about myself; where my family is from and how I ended up in Florida. After having several cups of tea, he offered to cut some peaches and we had sliced peaches from Fresh Market, which were really sweet. Afterwards he gave me two of his peaches and we called it a day.

Thomas TS #13

I met with Father John for the first time in a week. He had been in Orlando for a conference with other Korean priests from other parts of Florida such as Jacksonville and Orlando. He also suffered from a knee problem and had to make visits to the hospital to get it treated so we had to cancel our session on Friday and he missed our Monday session. We had a nice talk about a variety of topics. Apparently he didn’t know about the Korean market and Lynn’s Asian market so I showed him where they were on his map of Tallahassee. He also told me about the Yangju highway incident, which was covered in class later that day. He also told me that he was staying for 2 and a half years before moving back to Korea (I had to teach him to say 2 and a half years rather than 2 year 6 months). He also told me about how he, aside from Korean and English, knows German, Greek, and Latin, which amazed me that he knew that many languages and he sheepishly told me that his English is the worst. At the end of the session he invited me for dinner at Ming Tree which I happily accepted since I enjoyed the last time I ate there.

Ebo Entsuah CP #5

In this cultural workshop we were helping the CIES students with their cultural relations project. In this project, students must find the comparisons and differences between different cultures. Not just cultures but the aspects of the cultures. Things like; religion, food, school attitude, or even morality. Being able to see the difference between these and similarities helps them to see that even though people are from different areas of the world, there are many things that they do the same of and are similar.

Jamaal Gill TS #10

So, I met again with my Korean Adult Tutee, Ki Woong Cho, over Skype this morning. He was the very first person I had tutored in my life and I was excited to continue our face to face meetings. Unfortunately, he had to leave right after our first meeting. So, he finally had free time for us to begin our sessions again and he told me about his travels to China and then to his home in South Korea. Right now, he's currently living at his parents home with his wife. This seems to be normal over there he tells me. Anyways, we talked about a large variety of topics today ranging from the Brexit and Theresa Mays and even the Panama Papers. I had him read a newspaper article on the Brexit and test his comprehension levels. He understood most of the words that were in the article but there were some that took him a while to figure out through context clues. I plan on working on his pronunciation next time because I would say that's the only thing that he needs help with. Pronouncing the R's and L's. We also talked about the rise of global conservative populism and he taught me how to say goodnight in Korean. Jalja! (I think)

Jamaal Gill TS#9

David and I met for the sixth time today. He was pretty compliant today but had the attitude of a child who just woke up from a nap. It's hard to tell at times whether he's messing with me or if he just doesn't like me. I can't tell. He is a good kid though. If he were only a tad more motivated to do work or even just to follow my orders a bit better, he would be an above average student. Also, there are times when I feel like he writes bad on purpose, to make it seems as if he needs help. However, he only does this occasionally and there are other times where he'll actually not understand the material. So, I'm starting to realize it's either a hit or a miss. We did work on some speed writing (note-taking) today. Oddly enough this kept his attention the whole time. I've never seen him write so much without pouting or whining. This could've been due to the video I was showing him or rather the video he chose himself. He decided to watch a video on Parkour and he seemed to be quite motivated the whole time throughout watching it. He was taking notes on what was happening the whole time. After we finished watching the video, I asked him to look over his notes for any spelling or grammatical errors. He actually went back and corrected stuff. I was actually pretty impressed. I will definitely say I overestimated the attention level of a new 6th grader. I will definitely need to be more creative like this in the future if I'm to keep their attention.

Demery CO-3

On July 19th 2016, I sat in on Kyle’s Reading  3B class. I taught this class last week, so I thought it would be good to watch how this class is supposed to be taught. I can see why the class asked us to slow down, Kyle makes sure his speaking speed is slow and understandable. He is a very clear speaker. He started by talking about the reading for the day, which was Moby Dick. I also watched as Kyle interacted with the class, making sure that each student was involved. I learn so much through watching these classes; it struck me today that instruction is heavily needed to teach a class. When taking a class in another language, it’s imperative that clarity is king. I also was reminded that i need to brush up on my explicit grammar knowledge. It’s shoddy at best, and nonexistent at worst. I also think that I can learn through Kyle's teaching style, which is very welcoming and friendly. 

