Lucy CP-5

Even though I hadn’t really wanted to have Mussad as a Conversation Partner because I already had him as a Tutoring Partner, I could tell he was eager for extra speaking practice, and because the TOEFL is in June, I complied. As it turns out, I’m so glad I did. Mussad is incredibly thoughtful and interesting and we have a lot we can talk about. My boyfriend came along at my request, and the three of us had a wonderful meeting at Monk’s/Wells Brothers-? (It looks like they’re changing their name).
He spoke of teaching at King Saud University, and said he felt confident having me as a tutor…(What a moment—I think “beaming” is the word). I asked him if Saudis liked U.S. citizens, and he thought that the educated college crowd would be very receptive. He did admit that there is tension with Western influence, but seemed to think that with the Arab Spring, minds were opening. He said that the tragedy of 9/11 hurt the whole world, and that attacks like that had happened in his nation. He also confided that he had a friend killed by Al Qaeda and disliked their influence. I told him that I had been afraid after 9/11 that the U.S. was going to become increasingly closed and hostile towards immigrants, and it made me sad to know that there was such fear and bigotry clouding our air, but that I thought the U.S. was slowly recouping its international relations. We spoke of religion, and how upsetting it is that while so many religions claim to value peace (can’t think of one that doesn’t actually), they all seem to come to conflict. Mussad is a pretty devout Muslim, and I told him that I had taken an Islam course in college, which he seemed grateful to hear. I told him that I was a Catholic, but that I had a lot of respect for the Quran. We both thanked each other for our understanding. I also brought Mussad an American Education book this meeting…”Creating An Inclusive School”.  Perhaps Mussad and I can co-author “Creating An Inclusive World”.
 I was really happy to have Jon with us because he spoke at a normal pace and didn’t slow down, speak louder, enunciate, or avoid jargon or analogies while he chatted with Mussad. This was interesting to observe because I saw what Mussad was really having to deal with and would need to become better prepared for. A fascinating moment came when we began speaking of the job market here in the U.S. and Jon held the opinion that immigrants able, willing, and intellectually capable of work should be able to hold jobs, while Mussad didn’t like the idea that jobs for Americans were being taken by immigrants. Mussad wants to return to his country and help there as soon as he finishes his phD here. He held the idea that immigrants should return to their own countries and help to fix the problems there before coming to the U.S. for help.
…I smiled and nodded but stayed out of it. I would agree with Mussad, except in a few cases. Say, language teachers for one… (:

Ted Hong - TP9

Today I met with Butsawan and Rose and we reviewed some of the exercises we had learned previously. I sent them an email regarding most of what we've covered in our sessions, even noting the problem points. I hadn't found solutions to all of them, as they're still on my list.

Before fully completing the exercises, I wanted to try an exercise with Rose which involved saying a long list of sentences in one breath. I found flaws in my approach as I figured I could take a bunch of sentences and just use that as something to read. I came up with and gathered a bunch of random sentences, none that were supposed to be coherent to one another nor... be coherent in any sense.

I can eat. I can dance. I leave nothing to happenstance. I can win. I can lose. If I do, I drink booze. Trick or treat, smell my feet. Give me something good to eat. If you don’t, I don’t care; I’ll pull down your underwear. Yankee doodle went to town, riding on a pony. Row, row, row your boat - gently down a stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily; life is but a dream.

This ended up causing a bit of problems as they were now attuned to pausing at each period of a sentence. Punctuation became a problem. I should just make a list of words for her to say in one breath. Words that are easier for her to pronounce just to start off.

I wanted to do another script reading, but it wasn't as convenient as reading it upon a projector. Making handouts would have been another option... but I didn't have the resources to do so. On top of that, if I load a DVD into my computer to view scenes, my laptop would overheat and more or less crash. It's an old baby and she's on her last legs. So we resorted to breaking down pronunciations of words.

We spent a great deal of time with the GKDTBP exercise and realized that Rose could also use some more practice with "V" sounds and the subtle "K" sounds (rather than "KUH!"). I referred to the GMU Accents Database and looked at the comments underneath the passages to identify what the drawbacks were for her. Did not understand some of the lingo but I did my best to guess (voiceless velar fricative... being one).

Butsawan's accent is slight so it's not really so much a problem. However, her case is that she doesn't project enough so the way she speaks is very quiet. I advised that practicing to speak loudly will help set her in a better way of pronouncing things as they're "gross facial exercises". Just doing that in practice, when she is required to speak at a normal register, things should be a little easier. The same goes for Rose.

She's very concerned about being incorrect or misunderstood. Which reminded me of the next session that I wanted to focus on: improvisation. I've brought it up in the last two times we've met up so I've been slowly warming them up to the idea. I figured it would be a good way to have them create different pathways to explain. I did a little practice run and asked her to tell me about McDonald's/Fast food without saying those words.

Before we concluded our session, we traded skype information, and I was also asked about being their tutor for next session but I don't know how things will be post TEFL class so I told them I'd get back to them on that.

Allison CO - 2

Having accidentally slept through her class last week, I was able to reschedule to observe Felicia's 2C reading class for Tuesday morning. Just like the video of her that we watched in class last week, Felicia is quite friendly and has a good control of her classroom. She appeared to be invested in the students' understanding of the material, which is always nice considering I know there are some teachers at FSU that aren't really like that.

