TP Session #16_Kennell

TP Session #16 – 3/3/2015

I sat in on Andrew Wilson’s Listening class for the first time on Tuesday. I met Mr. Wilson fifteen minutes before class in his office, where he gave me the textbook for the class, the syllabus, and an attendance sheet. He even put them all in a personalized binder for me. Needless to say, I felt very welcomed.

We began the class with me taking attendance. I didn’t do as bad with the names as I might have, and felt generally pretty good about it. Andrew then had students ask me questions about myself, which I thought was a good exercise. It gave the students some listening and speaking practice while keeping their interest level very high.

We then did some vocabulary building and discussion, before moving into a listening activity. This was the first part of the textbook’s listening practice story. We played it a few times, having students fill in blank spots in a dialogue transcript. We then discussed the answers, and ended the class.

Elyce CO #2

My second classroom observation was Vicky's Group 1A speaking class. I was very excited to observe this class, because Speaking was my favorite section of the class we had been over so far!

Upon arrival in Vicky's class, the students were all seated in desks in a circle. Vicky had be choose a desk towards the center so I got to feel like I was a part of the class! Right off the bat, I was surprised at Vicky;s speaking rate. She spoke very fast, which was surprising to me because this was a lower level than Felicia's class, and she spoke very slow. The class began by vicky passing out maps of FSU campus. The students had to give each other directions to places on the map. This was a very fun activity and I'm glad I got to participate in it. I was once again surprised at the proficiency level of the students, they gave very accurate directions. I feel like this is a very practical activity as well. After the directions activity, the students practiced giving timed speeches that they were going to record later that week. The topic was "the most exciting moment of your life". It was interesting listening to their speeches, because it helped me to realize all of of the cultural differences. After this the class was over!

The main thing that stood out to me with Vicky's class was that she spoke fast, and rarely repeated herself. However, the class seemed to understand her very well.

TP Session #15_Kennell

TP Session #15

This was my last tutoring session with Youngseo, and I thought it went really well. We started with vocabulary and spelling practice, the way we usually did. We then talked for a little while about school and life. Her spoken English has definitely improved since I first started working with her.

I wanted to work on prepositions with her, and was struck by an idea of how to teach them. I drew a smiley face on a small piece of paper, and told her I was going to hide it somewhere. I then wrote down the location of the smiley face in the library, so that she would have to read where it was before going to look for it. I would make sure to use prepositions, using language like “It’s behind the yellow poster” or “it’s next to the computer.” We would take turns writing clues to each other and then finding the smiley. If we needed to, I would stop and explain some of the prepositions to her and ask her to use them in the clues that she wrote. It turned out to be a very good activity. Enthusiasm was very high, and Youngseo was learning proper preposition use rapidly.

This was my last session with Youngseo, so her parents gave me a lovely card, and were very sweet and complimentary about my teaching. I will miss working with them and Youngseo. I learned a bunch, though, and feel very motivated to earn the praise they gave me.

TP Session #14_Kennell

TP Session #14

I met up with Val at Starbucks on Sunday. We talked about the TOEFL practice that we had done the week before, and some of her main challenges with writing. She had moved to a higher level since the last time we had worked together. Before she had been in mostly level 1 classes, and been bored by her work. Now she was in level 3, and thoroughly challenged.

She admitted that she had gotten a little lazy at the end of the last session, and I introduced her to the word “Senioritis.” This led to a discussion of prefixes and suffixes, and how diseases usually ended with “itis,” or “osis.”

We did a bit of speaking practice then, TOEFL interview style. I would ask her a question, give her 15 seconds to plan her response and 45 seconds to answer. She did pretty well, and I found that I could focus on her actual language use much better in this way than during a conversation. I noticed that she had problems with gerunds, and Ls and Rs. I planned some gerunds use and minimal pairs for next lesson.

Rebecca TP#12

Tutoring Session #12

Feb 19th, 2015

19:30-20:30

Tonight’s session with Ahmed focused on more practical speaking usages. He told me he had been having trouble understanding his roommate who talks too quickly and is very hard to understand. I asked him about what was hard to understand outside of the speed, and he responded that he talks strangely. I modeled a few sentences using reduced forms for him and asked if they were similar, to which he responded that they were. Because of this, I decided to make this session about some basic reduced forms that he might find helpful.

I borrowed some materials from the lesson plan I did on reduced forms, including the list of common reduced forms and how to make them. Most of our session was spend modeling and reiterating sentences in formal and reduced English. I told him that is was more important at this point to be able to understand reduced forms receptively rather than create them. Ahmed’s roommate will understand if he speaks standard English, but Ahmed will not understand if his roommate uses tons of nonstandard language.

I felt like this session was a lot more relaxed than many of my other tutoring sessions; however, I think that was due to the topic matter. Usually we’re talking about topics that my tutees are going to be tested on, and they put a lot of weight on their grades. This session was a nice change of pace from that.

Rebecca TP#11

Tutoring Session #11

February 15^th, 2015

14:00-15:00

This afternoon’s session with Hector was culturally focused. Though it was the day after Valentine’s, we talked about the holiday and celebrations in the United States and around the world. I brought some reading materials on this topic that were mainly extensive for Hector’s reading level.

At one point, I explained how it was common for children to give everyone in their class Valentine’s cards or candy in Elementary school (at least when I was little), and Hector found this a little strange. This continued into a discussion on how schools in the US tend to enforce students being generous to each other, even if this does not always make logical sense (i.e. being nice to your bully). I think it was a worthwhile tangent to go on, as it shows a slightly different side to Americans than the level of bluntness expressed by many students from Latin and South America.

During this session, less speaking error correction was addressed than usual. The more relaxed atmosphere allowed Hector to loosen up more than usual, I think. He is always a very serious student. As such, he tends to say less, or be in constant correction when speaking. Today, however, his words flowed much better, and when I would point out an error, he corrected himself without getting flustered.

Rebecca TP#10

Tutoring Session #10

February 13^th, 2015

18:00-18:30

This evening Jun and I worked through one of the Magic Tree House books. I hadn’t realized that the series was still popular, but Jun had acquired a number of them recently. I went to the bookstore yesterday to pick up a couple that I remembered him having, namely, Blizzard of the Blue Moon and Dragon of the Red Dawn. For today, we focused on the former.

Before we started reading, I asked Jun to look at the cover and synopsis on the back of the book, so he could make some predictions about what would happen in the story. Also, because the book references The Great Depression, we took a couple minutes to talk about that period in American History and why it would be important to the story.

There were fewer times this week that I had to remind Jun to slow down his reading, or stop him so we could go over something he skipped. I think that he is most used to reading silently, so sometimes his mouth doesn’t catch up to how quickly his mind is reading. He almost never has issues in comprehension, and if he does find something confusing, he will stop right then and ask, so I think the problem has more to do with a lack of practice reading aloud than a lack of reading skill in general.