Jamaal Gill TS #8

Nevermind about David. We just had our fifth session today and it was very difficult. He's actually alot more rebellious than what I previously thought. Today, I wanted him to write a summary of a video that I had him watch for homework. Instead, he goes "That's so boring. I don't want to." Then, he would keep repeating that or his favorite go to phrase, "I don't know". Then, me being the sucker that I am, fell prey to his manipulative tricks and we ended up watching a segment of Fast and Furious 7 on my computer. I had him write a summary of what happened during one of the scenes. He even thought that Fast and Furious 7 was a boring film! It has "The Rock"! He is basically what every kid his age loves at the moment. I can only hope his miserableness leaves him as he gets older. Otherwise, he's a great kid with so much potential. The only issue is keeping his attention.

Jamaal Gill TS#7

Today, David and I met for the fourth time. David has definitely started to show improvements in complying with my orders. He's slowly and slowly beginning to pay more attention to me. He doesn't ignore me as much as our first lesson. It seems like he's at least tolerating my presence. It's felt like he was unhappy when I first met him, but I later learned that he just doesn't like to do work. He would much rather play video games so I have definitely had to incorporate lessons around what he likes to do. We watched another Brave Wilderness video today. I asked him questions about this but on paper. He had to respond in short answers. While correcting some of his answers, I would notice that he would have just some normal spelling mistakes from nature (latin) words. He had a pretty good memory though for when it came to details from the video. One thing I forgot to mention is that I would usually have him summarize after the video and not during. I do this so that I can see if he captures the main idea or the main reason why the video was made in the first place. Towards the end of our session, David even told me about his special crush at school. I think I finally made it!

Jamaal Gill TS #6

David and I met again for the third time and he has grown a little bit more accustomed to listening to my orders. Although, he does still tend to be rebellious and downright hard to handle when it comes to getting him to focus. Today, we worked on a YouTube channel called "Brave Wilderness". When it comes to videos, David turns into a different person. He becomes easier to deal with and listens (to an extent) to me way more than if I had him reading an article. His energy just isn't in reading which makes me a tad sad because when I was his age, that's all I would do. I also played video games but the balance I had was much more distinct than David's balance. He seems to be really interested when it comes to nature, videogames, or extreme sports (parkour). It's just another challenge for me to become more adaptable to the different types of students I may have in the future.

Jamaal Gill TS #5

My second session with David was very interesting. I had gotten a list of his favorite YouTube channels from our last session together. So I took one of the videos from David's list and I made a little quiz about it. I provided a script and then had questions about the video. They were very helpful to an extent. David needs to get pushed to do work. Why? I'm not sure. However, watching videos was an activity he would much rather prefer to do. So, I decided that was the best course of action if I was going to get any effort out of him. Thankfully, his mother agreed to do this if it will keep his attention and I assured her that he seems to enjoy watching YouTube videos very much. It may be that kids preferences are changing nowadays on how they want to be taught. Everything is much more technology-oriented now. Also, you can learn almost any skill you want on YouTube. There isn't much of an argument for why technology shouldn't be integrated into a class. Nevertheless, I still have faith in the "old-fashion" style of teaching because I think I turned out alright, right? Anyways, I had him writing summaries almost the entire time a little bit after the YouTube video on different articles about nature that we would come across on the internet. It's very hard to get him motivated to do something so I'm not going to lie, I felt pretty accomplished.

Cailin TS #2

I start off each lesson with Seoha trace 3 new letters and then I have her spell a word with that letter. Today, I had her do the letters D, E, F and then try to think of a word that starts with that letter. I had her write out the word and also draw a picture to go along with the word, Seoha really likes to draw so I try to incorporate this in most of our lessons in order to keep her attention. After this, we worked with a few word flash cards I would show Seoha a word and have her read it out loud for me. To end the lesson I let Seoha pick out a book, since she picked out an easy book this time I had her try and read it to me on her own, she did a very good job!

Cailin CW #2

For this cultural workshop we were given a worksheet to fill out that has an iceberg on it. We were given various topics like modesty, classroom dynamics, food, and religion. We then had to decide if these topics would be shown above the surface of the iceberg or below the surface. For example, food is something we put above the surface because it is clear to people, even people who don't know much about a culture, what we eat. We also put most of our topics in the middle of the iceberg like modesty because you are able to visibly see if someone is being modest or not but you don't know why they are deciding to be modest or not. This is an important learning activity because it allows us to see how much "under the surface" things we don't know about cultures.