Felicia began by writing down the itinerary on the whiteboard and took roll. There were a few students that came in late and knocked before coming in. Felicia instructed them that in the US, it is better to simply come in quietly so as to not draw attention away from the teacher. After this, Felicia shares a cordial conversation with her students as to what happened over the weekend. Students are quite relaxed with the teacher and even use some colloquialisms. A few new vocabulary words are brought up during this chat, including "rollercoaster". She wrote them down on the board. She caught a few gentleman having a side conversation in Arabic but quickly stopped it.

Keeping a moderate pace throughout the lesson, Felicia smoothly transitioned into discussing an article on immigration which the class had gone over in depth during their last meeting. She gave students the opportunity to review the material by reread the article before they began to talk about it. When she has the students explain the content, students are actively participating. However, for the most part, answers are being issued at random and almost no one raises their hand. Felicia does correct errors and they are all done orally.

Once she feels the student have a grasp of the content, Felicia has the students do an exercise in which they must organize the information from the article into the appropriate column. Students were instructed to write down whether immigrants from the countries mentioned were either attracted to (pulled) America or (pushed) forced to come here due to bad circumstances. I helped the students on either side of me to give them some clarification.

After this exercise, Felicia gave the students a comprehension quiz to check if they understood what the article was about in its entirety. She told the students to only use their notes for the quiz yet I saw many students referencing the article during the quiz despite her instructions. After she collected the papers, Felicia read a chapter of the script of the movie Rain Main aloud to the class. It appears that they do this at the end of each lesson.

Will Stone- CO2

 

The Second class that I observed was Karin Devick’s group one listening class, which was focusing on intensive listening. I walked in after a majority of the class had already taken their seats. After I had taken my seat, Karin informed the class that I would be sitting in on their lesson and asked me to introduce myself. A minute after I had introduced myself, the last student came in late. He rushed through the door and quickly uttered an apology to the teacher. She promptly stopped him from sitting down and asked that he properly apologize to the entire class and then apologized to him for embarrassing him in front of peers. The first thing that Karin did was write the schedule for the day on the board. The preliminary activity consisted of Karin playing a trailer for the new Pixar movie Brave several times and having the students fill in a pre-prepared script that had blank word spaces for students to fill in. After the activity was finished and Karin had gone over the correct responses with the students, she informed them that they would be quizzed on symbol meanings and gave them a few minutes to prepare for it. The quiz was 23 questions long and covered fairly basic symbols (! # $ % & @ w/ “). After going over the correct answers, she introduced the next lesson, which would be interviews and American culture. The vocabulary was introduced and seemed to cover southern foods mostly, which prompted a student to ask what ‘gumbo’ meant. The class then reviewed the words by asking for example sentences. The late student sat next to me and asked for several examples or answers. Karin announced that they were going to watch interview videos, but they had run out of time. Overall I found that the lessons/activities were fairly simple but seemed effective in conveying the predetermined content in and engaging way.

Ted Hong - TP8

For my tutoring session yesterday, May 29, I fashioned a lesson plan for Butsawan and Rose for them to have better preparation and practice for speaking.

I know Rose is deeply concerned about her accent, and I had told her before as I told her again that the first thing she should focus on is her communicating ideas and being understood. It's the last thing. To reassure her, I told her that there are many English accents and even a good amount of people still struggle with the minute details to accents. However, I told her it was possible to learn other accents/overcome her accent. I then showed this video:
Amy Walker - 21 Accents
...uh twice. The second time with the closed captioning because in her accent, the captions follow respectively per region.

Following that, I told them that we would be focusing on preparation for speaking, which relied on the use of listening, as well. I told them that the exercises I had them do before were not just for the heck of it and they were legitimate exercises. I took the exercises I had learned back in high school and figured it'd be appropriate to apply them here. One of which was The "GKDTBP Exercise", as I called it. It is also performed in the videos. To support my claim, I showed them the first and fourth video and had them participate in the exercises. This is a link to the 4th video:
National Theatre - Exercise 4: Articulation

I told them that being silly is all a part of it, serving as an ice-breaker and taking away the fear of being criticized. Rose was still concerned about the way her English is spoken, and I told her of one exercise which was to continuously say words all in one breath to help her get into the practice of things. We're going to practice that next session.

Following this, I showed a scene from FRIENDS (I... did a lot of visual learning. So much that two other students, Michelle and Mariam, who were just hanging out commented on my style of teaching. They were positive which relieved my concern) where Ross comes in mortified over his divorce and Rachel joining the group after running out of a wedding.

I presume everyone knows these characters as they were definitely a huge part in American television, specifically sitcoms. I chose a sitcom for their focus on dialogue. It's dialogue heavy but it's not heavy in the sense that it's hard to understand. Not to mention it offers a great source of American culture, even if it is sort of a caricature of people's lives. The laugh track would also help provide cues as to when jokes were made, despite the fact that they may overdo it.

I showed them the scene, then I pulled up the script of that episode from here: FRIENDS Script - Season 1, Episode 1

I had Rose and Bustawan read lines, and I even included the other two whom were apparently involved in my lessons. I thought I'd try a deductive approach first to give them an example of how the lines were said. This would allow them to infer the inflection and tone of the dialogue. I reminded them of the use of thought groups that I had covered in previous sessions.

After those lines were read through, we talked about certain things. For example, the part where Ross says, "I just want to be married again," is then followed by Rachel running in dressed in a wedding gown. Chandler then chimes in saying, "And I just want a million dollars!" I had to explain why that situational irony was funny.

