Milton_CP_#5

Milton_CP_#5

Student Name: Mohamad saif                                                                                                               Date: Wednesday, January, 28-2015                                                                                                           Location: Momo’s pizza next to FSU, 7:30pm.

Skill – Speaking and Vocabulary acquisition

Mohamad is from the United Arab Emirates. His country is located in the southeast end of the Arabian Peninsula on the Persian Gulf.  He works for the government police department.

He needs a lot of practice speaking English. Interestingly we talked about his family in Saudi Arabia. He let me see pictures of his father, sisters and grandfather. Mohamad is pursuing a degree in Public Relations from the Marshall University in West Virginia. After he finishes his CIES class he will move to West Virginia.  He loves to talk about many subjects and he is open minded and respectful of our culture and ideas. It is a lot of fun talking with Mohamad and sharing ideas.

He just bought a sports car. I encourage him to be careful and to drive slow since in his country the speed limit is way higher compared with USA.

The clothing used in the Emirates is quite elegant. Females use the abaya which is really beautiful and elaborate.

Lesson Learned: Mohamad needs a lot of practice acquiring vocabulary and speaking English. He is very outspoken and friendly, ideal qualities for a student of Public Relations. I need to share with him the voice less sounds affecting his culture and which syllable to stress when talking because sometimes is hard to understand with his strong accent. 

Milton_CP_#4

Milton_CP_#4

Student Name: Mutaz Bakri                                                                                                                         Date: Friday, January, 29-2015       

Location: Starbucks next to CIES, 5:00pm.

Skill – Speaking and Vocabulary acquisition

Mutaz needs a lot of practice speaking. We talked about his culture in Saudi Arabia. He loves sports and he visits the FSU gym regularly. Several years ago he was a champion of judo on his school. Mutaz enjoys speaking English and he is expanding his vocabulary collection on a daily basis. I did teach him some new words and ask him to tell me the meaning. It is funny how he uses his cell phone dictionary or translator. Once he finds the meaning he develops a sentence and we keep on talking until a new word shows up and again we start the cycle.

He is a native of the city of Mecca, the capital of Makkah Province in Saudi Arabia. The city is located 70 km inland from Jeddah in a narrow valley not facing the ocean. Mecca is the prophet Mohammed's birthplace is Islam's spiritual center. According to Mutaz is very hard to find a hotel due to the large number of people visiting the place on a daily basis. Most of the visitors stay with family members. He has a wife. One interesting detail – I asked him if they have butterflies in Saudi Arabia, my speculation was negative due to deserted conditions in the region. To my surprise he said yes and in fact some people eat them, they even have the monarch butterfly.

Lesson Learned: At the beginners level speaking is a fun activity and I see why some people shy away from it. Mutaz is motivated and he is having fun, I will keep on sharing vocabulary and making corrections to the sentences that he is building for regular conversations. If we keep a positive attitude he will be fluent in English soon.

Kayla_CP_IE_#3

Date/Time: January 29th, 1:00 pm
Location: Ramin's Intercultural Exchange Class

During this class, we got into groups of three (two CIES students, one TEFL student) to discuss culture and education. We were all given worksheets to help guide the conversation. The first activity was to check boxes the applied to our first culture, first with what is acceptable/expected for/from teachers and then what is acceptable/expected for/from students (how they all interact in the classroom). My group included Shuo, from China, and Shahd, from Kuwait.

We compared our answers, and checked a lot of the same boxes. The only box that I didn't check, as well as for Shuo and Shahd, was that it's acceptable for teachers to meet with students after class anytime and anyplace. However, when the entire class compared/discussed answers, some people said that it was okay for teachers in different countries to carry-on conversations at bars over a beer. (I've never done that, but that's super cool!) Shuo and Shahd didn't check the box that said that it is acceptable for teachers to admit when they are unsure of the answer. Both CIES students explained that in their countries, teachers are "all-knowing," and that if they ask a question that the teacher doesn't know, that the topic is their homework for the night! Shuo didn't check the box that said it is expected that teachers organize students to work in groups because in China individual work is highly stressed upon. Group work is not a common teaching/learning method at all.

We compared and contrasted ideas about how students can generally act, but it varied among the three of us (too much information to type). I think this is because each student is different in every country, so it's hard to peg down what is specifically allowable or accepted from students.