Cailin CW #1

For the first cultural workshop we were given two worksheets prior to look at and fill out a chart using certain things to describe yourself. For example, some of the things I put on my chart were marketing, server, non-religious. We were broken up into groups and then as groups we read our charts to each other and discussed them. In our group we have 4 TEFL students and 2 CIES students, Saeed and Lina who are from Dubai and Russia. We then discussed specific things that differ between each of our cultures. For example, in Dubai you don't shake hands with woman and when men greet each other they touch noses. In America, many people will hug, shake hands, or tap each others backs as a greeting.

Cailin TS #1

For my first tutoring lesson I taught Seoha who is a 5 year old girl. I was very nervous because I wasn't exactly sure what I was doing and I wasn't sure how well Seoha would know English. I had brought a few different books I found from the dollar store; one with animals, one with shapes, one alphabet book, and one reading book. To start off, I went over the alphabet with Seoha to see how well she knew the American alphabet. I would have her write a letter and then have her come up with a word that started with that letter and then see if she could spell the word...Seoha was very good at this! After that we did a page in both the animal book and the shape book and then we read a book together, I would read a line and she would repeat after me.

Ebo Entsuah TS#9

I met with Ahmed today, and decided to go over some cultural lessons. These lessons would incorporate reading and reading comprehension but would mainly focus on the cultural differences between the United States and Saudi Arabia. For the first exercise, we read biographies and job descriptions of various workers in the United States. These jobs varied anywhere from a Teacher, a Pilot, a Vet, and even a Police Officer. Each biography contained a job description, hours, duties, and amount of schooling necessary to become that occupation. After I had him answer specific questions about each job and then tell me about either a similar job that could be found in Saudi Arabia or a completely different job. After this we went over various superstitions that could be found in various countries. It was interesting because he knew the various superstitions, but in Saudi Arabia they do not use that word. Afterwards i did some evaluation with him and found out that he wants to do more political reading. I will incorporate this into our next lesson later this week.

Ebo Entsuah TS #8

On this day me and Ahmed decided to take it a bit easy and transcribe some phrases from some various clips on the internet. We decided to go along and watch scenes from FRIENDS, Seinfeld, and How I Met Your Mother. I had him watch each clip 3 different times and transcribe them each time. At the end, I would watch a clip and then check over his work to make sure it was correct. For the majority of the clips he was 75% correct on the transcriptions. There are only some parts that were spoken very quickly were tougher for him. He has definitely been improving and I am pleased with his progress.

Ebo Entsuah TS #2-3 (#7)

Me and Woo met today and he did not want to do anything too strenuous (either because he's bored or lazy who knows?) So instead I made him watch various clips from his favorite show Tyrant and transcribe them for me. I watched them as well in order to understand the speech and figure out what exactly they were saying and how they said it. I think due to the fact that he knew the show somewhat, he was able to transcribe what they were saying a lot easier than in a situation where he did not know anything about the show, After that I did error correction on his transcriptions and said we would try something a little harder next time.

Ebo Entsuah CP #4

For this cultural workshop we spoke about academic behaviors and customs. Many people who immigrate from different cultures can find it difficult to assimilate into American classes because some things they may do in their culture they cannot here in America.One thing I learned from our Arabic partners is that there are very little to no co-ed schools. Due to this there are no real opportunities for group work and time with the opposite gender. While in Russia, it is more similar to that of an American school and classes are usually taught together. Students co-exist and hang out often.

Ebo Entsuah CP #3

For this cultural workshop, we talked about racial stereotypes and generalizations. Being able to tell the difference between the two is incredibly important in today's society. We went over the difference between the two, and a lot of the CIES students learned that Generalizations tend to focus on 'most' while Stereotypes tend to say 'all'. We also talked about certain stereotypes and generalizations between different races and ethnicity's. Some people feel as though people from Russia do nothing but drink alcohol, while others say that people from Saudi Arabia like to show off their wealth because they have nothing better to do. This workshop was definitely one of the more interesting ones because there are so many different stereotypes and generalizations people may have about other cultures and they can range from being somewhat true to absolutely false.

Ebo Entsuah CP #2

For this cultural workshop we talked about Icebergs and how even though we may see something on the surface, we do not know what is underneath. Just like an Iceberg, just because you think you know something about someone and their cultural, it does not mean that you know everything because there may be something underneath the surface. We talked about certain subjects like; attitudes toward schooling, degrees of modesty, religious affiliation, and even eating food on certain holidays. All of these discussions varied extremely because our group was made up of many different races and ethnicity's. Being able to hear everyone's rational and reasoning as to why they act a certain way, or why they respond to certain things is incredibly interesting.