Which, then lead to sarcasm. I explained verbal sarcasm is best exhibited in the intonation/stress in a sentence. Butsawan knew what it meant and even supplied an example. "Oh yeah. I'm great." I read it several different ways to give an extensive understanding.

I then had them read lines further into the scenes and showed the rest of the segment to them. That appeared to be an epiphanic moment. The angels descended with a chorus of awe... heaven's light shone through the windows as the comparison made between their readings and the way it was performed had... come to light. This inductive approach appeared to be more fruitful, but I don't think it would have been as effective had I not done the deductive approach first. They were repeating lines a couple times after listening to them.

Class time was up and I was surprised by all the positive feedback I received. I got compliments from other students and Olga, one of the teachers. She came in to prepare for her class and noticed my notes on the board. I gave her the gist of my lesson and even got a thumbs up from her. Not literally, but in conversation. I imagined a giant hand above her head that gave me a thumbs up, though. This definitely made up for last week's morale burn out.

Olumayowa CP-6

This was the most stressful CP meet that I've ever had, because it was more of a TP meeting and I was the student being tutored. At Tea Time yesterday, I was again ditched by my partner Baraaa so I got out the Arabic children's book that I studied for my reading log "Mami Wata and the Monster" and asked my friend Roger from Saudi Arabia to help me with a small portion. I expected him to help me translate a few sentences and leave but Roger helped me read the book step-by-step like a real teacher would, I guess from his own personal experience learning to read at CIES.

I went through the emotional process of an Intensive reading and he handled me just fine, allowing me time to try pronouncing the words and then stopping me at the end of the harder sections to ask if I understood the meaning/main idea; a lot of the time, I was so stressed that I wanted to give up but Roger was actually interested in the activity and continued to encourage me to read on. The book was actually helpful for Roger because in explaining some vocabulary words to me in Arabic he had to learn them first in English, so we had a lot of hand miming and crude descriptions during this session. Together we learned the meanings of : tears, cry, gently, growl, hide, invite, invent, and decide.

Sometimes when helping my TP with his reading, my attention might drift off a little or I might forget to give him a high-five for understanding something significant, but after a great tutoring session with Roger I feel like patience and reinforcement are incredibly important for morale. I kept getting a "Great Job!", and even when he had to disappear for a few minutes he called his twin brother Roy to help me out and he did just as good a job. Though I still need to go through the book again and write down the Vocabulary words I recently learned, conjugate them, pronounce them, and then write sentences, I walked out of that session feeling like a million dollars and still feel as competent. I will be a fluent speaker someday!

Olumayowa CP-5

On Memorial day, I was going to take Aadl to G&Gs for Jamaican food (which is really similar to Nigerian food) because he took me to Pitaria last week, but it ended up being closed so we impulsively went to Samrat Indian Restaurant on Apalachee pkwy- a place that is consistently amazing, though their food is a bit expensive (Go for the lunch hour buffet). I almost passed out from the amount of aloo gobi and chicken curry that I ate while Aadl was a very slow and deliberate eater, I hope that Middle easterners won't be freaked out by my speed eating when I visit their countries. If not for the food, go to Samrat for the Bollywood videos that they play all day, they are better than any musical that you've ever seen.

We left the restaurant quickly for my shift at Lofty Pursuits, Aadl and I actually were hanging out because I told him that I'm learning how to make candy and he wanted to watch the process throughout my 4 hour shift. He sat and watched Wes (my boss) and I making Blueberry, Watermelon, and Apple hard candy; though I could tell when he was starting to get bored and anxious, it really was a cultural experience for him to see us putting together colored blocks of molten sugar to create a very American treat. He asked for a lot of samples and actually bought some candy before we left.Though I feel bad that he hung out for so long, I think being alone at a neighborhood hangout like Lofty Pursuits was really good for him; I noticed times when he was listening to conversations, walking to different shops in the mall to browse, asking people what they were doing (there is normally somebody yoyoing/juggling at the store), and when he went to buy scoops of coconut ice cream he was social with my colleagues because he knows them to some extent. 

 After I finished my shift, Aadl still wanted to tag along with me so we went to The Warehouse to play pool with my friend Liz. He actually beat us both in one game and then suggested that we leave because he didn't like the atmosphere at the pool hall, which is literally a warehouse with low lighting and no air-conditioning. We went to Seminole Bowl on Tennessee Street because we still wanted to do something active; here I dominated the game ( :D ) while Liz and Aadl began to hit it off because she's a student in Middle Eastern Studies and was effectively ruffling his Saudi feathers.

I was wondering if she could be another conversation partner for Aadl, until later in the second bowling game when they began to discuss the politics and culture. Aadl is a 30 year old man from Saudi Arabia while Liz is a feminist and also a very passionate political activist- especially for moderate Islam and for an Israeli-Palestinian two state solution, I really did not imagine that anything would go wrong. There were no harsh words or fists thrown but I definitely got to watch a very tense, two hour-long debate about women's rights, Sunni & Shia violence, the morality of Jews, American motives in the middle east, and 9/11. At least I got to see his argumentative skills in the English language.

I wonder if hanging out with them together in the future will be beneficial and not stressful for Aadl, he has very strong views that are morally skewed in my opinion (or should I tag disliking Jews as relativism and just forget it?) and Liz is the kind of person who will speak until her point is understood, she was fuming after I dropped Aadl off. Maybe next time I'll invite them both to a relaxed setting like a hookah bar and simply not show up myself. 