However, the back of the worksheet was really fun, although we only got through three examples. For this activity, we were supposed to explain and demonstrate the appropriate behavior (verbal/nonverbal) in each situation listed on the backside of the worksheet. We demonstrated how to greet someone of the opposite gender (same age), someone younger than you, and someone older than you. The girls laughed at me when I explained that there are different situations for when I greet a guy my age. If it's a guy I don't know, I'm super shy and won't really say anything. If it's my friend, I run-hug-tackle him. Shuo and Shahd both explained that they were a little more reserved when greeting a guy that is their age, but if it is their girlfriend that they are a lot friendlier. Almost no physical contact when greeting a man their age.

Overall--fun, interactive class... but not enough time at all.

Celina_TP #4

     For my second tutoring session with my child tutee, I came up with a more entertaining writing exercise. We started off our session by reading some of her new Magic Treehouse book, she pretty much reads a whole book each week! This time the adventure took the main characters into the deserts of ancient Iraq, so there were some very exotic challenging words for Yunseo to get through. She read about half a chapter and then I bargained with her by reading the last few pages myself. Next we went over her homework for school. It was very simple writing work, it just had her write her name and some letters. The homework was a bit of a surprise to me because Yunseo is much more advanced than that and has been writing full paragraphs during our sessions! After her homework I came up with an idea to make our writing exercises more fun. I ripped up a piece of paper and scrolled through the chapter book we had been reading. I found random yet more challenging words from the novel and wrote each one down on a slip of paper and folded each slip. Then, I had Yunseo choose three of the slips and read each word to me. The task of the exercise was to write a story using sentences with each of the words she had picked. We decided that our "story" was going to be an adventure about her monster she had drawn. It was really entertaining for the both of us, and it got her to utilize some of the new vocabulary she had learned. I am glad I prepped for this session with this game! I hope next week I can make up an equally as fun plan.

Celina_CP #4 (IE)

       For our third session in the CIES speaking class we got to share with the CIES students some interesting things about American school culture. I partnered up with two familiar faces this week, Sam and Eduardo. Our assignment was to review a sheet that described actions of students and teachers, and determine whether or not they were commonplace in our different cultures. For me, it was interesting to kind of reflect upon the norms set on American students. When the three of us shared our answers with each other it was surprising how similar most of the answers were. I think I just assumed that in most cultures students are supposed to respect teachers a lot more than we seem to in the U.S. For Sam, in China it really is not common for students to be placed into group work during classes. He said it was because for the most part students are individually graded and group work would really just hinder on that. As a future (possible) english teacher, this was really important for me to understand. I can't just assume that all American teaching techniques are typical elsewhere. I may very well come across a culture difference in teaching methods when I teach abroad. Overall, this was a great session and i'm really looking forward to next week!

Celina_CP #3

 
 For my third conversation partner session I met up with Abdullah from Saudi Arabia. Abdullah is in the Thursday speaking classes that we participate in. We met up at Starbucks at the library and got to chat for an hour or so. I told him a lot about what I study and what I want to do when I graduate. Since I am not sure of where I would eventually like to teach english, we talked in depth about some of the places we have both traveled and some possibilities for teaching job locations. Abdullah previously studied Engineering and has his Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from his university in Saudi Arabia. He came to the U.S. to improve his english, even though all of his Engineering classes were in english! Eventually he would like to attend Florida State and get his masters. He didn't know what he wanted to study though, because he doesn't want to continue with Engineering. I explained some possible Master's programs FSU offered like Business Administration and Communications and he seemed pretty interested in those areas. I enjoyed learning about Abdullah's culture back home and what living in the U.S. is like for him!

Lindsey_TP_#7

In my most recent tutoring session with Youngseo, I worked on her pronunciation some more. She is really good at writing and sounding out words, but when she is speaking freely and telling me something about her day, she seems to jumble up her words and start speaking very quickly. I reminded her a few times to slow down when she was talking to me. This helped both her pronunciation and also the clarity of what she was saying. She seems to also get really excited when she is talking to me, which is good because it shows her confidence, but sometimes it just makes her talk to quickly. I am going to focus on slowing down her speaking rate over the next few sessions. 

I also worked on pronunciation with words in the book. I would read one page very clearly and slowly and told her to carefully look at the words and how I said them. Then I would have read it back to me. We also did reading based on comprehension. It seems that compartmentalizing the comprehension and pronunciation aspects of readings helped her. Telling her exactly how to sound out a word and what it means is sometimes too much for her and she gets distracted. I think I will continue this method in our next sessions and I’m looking forward to seeing her progress.