Ebo Entsuah TS #2-2 (#6)

For this tutoring session me and Woo were met by a couple of my close friends and engaged in general speaking and conversation. We started with informal conversation; general discussion which ranged from introductions, to activities, and even family. We then switched over to a more formal setting, creating a scenario where Woo would be interviewing for a position and would be judged by a panel of his peers. Afterwards, we evaluated his formal and informal interviews and were able to essentially nitpick his mistakes, and bring to light his positives. Although lengthy, by the end of the tutoring session he had begun to understand where he was correct and also where he was incorrect.

Ebo Entsuah TS #2-1 (#5)

This is the first blog post for the second set of tutoring. I met with Jeongwoo for the first time and conducted a benchmark/placement test for him. After going through the test I realized that he was definitely in the upper echelon for all academic areas. His reading is great, his writing is good as well, the main area he lacks in is speaking, particularly speaking in public. So to combat this I will devise a series of assignments in order for him to improve his speaking and get over being shy in front of other people.

Sofia TS #3

During the third tutoring session with Chi, my Vietnamese CIES student tutee we focused on using words in context. mainly my role was air correcting her with certain items she said. Her being a beginning student in level 1 I did not nit pick but focused on major errors such subject verb disagreements and when sentences were out of order.

Ebo Entsuah TS #4

For this Tutoring Session me and Ahmed went over narrative writing and how to create a story from various pictures. I gave him a series of pictures and he picked the ones that felt most interesting to him. After, I told him to write down some words that described those pictures and how they made him feel.The picture that he himself picked was that of two men running. He wrote a paragraph about how they were training for a marathon and had been planning on running one for a very long time. After he wrote it, I looked at it and was able to edit and correct the mistakes that were in the paragraph. Making sure to nitpick but at the same time grasp the core concept of the story.

Ebo Entsuah TS #3

Me and Ahmed were able to meet today and work on vocabulary structure and synonyms. There were twenty various questions and each question contained five different words. Out of these five different words there are four that are synonyms and one that is unrelated. I gave Ahmed the task of looking through these words and finding the unrelated word. First we went through each word to make sure that he knew what the word meant. If he did not, we would research the word, find the definition, connotation, and related words. After researching all of them we went through all twenty questions and answered them. I then gave him homework which required him to take five words from the list; research them and then create sentences with them.

Selene TP-10

Today, Matthew and I worked out of a worksheet book that Matthew's mother brought to our session. The overarching topic was verbs: direct objects, irregular verbs, and helping verbs. I was surprised by how much trouble Matthew had with these because he has done very well so far with grammar activities. Mainly he had trouble conjugating the article with the correct verb tense. For example, he kept writing down "they has" or "he have." This was very surprising to me because he speaks perfectly fluent English and was born in the U.S. Maybe his parents' inability to help him with his homework is causing him to fall behind. He also struggled with the past participle, going through many made up words like "leden" and "dreamen" before arriving at the correct answer with some help from me. I, again, couldn't tell at first whether he was just fooling around, because his reading, speaking, and listening skills are so much more advanced than what he demonstrated today with the worksheets. It's a good thing, though, since now I know where his weakness is and we can have more targeted activities from now on.

Selene CP-3

This cultural workshop was very interesting as the topic was differences in education culture across countries. Once again, the focus of our conversation dealt with something that is very important for both the CIES and TEFL students to know about. We got to learn about the way each other's teachers behaved in primary and secondary school as well as how we were expected to act as students. Somehow, our particular group got siloed into pairs, which made the discussion less rich but still interesting. Kyle made sure we were staying on task by walking around and checking in on the individual groups. Sayyid and I had gotten off-topic and were talking about camel races when he came around and asked us (nicely) to finish discussing the rest of the items. I guess the topic was't as stimulating as previous sessions because no-one in our group seemed overly eager to share their own experience. I think our experiences were all actually pretty similar, with only a few exceptions.

Selene TP-9

Matthew and I worked on a reading comprehension worksheet from ReadWorks.org today. The title of the short text was "A Constitution for Kids" and it was about a woman who wrote a kid-friendly version of the U.S. Constitution. The worksheet was given to me by Matthew's mother and, although it was a well-constructed activity, I think the reading level was not very challenging for him. His main problem with answering the questions was that he kept getting distracted and goofing around. Whenever he got a question right he would say it was an "educated guess", which made it hard to tell whether he actually didn't know the answer and had just gotten lucky. He doesn't respond very well to worksheets and I don't blame him. Most of the topics are very bland and don't apply to his life or interests at all. On the bright side, he seems much more comfortable with me now and is willing to do any activity I ask of him with only minimal complaining.