Allyce-TP5

                As I had promised Hussam, I made sure to choose our next reading activity carefully and make sure it pertained to what he was studying. I had to comb through a bunch of psychology articles before I found one that seemed challenging but fun at the same time and so...I decided we would read about Facebook addiction! The article was an awesome conversation starter and included a bunch of key vocabulary words which Hussam could later use in his psychology essays. The top three words we focused on were Addiction, Dependence, and Social Media.  I took some advice from the Snow textbook and made sure to stop every other paragraph or so and make sure he got the main point of the article, I wanted this activity to be more of an extensive exercise versus and intensive exercise. I think it worked, he really only had a few questions about some vocabulary but was able to point out the crucial themes each time I asked him. Although we were practicing reading out loud, I would give him time to skim the article, I remembered reading from Snow (and from personal experience) how difficult it is to actually retain information as you read in a second language, I knew that at times Hussam was too focused on the pronunciation of a word instead of its definition. 

                However, that was not the most interesting part of the lesson! After we finished reading and going over vocabulary, I could tell he was puzzling over something. When I asked him if everything was okay a whole mess of questions came pouring out about American culture and why we can be so unfriendly and most of all, why we misconstrue any physical touch as something inappropriate! I had my hands full, I answered his questions patiently as he asked various questions such as what the difference between a boyfriend and husband was,  what dating meant, why girls and boys hang out together all the time. It was all very interesting and he gave me some great insight into his own culture...I just hope I was able to clear up any confusion he may have had. 

             I've attached the article we read to the blog, Hussam and I took the "Are You Addicted to Facebook?" Test and turns out we are...are you? 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/08/facebook-addiction-test-women_n_1500656.html

Dhugal Gardner CO 2

I went this morning to observe Carolyn Stringer's group 2C Composition class, approximately 10 students. 

She opened the class by introducing me, which was nice. She then outlined what was in store for the lesson: the students would go over previous essays and enter mistakes in an error log with a correction; then the students would work on outlining. 

The error log exercise seemed pretty useless to me. The students would just mindlessly write down sentences that had already been corrected by the teacher. No real thought processing was needed. Needless to say, the students weren't really engaged with the exercise, and I heard many of them chatting about other things. It seemed that the students could use any essay they had written, so they could've been mentally far removed from the works. Perhaps something they had written recently should be used, with errors pointed out but not corrected. 

The second part was on outlining. She went over the idea and importance of an outline on the board, and also reviewed the basic structure (into with thesis, body paragraphs with topic sentences and supporting details, conclusion), which I thought helped focus the students. She then broke up the students into groups, and gave a prompt with which to prepare an outline around; it was something along the lines of characteristics of a good co-worker. She had the students brainstorm first, and I worked with a group. I was fairly impressed with their production of adjectives to describe workers. We only brainstormed for about 5 minutes, as class ended. I assume they will finish the outline tomorrow, and write them out on large sheet paper. 

I liked the interaction that the second activity provided. It gave students a chance to share work experiences and relate to each other.  

Dhugal Gardner CP 7

I had a good chat with Abdullah today at the CIES building before our class. Prior to that, I saw Hamad outside the building with some classmates, Anwar and Mohammed. Hamad introduced Mohammed to me, telling me he is from Iraq, and joked that 'they are at war with each other'. This Gulf War reference got us going on a bit of a political tangent, that went sort of like this:

Mohammed: So you like politics?
Me: Eh, I'm more into conspiracy theories.
(blank faces all around)
Me: You know, when the official story given by governments is hiding something...like the whole 9/11 thing.
Hamad: Ah yes! I know this.
Me: Yeah, there are people out there that believe the U.S. government carried out the 9/11 attacks to initiate a war in the Middle East. There are just so many questions that are still unanswered, so much doubt...

I went on citing some examples: the hole left in the side of the Pentagon was much smaller than the hole a 747 would create, and furthermore, there was absolutely no recovered wreckage. The manner in which the two towers fell was consistent with that of a demolition, suggesting charges were planted strategically in the buildings. Jolly good chat.

The conversation with Abdullah was much more innocuous. We talked about working out and good foods to eat. His speech seems to be getting clearer, which is encouraging.

awesome conspiracy movie for anyone interested!

Allison TP - 6

Since I typically meet with Yasuko during CIES lunch hour, our time together is usually pretty short and I know that she needs a lot of help, especially when it comes to her pronunciation. Thus, I agreed to meet up with her on the weekend. She lives on the other side of town, but it's not too much of a trek because I was already out there anyways. When I walked in, I met her daughter, Marine. She is an adorable special needs child with the age of 7. Although I tried to engage her in conversation, she is quite shy and other than a simple hello, she sticks to watching youtube videos. Due to my arrival around noon, Yasuko insists on making some lunch for all of us. She made pancakes (for Marine), spinach salad with what she said was a carrot vinaigrette, and potatoes au gratin. It was quite yummy but I wanted to focus on the tutoring more than anything so we set to work.

Apparently, Yasuko has just recently moved up to Group 3 for her reading class because her group 2 one was far too easy. However, this move has not gone off without a hitch. Now her material is quite difficult! She takes out her reading assignment and I see that the article is discussing a magnet lab. Earlier in the week, the class took a little trip to see FSU's magnet lab as well. Either way, the article had several tricky scientific terms that I had no idea how to explain such as "megajoule" and "quantum". I was just happy that I remembered how to pronounce them, honestly. I was never much of a science gal.