Thomas TS #12

I met with Astin and his mom at FSU’s Stone building today at 1. Astin was already finishing up with Lora and we asked each other what we’ve been teaching him. From what I learned, she’s been doing almost the same thing as I have, except she asks him some comprehension questions to make sure he’s paying attention. This is something I wanted to incorporate into my session as well. Additionally, she encounters the same problems as me; namely Astin replacing some words in the passage with another. This isn’t a big problem as it doesn’t affect the meaning but I want to get him into the habit of reading the words as it says. As I have been busy this whole week, I didn’t print out any worksheets for him to do so we spent the session finishing up The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. Of course, Astin replaced words again and I asked him to repeat the proper word for each. As his mother noticed, he is very curious as he asks what the words mean. He’s also not sure how to pronounce some words and asks me; while I’ll tell him how to pronounce the hard words, I encourage him to sound it out. Our experience was really enjoyable and Astin really like the story. Unfortunately Astin and his family are going to be out of town next week so our final meeting day will be the 24th (time TBA), a little close for comfort as I will be preparing to move near the end of the month.

Katherine-TS#7

Today I met with Boram Kang again. We had a really fun session this time! She really wants to learn more about American culture and American slang, so as discussed in our last tutoring session, we were going to look up some culturally-relevant clips and watch/discuss them. She had watched some SNL clips online and had written down some questions about them. Some of them were about mannerisms (which I explained were helpful in developing a character's personality -ie effeminate speech, hand motions, etc), and some of them were about specific words (most notably, "ain't"). We also talked about some of the beauty trends across our cultures (this was brought on by clip discussion). In America, many white women are pressured to be thin and get plastic surgery. Plastic surgery is also a large social issue in Korean culture at the moment as well. I showed her a clip from Parks and Recreation (a popular American TV show), that mocks Hollywood/California culture, features sarcasm, and a lot of stereotypes in jest. There was ample room to talk about "taboo" subjects in American culture and examine "slang of slang/slang slang." These are words like "totes" for "totally," and "crazemazing" for "crazy amazing." A funny thing we talked about was the tendency for close groups of girls to call each other by not-so-nice names (like hey, b****, wassup) much like men will call each other "dude" or "bro/brah." I had to be really careful to explain that this was only used between young people, and only with certain groups of friends. Not all people are okay with this, but it is often seen in real life, movies, etc. She said she had noticed it before and wondered why friends were being mean to one another. Next session, we will be going over a mixture of both sudden fiction/short stories to discuss writing techniques, comprehension, and any words/cutural references as needed. I will also be selecting clips to watch and discuss like today.

Thomas CP #4

For our cultural workshop this past Tuesday, we talked about classroom behaviors and customs. Since we will be future EFL teachers in a foreign country, this is relevant and pretty important to us so we don't run into any cultural mishaps. I learned a lot of things from my partners’ classroom cultures as well as somethings from my own classroom culture. For example, I wasn’t sure if it was acceptable for teachers in the US to admit a mistake since it would make the teacher look bad, and that is how I was taught in this TEFL class (avoid saying "I don’t know", say you’ll get back to them the next day). Some things I learned from my partners is that in Saudi Arabia there are no co-ed schools; as a result there are no opportunities for group work with the opposite gender. In Vietnamese elementary schools, they are taught to raise their arms in a specific 90 degree angle if they have questions, unlike in the US where there’s no such restriction on how you raise your hand. This is loosened in higher education, such as high school. All in all, I learned some interesting information from this session and this will increase my awareness of the cultural differences in the classrooms of foreign countries.

TS - #1

My very first tutoring session was with Bumsoo Park. We met at the Starbucks on Tennessee Street right next to the Hecht House.

Bumsoo was a little quiet but I knew beforehand that he was a Sports Management Doctorate student. With this knowledge in mind, I started to bring up sports and that got him to speak a little more freely. He said that he most enjoys soccer and actually plays regularly at the IM fields next to the Pensacola parking garage. I asked him if he was following the Euro Cup and he said that he doesn't have a team that he's particularly rooting for but still enjoys watching the games.