I really wanted to work on her pronunciation with the speaking packet that we looked at in class but Marine was monopolizing the internet and I figured we can just go over it next time. Thus, I had Yasuko read the article aloud and I copied down each word that she mispronounced. I had her go paragraph by paragraph. At the end of each one, I would reread it aloud so that she could hear how it was supposed to sound and also give her a brief summary of what it meant (to the best of my ability...like why in the world would a teacher assign such a useless article!? I realize the need for students to understand scientific material, but I feel like a Biology related piece would have been considerably more relevant to the average student). After summarizing the paragraph, I went over each mispronounced word with her individually, repeating it until she could say it properly.

Doing this task took a lot longer than I thought it would. Before I knew it, two hours had passed and I needed to hurry off to work. Yasuko thanked me graciously for my time as always and said that she really appreciated me coming out to her apartment to work on this.

Allison CP - 7

This past Wednesday some of my friends invited me out to Bullwinkle's for ladies night. Naturally since I have a thirsty moose card (which means I have free cover/drink free there whenever I want), I agreed to go. When Joyce and I had gone on our little roadtrip, she had said that she had never been to an American bar in her 8 months of being here. This shocked me. How could she take classes at THE Florida State University and not ever visited the strip or any other notorious bar for that matter?! Thus, I took it upon myself to help immerse her and her roomie Fay into some more American culture. What a great CP, I am haha. Joyce had also remarked during our roadtrip that she wanted to see Fay get drunk because she is usually pretty reserved.

Her wish was my command. On Wednesdays at Bulls, there is only a $3 cover for ladies and it is, of course, all you can drink. Thus, I set to work on telling Joyce and Fay what drinks they should order based on their taste preferences. Joyce likes sweet drinks and Fay likes sour ones. They were both surprised by how many different drinks I knew and called me an alcohol expert. I don't take this to be a compliment. I simply explain that after months of AYCD at Bulls that I've gotten to opportunity to sample many a favorite drink of my friends.

Because it was a Wednesday, the crowd was pretty small. There was no DJ and thus the jukebox was playing. Someone had come in and put in a ton of money on some pretty terrible country songs. Thus, conversation was sparked on different genres of American music. Fay and Joyce didn't seem to mind the country but they didn't particularly care for it either. I was super excited to hear that Joyce downloaded some Maroon 5 music after I instructed her on them as well as several other American bands during our roadtrip.

After having kamikazes, grateful deads, jolly ranchers, etc., Fay was securely tipsy so I offered to drive the girls home since it is on the way to my place and I didn't want them walking at night. Overall it was quite the fun evening!

Allyce-CO1

     My first Classroom observation was with Whitney Harvey's listening group 3. The difference in levels (I've been primarily working with lower level students) was a stark contrast from what I'm used to. The level of comprehension was much higher and their vocabulary words rivaled those of any undergraduate student at FSU. The list was as follows; literacy, stigmatized, capacity, dedicated, predicate, hierarchy and contention.  Ms. Harvey did an incredible job of explaining some of these difficult words to the students and made sure to go over them briefly before having the students watch the video clip. She also handed out comprehension questions which went in chronological order so that students would remain focused on listening to the clip and searching for answers.
     The video clip she chose was about 20 minutes long and was from the TED speaks convention, the monologue was by Sir Ken Robinson regarding the death of creativity within the education system. As a student myself I felt the clip was very interesting and I even enjoyed watching it along with the students. It was rather comical because occasionally Robinson would make a joke which was based upon a word pun or something and I would laugh out loud, some of the student just laughed along right with me and I heard a couple say that they didn't get the joke. Luckily, Ms. Harvey took 10 minutes after the clip to answer any questions and clear up any vocabulary which may have impeded students from understanding the point of the clip and then we proceeded to watch the clip again. I noticed that the second time around, more students got the jokes and heartily laughed along with me and the teacher.  They also seemed to have a stronger comprehension of the message.  This whole teaching method was enjoyable for both the students and the teacher which really created a fun environment.
        Ms. Harvey explained that they typically spend 2 days performing academic work such as traditional listening activities and then spend the following 2 days watching a video clip which allows them to put their listening skills to use. It seemed to me that the students really enjoyed coming to this class and got a lot out of the activities. They were able to discuss the clip thoroughly with each other and seemed genuinely pleased at her video choice.  The class was a success and I can only hope that my students enjoy themselves in a learning environment as much as Ms. Harvey's did!

      I've placed the video she played in class within the blog. I think that it may prove interesting for all of us students!

Allyce-TP4

                My second tutoring experience with Ahmad was very different from the first. I originally did not have a session scheduled with him on Thursday and had only planned on tutoring Hassam however Ahmad found me in the CIES lounge and seemed incredibly worried. He explained that he got a perfect score on his last quiz that I helped him study for (which he had never managed to do before) and really needed my help studying for his next one on Friday. After trying to figure out where I could squeeze him in during my already packed day (work, tutoring, class) we decided to meet immediately after my TEFL class at 7:15 in front of the library.

                His test the following day was on capitalization, punctuation and simple present tense.  He was given a worksheet with a bunch of pictures illustrating a man going through his morning routine of drinking coffee, cleaning the dishes, etc and Ahmad had to write a sentence describing what was going on.  As he worked on his punctuation/capitalization homework which he had already mastered, I went through and did the homework for myself so that I would have the correct answers with me, I quickly realized that there were multiple correct answers based upon the vagueness of some of the pictures and also simply because one could state an action in a variety of ways.  The activity turned out to be a bit of a struggle and was only a precursor for the rest of the night. Between Ahmad's limited English and my inability to explain why (or simply why there is no pattern) to some conjugations, it was a bit of a struggle. At one point I must have looked very frustrated and he apologized, I quickly explained that I was not mad at him but simply at a loss to explain some of the rules, I told him that memorization was the key for irregular conjugations and eventually he resigned himself to this fact. However, I refused to give up and labored with him over the various rules until finally he began to get all my practice questions right...as far as I know he did very well on his test!

                Overall, this was my first difficult tutoring session and I think I learned a lot from it:

                1. Patience is key

                2. Make sure to read your students notes and textbook instructions to make sure that you are teaching it the way he learned in class

                3. Stay positive! It will rub off on you and your student.

Kelly TP-5

Last Wednesday I met with Michelle after class at CIES. I took a peek at the book Ramin showed us in class on common problems new speakers have with English based on their native language. Michelle speaks French, and as I've noticed before, she has a difficult time with "R", "B", and emphasizing the end of words. I decided that we should begin with practicing "R," and I had her repeat a few "R" heavy words/phrases. (Red Roses, Right as Rain, etc). I tried to explain in words and physically that the sound comes from the back of the throat. I tried to equate the sound to "Rue" in French. I then showed her a brief youtube video designed to help teach a non native speaker R. We repeated some of the phrases together. I could see that this was starting to become tiresome and frustrating, and moved on.
I asked Michelle what she had been doing in class. We went over some worksheets on "buying clothes." There were a few scenario comic boxes, so we role played them, then reversed roles. I then had her pronounce the vocabulary words (with images); sizes, monetary amounts, etc.  I asked her if she has bought any clothes in the United States yet. She shyly put her hands to her face and said "no, no, no!" Again, this practice was starting to become tiresome, so moved on.
The next exercise the class was working on was "things you do to get ready for the day." Instead of having her read the scenarios laid out in the book, I asked her to tell me what her morning looks like. She told me about waking up, breakfasting, and then continued on with the entirety of her day including times. At first she seemed frustrated that her fluidity wasn't fast enough, but I encouraged her to take her time. Her delivery was choppy, but I noticed that when she could speak more casually about things that she knew, she would pronounce things correctly, such as "R." This may be the approach that I should most often take with this beginner student. Perhaps seeing things she has been working on in class (that she has some vocabulary for) and asking her to tell me about it will help her practice the muscle of speaking English.
She quite enjoys coffee- which includes lattes and such- so I asked her if she has been to a cafe to have one yet. Again she replied, "no, no, no!" I should like to take her sometime soon. I know sometimes a good espresso drink is all it takes to go from having a mediocre to a great day.

Dhugal Gardner CP 6 continued

A view from the street courtesy of Hamad

The last post was brief and done in a state of fatigue, and does not do justice to the entire experience of truckpool Sunday. I cannot attest to the content of all the conversations, since my partners ended up talking to my friends more than they talked to me, which is a good thing. At one point, as a few of us were hanging around the grill, the topic of cooking came up, naturally. My roommate happens to be an excellent cook, and he ended up talking to Hamad for a while about what dishes he likes to do, and that they should cook together sometime and share recipes. Hamad has aspirations to be in the film school at FSU, which brought up a lengthy conversation between him and my other roommate, whose girlfriend just graduated from the film school.

Whereas Hamad didn't participate in any drinking games, Daniel did wholeheartedly. He talked a big game when it came to ping pong, but I managed to put him down (nobody beats me on my own table). He was my team mate for snappa (an old water polo drinking game), and enjoyed that thoroughly.

At one point, as I was locked in an unusually long game of snappa, I saw Hamad sitting on the steps by himself, on his iphone. I asked my roommate Soren to go have a conversation with him, which he did very well, and I'm thankful for his willingness and amiableness.

Ted Hong - CO2

On May 22nd, I sat down at Ryan Flemmings's Speech class, Group 3B. A class size about 15 people.

Opened class with a warm greeting, "Happy Tuesday everyone." It apparently was also a presentation day, or rather a continuation. Before calling out for attendance, he formally introduced me to the class and reassured students that I was not there to BRING DOWN THE RAIN OF JUDGMENT upon their presentations, but rather of him in a general class observation. He did a quick run down of attendance, as he was booting up the computer and projector.

Following that, he went to a sequenced list of the class in regards to who had not presented yet. He asked if there were any volunteers who preferred to present today, thus putting them first. He even rearranged the list to accommodate to other students, breeding that comfortability for them. He went over the list of people to present today and gave the floor to one of his students.

Ryan sat down next to me and showed me his rubric in evaluating students' presentations and performance. He separated points: grammar/pronunciation, topic development and organization, delivery, and connection with audience. In these, he took extensive notes and had set ways to identify pros and cons of one's performance (putting slashes to indicate grammar or quotations to indicate pronunciation). He said it would take about half a week to a week to be able to hand out evaluations back to students as he had to quantify their values as well as suggesting feedback. He had also constructed a way to be more efficient in grading for himself by separating certain items of major difficulty but integral to the students' grade. Brilliant.