After talking about sports for about 20 minutes I figured it was about time to get back on track and asked him what area of English he wants the most help with. He said that he feels his speaking, writing, and listening are strong, but his grammar and vocabulary need some work. I told him that come next session I will have something along those weaknesses prepared for him to work on.

Soon after we got back to our conversation of sports and then decided it was time to leave.

Culture WS #1 - Brad Charlassier

The first culture workshop really opened my eyes to the many differences that American culture has to the culture of other countries.

In my group I had Maria. She is from Columbia and has resided in the States for a number of years, but has never attempted to learn any English. Her children have begun to speak English because of what they've learned through school and her husband knows English for his profession. Because of her family learning English, yet her inferno rant, her motivation for learning is strong.

Also in my group today was Salem. Salem is from Saudi Arabia and I actually really liked his Ray-Ban clubmasters that he has. Salem is married but I was unable to hear his reasoning for learning English initially. After talking with him for a bit, I think he wants to learn English since he plans to live, work, and raise a family here. 

The final member of my group was Nauman. Nauman is from Pakistan and is very outgoing. He has a great grasp on English and picks up on the jokes we make in the group just slightly faster than the other two. Sometimes he speaks a bit too fast, and that mixed with his accent can sometimes make him a little difficult to understand.

In our groups today, we asked one another questions relating to that individuals culture. The men from the Middle East, Salem and Nauman, both were taken aback by the cultural norm here in the States of a son or daughter moving out once they turn 18. We discussed that it has to do with the one of the core ideals around our country: Independence. I also assured them that this isn't necessarily always the case. Many Americans stay at home in an effort to save money and eventually move out at a later point.

I feel myself already becoming more cultured, which I suppose is the entire reason for the culture workshop in the first place. I really look forward to the others.

Demery TP-10

When I was preparing for our tutoring session, I realized that Dojun and I had spent our last few sessions focusing heavily on grammar. Although the grammar sessions are incredibly helpful and informative, I wanted to make sure that we were also focusing on grammar in use (instead of simply studying the mechanics of grammar). So, I decided that our session today would focus on speaking skills. Dojun and I spent some time talking about the weather, and he mentioned that it was entering into monsoon season. This lead to us comparing and contrasting the differences between hurricane season and monsoon season. (I'm from south florida, so I have a lot of hurricane experience). We ended up talking about hurricane Katrina and it's effects on New Orleans. Once we finished working on our speaking skills, we worked on idioms. I taught Dojun some idioms, and then he mentioned that he was having trouble distinguishing between idioms and proverbs. After a couple minutes, I think I was able to give him a solid understanding of the difference. I use my hands a lot when I teach, and I saw him replicate one of my hand movements when he explained what an idiom was.

Thomas TS #10

I had my 4^th tutoring session with Father John right after the 4^th of July. I asked him how his 4^th of July was and he said good. At this point, I’m trying to get him to talk more because as most East Asian ESL learners are, he’s shy and focuses on accuracy, in addition to having learned it a month and a half ago. We tried making some small talk before going into reading some passages from the Order of Mass. As usual, his reading skills aren’t that bad aside from the minimal pairs problems that Koreans encounter. I am still thinking about some good activities or ways to get him to talk since he speaks the bare minimum to answer any questions I ask him and I don’t want to sound like I’m interrogating him. I want to try a conversation book or some sort of exercise that is appropriate for an adult foundation level ESL student.

Thomas TS #11

For my 5^th tutoring session with Father John, I wanted to change things up. Using a conversation book I borrowed from CIES, I went through the topics with him and tried having conversations with him about it. Aside from some topics being off-limits due to him being a priest, I was also trying my best to explain to him in the most basic English what they mean. Unfortunately, a lot of the topics in the book were not level appropriate for him and it was hard getting a topic for us to talk about, let alone getting an extended conversation from him. Despite the difficulties, we did manage to have some (albeit short) conversations, such as a customer forgetting their phone at Starbucks and getting the landlord to fix the windows at a place. Regardless, I figured I’ll need a book that is foundation level so it’ll easier to communicate.

Thomas TS #9

This is my 6^th session with Astin. This time his mother wanted to meet them at the nearby library. I met up with them and I looked at the work that his mother printed out. I also asked for the assignment that I printed out for him and he answered all the questions but one about who lives in the house and I went over it with him, explaining the family includes everyone which is why it’s the answer. We went through another worksheet about picnics and the worksheets his mother printed out really quickly and at this point I have confidence in his reading comprehension skills. We spent the rest of the time reading the sequel to Dr. Seuss’ Cat in the Hat, Cat in the Hat Comes Back. We got through half the book before his mother came to take him home and I would say that he was cooperative today, as I was able to talk him out of playing and getting distracted. I would need to think of newer exercises with him because I feel the ones I’m giving him are too easy.