The students were to perform 3 interesting items to the presenter for 5 minutes. In that class, only 3 were able to perform due to the overlap on time in performances and in-between with preparing their topics. There were some difficulties in between presentations as students took some time to boot up their powerpoints via email. In the meantime, Ryan asked the class if their presentations were on their flash drives or on their email. A resounding "on email" came about.

Ryan also kept a digital recording of each student's performance. However, the recorder ran out of batteries and was therefore forced to pause class while he sought out replacement batteries. He had a student "watch over" class but it wasn't really necessary as the class appeared very civil, silently talking amongst themselves.

After class, Ryan and I spoke a few words. He gave me his background on taking the role of the teacher and that he's been doing so for 5 years thus far. He suggested that I have a look see at an advanced class to get an idea of the range of levels. Although I did sign up for a higher level class to observe next, I realize I should have signed up for foundations as my weakness lies there. I'll have to arrange that.

Good class, good man.

Dhugal Gardner CP 6

Yesterday I hung out with both Hamad and Daniel at my house. I picked up Hamad and we went to Publix, where shopping is a pleasure. We picked up some burgers and headed back to my place, where Hamad helped me set up truckpool. Truckpool is our rendition of the redneck hot tub, and an excellent way to spend a lazy Sunday. We put some jacks under the suspension of my truck ( to support the water and body weight), put a tarp in the bed and filled it with water. This was a good team building activity. By this time a few of my friends had shown up, as well as Daniel. We moved our ping pong table to the frontyard and lit some coals for the grill. Beer was flowing like water. I offered beer to Hamad, but he refused. I don't think he's ever drank before, an unheard of feat for people our age here. Although I would like to enjoy a cold one with him, I respect him for standing up to the peer pressure.

This was a good opportunity for Hamad and Daniel to meet some more of my friends and have natural conversations. There was a lighthearted, tailgate-ish atmosphere, and it was a pleasant day all around.

Ted Hong - CP4

On Friday the 25th, I met with Joyce at Yogurt Mountain.

There, she filled me in on her past weekend with Allison and the crazy times. She told me that she drove past where my hometown is and even went to the beach there. Siesta Key. I told her it was the #1 beach in America and she did not believe me. She asked me if I was being biased, saying it's #1 in my book but I said, "Nay, nay, nay, good woman. AMERICA SAYS SO!"

I didn't actually say that, but something to that effect. Here's a link: http://www.drbeach.org/top10beaches.htm BAM! Lawyered.

I asked where her roommate, Faye, was and she said she had just woken up (this is about 1PM) and wasn't up for moving about. She apparently stays up watching chinese shows and things of the such. Things shifted to her telling me that she normally studies during the week and doesn't do too much otherwise. Sometimes too lazy to cook so she'll keep to simple things. On the weekends, she goes to bible studies and church so she's typically busy during those times.

She asked me what I did and I end up telling quite a bit. I was horribly burnt out this week that even my body was resisting any sort of conducive work. It's been hard to sleep as of late so I'm perpetually tired. I told her that I've had to deal with a lot of things - a lot with TEFL, but also keeping promises and handling an auto insurance settlement from a car accident back in November that has been dealing a great deal of stress to me. I finally got my settlement so that's now out of the way, thankfully. lol Now paying off medical bills.

We eventually got onto the topic of accents. I told her that some people never really get over their accents and she slumped over in disbelief. If I had to describe that exact moment, it would be as if I had just punched her in the soul with an iron fist of despair as she... spiraled down in darkness.

I assured her that it still can be overcome, but I told her that it's more efficient to focus on communication and coherency before the accent. Eventually, some people just disregard the accent because it's so minimal. And to reassure her, one of my friend's that's in Tianjin, China right now has a fluent grasp on Mandarin Chinese. I wanted to give her an example so I suggested skyping Denise later with Joyce to show. Not that it was of absolute importance, but it might be reassuring to actually see it.

I also brought up a video about a guy named Mike Sui on youtube who did 12 different characters, all surrounding Chinese in some form, all with accents. I would link it here, but it seems almost inappropriate in verbal content. Look it up, if you're interested.

David-TP3

After meeting with Majdi on Friday I had another meeting scheduled with Ladji.  By this time I was very hungry and had not had food since twelve o'clock.  I picked him up from an apartment of another girl from the Ivory Coast.  Apparently they all hang out together.  Anyway picking him up he was in a fantastic soccer suit that was bright orange and had all the colors of the Ivory Coast on it.  Once he got in the car we talked for a bit while I decide what I wanted to eat.

Because it was Friday I decided to get some Soul Veg!!!! On Fridays they have a chili cheese mac that is vegan and to die for.  Seriously if you haven't had it please go on a Friday and check it out.  Anyway earlier during my tutoring planning time I was able to grade one of his class papers that he had sent me.  In fact the one that he rewrote from his corrected outline last week.  As we sat in Soul Veg I was able to give him the corrections that I had found on his paper.  This was a very encouraging process for me because his teacher that had also graded the paper had almost the exact same corrections.  We went over the finer point as last time we just got him on topic.  I was very glad to have pointed him in the right direction and he actually writes very well for a non-native speaker.  We took the entire time to go over the corrections and why they were corrections so that he would not make the mistakes again.  Unfortunately I forgot to have him make a mistake log which I will do next time.

The tutoring time ended with full bellies and corrected papers and to be honest you cannot really ask for more than that.  Ladji is a really good student and he listens so i am very glad to have him as a tutee.

Austin CP5

I met with Mohammad and former CIES graduate Cherry at Pitaria on Tennessee street. We ordered lamb and some strong Turkish coffee which I find delightful. It was really strong and tastes the way coffee should taste (take a note starbucks). However, don't drink too close to the bottom or you'll get the grinds and ruin your whole experience.

Cherry asked me if I could guess where she was from. "China," I said. She seemed shocked that I knew the answer. "How can you tell?" she asked me, astonished. Not sure how to answer that one. I may not be the most worldly and travelled person in the world, but I think I know when someone is Asian, and when someone is not. Trying to sound as least racist as possible, I said "Well, you just have that general look about you. (Am I allowed to say that?) "You must know how to tell Asians apart," she said. "But what dialect of Chinese do I speak," she prodded. Well, I've only heard of two. Cantonese and Mandarin. I'm sure there are more. "Mandarin," I guess. "That's right" she said, even more surprised. I was not going to give away the fact that I was guessing, so I let her keep thinking that I'm a genius. "Yes, once you recognize the accents," I boast, "It's easy to tell the dialects apart. It's quite obvious to me." I am now completely full of shit.

Mohammad asked me if I will drive him and Cherry to Publix. Being a reasonable request, I happily oblige. On our way over, they ask me why "all Americans want to be teachers?" I reply "Not all Americans want to be teachers. It just so happens that all the Americans you've met ARE teachers." That would be like me asking why do all Arabs want to be students?

I'm dropping them when Mohammad asks me "Hey Austin, I don't have a fake ID. Can you buy me alcohol?" "Absolutely not," I reply. "I could get kicked out of TEFL, not to mention get arrested, and get you deported." "Oh, ok," he relents. Another soul....saved.

Austin TP2

"Merde," was the word used to describe my tutoring partner's feelings on English phonetics. We must have spent the better part of two hours working on just how to pronounce certain words in English, let alone, what they mean, or how they are used. My tutoring partner Mikael (pronounced Me Chelle) explained to me how in French, each vowel only has one possible way of pronunciation. In English their are many, with exceptions. For example, the word Apple, begins with the letter "A", however it is pronounced "Aghh" when saying apple, not "ayy". Also, we went over how sometimes the letter "I" can sound like "e", as well as "Y". We focused on phonetics first because in our speaking excercises, I was having trouble understanding his accent. With reading and writing, obviously, their is no accent, and no voice.

After the first hour focusing on pronunciation and his accent, Mikael has question regarding verb tenses  and possessive adjectives. Specifically, singular versus plural nouns coupled with their proper adjective. For example, Mikael used the sentence "I gave them their books back", but he said it "I give them theirs books back". First, I helped him differentiate "give" and "gave", past versus present tense. "What about present progressive?" he asked. Ok. "I am giving them the books back". Or future tense, which requires the modal verbs "Will, shall, etc." "I will give the books back.....in the future."

Next, we went over the possessive adjectives, or determiners. If the noun is plural, like books, the determiner does not have to be plural as well. "Mines books" would not make sense, just leave the determiner singular: "mine".

Cultural note: Mikael's favorite food is "GABBA" which is an African dish of tuna fish, and rice. It is served regularly at the restaurant "SOCOCE" in Le COTE d'Ivoire, his favorite restaurant.

David-TP2

WHERE IS MY TUTOR?!?!?

On Friday I was able to meet my tutoring partner Majdi.  I met Majdi initially in the foundations course that I observed.  After the class had ended he asked me if I would be his tutor and because I needed some more tutoring hours I said of course.  We exchanged information and all seemed well, which is why I was confused to hear on Thursday that he had asked Ramin “Where’s my tutor?!!?”. 

After hearing this Vicky Ledbetter approached me the next day asking me if I was Majdi’s tutoring partner.  I told her yes and she confirmed that is what she thought.  Apparently Majdi was still looking for a tutor because he was telling everybody that I was his conversation partner not a tutoring partner.  I thought to myself “I already have plenty of conversation partners” so needless to say I was pretty anxious to get this one cleared up. 

Later that night I called him to setup a time to meet, and let me just say that a conversation with a foundation student is very difficult over the phone.  Finally we got it straight that we would be meeting on Friday for tutoring partners.  When I arrived we started talking and he asked if we were conversation partners or tutoring partners.  I told him that we were tutoring partners and he said that was ok but he also wanted to converse as well, which I wasn’t sure about because of how many other meetings a week I already have.  I told him I would only be available once a week and he almost demanded that we meet twice a week.  I told him I would look at my schedule and get back to him, which he didn’t really understand and was wanting a meeting schedule right then and there. 

Needless to say I learned a lot about boundaries during this meeting.  I was almost shocked at how unlike my other partners Ladji and Alena who viewed my time as a privilege, it seemed as he viewed my time as a right.  After getting this cleared up and some firmness on my part we sketch out a tentative meeting plan and boundaries of our meetings.  After this we went for a walk and we worked on vocabulary and pronunciation of words with an American accent, which he really desires to have.  What I didn’t really expect is that with a foundations student it is really hard to place whether you are having a tutoring meeting or a conversation meeting because they do not have much to go on so the meeting is constantly teaching and attempting to get a point across. 

Overall I learned how important it is to set boundaries with your tutees and to make sure they understand your expectations as well as theirs.  And also to make sure theirs of you are at least reasonable.