Ebo Entsuah CO #3

I had the pleasure of listening in on Professor Kaminski's Speaking 3A class and I must say it was a rush. The students could all speak decently well and they were ready to learn. Kyle wanted to do a timed speaking exercise so students would be able hear their voices and receive feedback. Students were led to the computer lab and were given a prompt that they must answer into the microphone and then transcribe what they were supposed to write. Students were first given 30 seconds to brain storm and then the teacher records the response for 1 minute. Students are then given a choice to do their work over or keep their original one. One thing I noticed about his class was that it was incredibly structured, incredibly concise and clear directions and the prompt that was provided was simple. One thing that is necessary. is to provide a lot of attention to the students. Many had questions and he was able to attentively speak to everyone.

Jamaal Gill TS # 4

My second session with Ahmed was very rewarding! I got to help someone for the first time read and use more complicated words in a newspaper. I brought a Wall Street Journal newspaper for him to read because he enjoys specifically, American politics. As an Economics and International Affairs double major, it's so interesting to see how our politics is viewed from a foreigner. He actually likes Donald Trump even though his immigrant policies won't be in his favor. We talked about the different derogatory comments that he makes in public. Then I brought out a newspaper article about the Brexit. We talked about that it was a very unlikely thing to happen. It would make no sense to leave the European Union. I noticed as he spoke that he understood a good majority of what I was saying. However, there were times where he would keep nodding even though I know he doesn't understand what I just said. So, I remembered what Professor Kim had told us about people from Asia. Asians are very modest (at least Koreans are) people. I didn't think that people from the Middle East are the same. He would continue saying he understood until I would ask him a question about what I said. Then he would ask, "Wait, what did you say?". That's how I knew that it would be slightly difficult sometimes to make sure that he was telling the truth. So now, I've made sure to always ask a question about what I'm saying so I know he is understanding me to the best of his ability.

Jamaal Gill TS #3

I met with David today for the first time and he was just as Professor Kim described. It was as if he had an agenda of his own and nobody wasn't going to interfere with it. He was hard to talk to at first because he wouldn't want to do any work. I would try and engage him in conversation trying to figure out what he likes to do on his free time. Every boy at that age likes games in some form or another so I started listing out games that I played that I'm sure that he would've played. That's when his eyes lit up. He loves shooting games and fighting games a lot more than I did at that age. This makes sense with the progression of technology though. His mother seems to be an easygoing woman but she is strict with him when it comes to using technology or playing violent video games. So, I was relieved that we could connect on some level but for the purposes of our tutoring sessions, he still would have to do some work. I couldn't just let him play games all the time so like every gamer, I looked towards YouTube. YouTube's a major source of information for gamers and that's where I caught David's real attention. Then he starts talking like crazy about all the different YouTube channels he watches. Some were game reviews and children shows but then I found out that he loves nature. It's something that he won't talk to you about unless you specifically ask him and even then you might not even get a straight answer. So after our first session, I found out he loves a certain nature channel on YouTube called BraveWilderness. So I've decided to model some of our future sessions off of this. I look forward to the challenge of whether I can appeal to his inner strengths in some way through the use of YouTube videos.

Thomas TS #8

I met with Astin for the 5^th time on Friday. Astin came to me excited that he can create a maze. His mom printed out another worksheet for him, this time about camping, and suggested that we do that instead. I offered to solve his maze if he did the worksheets his mother printed with him, which he completed. He doesn’t seem to have problems writing, but as usual, he tends to write his s’ backwards and I try to correct that if possible. After completing the worksheets, I stayed to my word but I wanted him to complete another reading comprehension worksheet, one about family that I printed for him while I did his maze. Although it took a little extra time because I didn’t quite understand a maze made by a 6-year old, he completed the worksheets as he promised. At the end of the session, his mother said I can assign homework for him. I asked him if he’s alright with homework, which he enthusiastically agreed. I was honestly surprised that a kid would say yes to homework and gave him another worksheet that I had prepared, one about a blue house and I plan to go over it when I see him on Wednesday.

Thomas TS #7

I met with Astin for the 4^th time last Wednesday. His mom printed out several worksheets about sailing that tested his reading comprehension which he had no problems completing. Originally he was a bit uncooperative and wanted to read a book but I told him that we can read the book after he solved the worksheet, which he complied. After that was done, we read a picture book about art and lizards; I believe the book was called Art & Max by David Wiesner. The book itself was pretty easy and I would say level appropriate for him, although there were a few words that were hard for him such as ‘preposterous’. After that, based on a worksheet I printed out for him, I issued a challenge to him to come up with a word for every letter of the alphabet regarding summer. Although he didn’t finish since we ran out of time, he came up with interesting words and phrases such as ‘math’, ‘riding bike’, and ‘beach’. This tutoring session turned out pretty fun and I plan on printing out another worksheet for him.

Demery CP-3

On July 5, I took part in the cultural workshop for the third time. I have to say that I might not have been as involved as I've been in the past. This was due to a lack of sleep and a slight uncomfortability with approaching stereotypes. Luckily, my group members were incredibly supportive and involved, so my lack of exuberance wasn't so noticeable. Hesitantly, we all delved into the stereotypes associated with each of our cultures. Ankita had some really interesting things to say about the caste system in her village. Hassan told us about the ways that people show their money is Saudi Arabia; this sparked an interesting cultural discussion between Ankita and Hassan. Ankita said that, in India, it was culturally inappropriate to show that you have a lot of money through jewelry. We attempted to get to the cultural reasoning for this, yet, I don't think we came to a solid conclusion. (I think we decided that it had to do with different shows of humility.)

Jamaal Gill CP # 2

Today, we went over the iceberg effect of learning about different cultures. There are the things that you see and the things that you can't see. Sometimes this may be taken as implicit actions or explicit actions. There are many differences in the actions of people in America vs. that of people from Mexico. There are certain implicit or unspoken traditions of Mexico that may seem foreign to many Americans. That is only one example. One of the students in our group, Sara, is definitely one of the more interesting ones. She is from Saudi Arabia and the culture there is an almost opposite to what ours is. I find it fascinating to see how people live in other countries and other parts of the world. I always ask myself, "Do they feel comfortable here?". That can always be a very nerve wracking experience especially when you're surrounded by strangers. She looks so young yet she is already married. It seems that it was an arranged marriage and she did not know him beforehand. That type of lifestyle sounds crazy to me. For me to determine my child's future by strict compliance is one of the most absurd things I've ever heard. (Please don't tell Sara this) So it looks like Sara may be the heart of the conversation for future workshops. Her culture seems to be the most interesting and conflicting with ours and yet I enjoy that conflict and tension just so I could learn more.

Jamaal Gill CP # 1

Cultural Workshops began today and I haven't been more excited to meet so many people from different countries and cultures. It feels like we have a taste of almost all regions of the world in one room. It's quite interesting how globalized the world has become. Today, we got into groups and went over worksheets given to us the day before. The worksheets had a web where we had to fill in certain things about ourselves. I definitely think Kyle did a good job starting the workshop in this way. It's best that everyone is able to learn more about each other at first to maybe break some of the cultural barriers between everyone. Although there are so many different cultures in one room, we are all more similar than we would like to think. It was a very humbling experience and I look forward to next weeks class.

Katherine-TS#6

This morning, I met again with my Hispanic student to go over the writing assignment from our last session. He completed his "How to Flirt" guide and we spent the entire hour going over it.
He had a lot of "beautiful mistakes." The most common trends were random commas and random capital/lowercase letters ( like "i, wANt TO, go, to tHe SToRE).
We first went over titles-how all words are not capitalized. We next went over basic rules of capitalization like "I" is always capitalized, capital letters do not belong in the middle of words, etc. I had him explain his reasoning for where he placed commas. He said he had learned that they should be before capital letters (so the incorrect words he had "randomly" capitalized), before words beginning with "w" or "h," and a lot of other things similar to this. He said he puts them wherever he "feels like it," not meaning intuition, but "because its for fun." I told him I would bring a sheet on comma rules for us to go over next time, but for now, don't place them where it is fun, place them where they should be. There were a few spelling and wrong word errors, but over all, it was fairly coherent to read (minus the strange commas and capital letters). He found it much more entertaining to write a piece such as this, so I will try to incorporate more of this into our remaining sessions. I think it he were to read more, he would get the hang of writing very quickly, but as he "hates reading," I'm not sure how much his writing skills will progress until he can back up this knowledge via textual experiences.