FSU TEFL Certificate Course Summer 2, 2023

Date/time: June 30th, 10-11:30am Location: Online Topic/Skill: We talked a little about the previous week before starting a couple activities around past tense verbs. I reviewed the present perfect and present perfect continuous (so we completed all the present and past tenses) but had some trouble explaining the present perfect tense in particular. I may need to create another worksheet focusing on that with better explanations. I had her go over a fill-in-the blank worksheet to practice all the past tenses, but I may give her more material to do to on her own time to really hammer home the grammar structures. We also did a listening activity where we watched a clip from Friends (with English subtitles) and she answered discussion questions about it in the past tense. For the sake of time, I had her speak her responses while I typed them. Next time, I may have her write them on her own and we review after, but I've prioritized speaking over writing the past couple sessions. I sent...

      Today I had my first tutoring session with Natalia. I used this session diagnostically.     First I adapted some questions from the tutoring guidelines found in files. These questions ended up being very helpful. For example, I knew beforehand that my tutee was from Moldova. Knowing that Romanian is the national language of Moldova, I was not sure if I should bother asking her native language. However, by using parts of the Needs Assessment Questionnaire, I learned that Natalia's native language is actually Russian, though she did speak Romanian at school.     I also used the needs assessment to ascertain which subject Natalia felt she needed assistance with. She mentioned that listening can be a challenge, particularly to quickly-spoken passages.     Finally, I did a short timed writing exercise with her just to get a sample of her writing for future use. I found that her strong spots are use of diverse vocabulary, while errors are mor...

Date/Time: June 28th, 10-10:50am with Dr. Rios Topic: Grammar (Defining and Nondefining Adjective Clauses) Activity: Dr. Rios projected a chart on the board that explained defining and nondefining adjective clauses and asked students to read from it aloud, then further explained the terms. The first part of class was spent discussing the grammar structures and how/when they're used, as well as clues that could help students differentiate between them (e.g. nondefining clauses always have a coma). Everyone in class took turns thinking of example sentences while he wrote them on the board. When a student made an error, he gave students the chance to correct it themselves. Afterwards, students filled out a couple practice worksheets, going over answers after the first. No one finished the second worksheet before the end of class, so they took it home. I believe the worksheets applied scaffolding theory, where the first worksheet was fairly controlled and only asked to students to iden...

Date/time: June 27rd, 9-9:40am Location: Online Topic/Skill: We discussed my tutee's goals with English, current skill level, and study habits. He works in the airline industry in technical support/engineering and wants to better communicate with people from other countries. His main goals are to improve his reading, listening, speaking, and grammar accuracy. He wants a better grasp of niche terms relevant to his profession (the type of language one would find in an aviation manual). Notably, he doesn't get much practice with speaking English in his daily life, and while he frequently listens to and reads English media (films/radio/news articles) he hasn't been practicing grammar as of late. We did a speaking and writing assessment, but I failed to articulate the requirements for the writing assessment properly. I didn't specify that he should avoid using the internet and ask me if he ran into a problem, so I will have have to create another writing activity for next se...

Date/Time: June 26th @5pm w/ YeonHee Location: Strozier Library Topic: Introductory Meeting / Idioms Summary: In this session, I began with getting to know her through the tutee questions via the guidelines we were given. Through this I was able to discern that she speaks English well even though she explained that speaking was not as important in Korea due to how their exams were set up. I will have to perform mini diagnostics to see her level in other areas because I was not able to see her reading, writing, or grammar levels. After asking what her short, medium, and long-term goals were, we decided to work on idioms for today. She expressed that she wishes to be able to express herself with a wider range of vocabulary and idioms rather than using the same phrases repeatedly. It was a good first learning session for the both of us! Lessons Learned: YeonHee is competent at predicting the meaning of idioms that she is not familiar with. I believe once she becomes more confident in ...

 Date/Time: June 26th  @11am w/ Professor Ryan Flemming Topic: Reading Summary: In yesterday's class, I was able to observe the students and how they progress their reading skills in class. Since it was Monday, the professor started off with going over what they would be covering that week in Canvas. The first activity was to sit with a partner and review last week's vocabulary with a partner and ask each other comprehension questions. After partner work, the teacher brought everyone together to discuss any outliers they did not understand and added more context to them. Then they voted on the short story they wanted to work on for the week, after voting the professor read a few paragraphs then alternated between students while stopping every so often to go over new words. Feedback was given through having students make predictions about vocabulary words then correcting their predictions using context clues and pictures. This allowed them to have the correct definition and und...

      My second observation of the day was of Olivia James' 4A Speaking class. This class was of a similar size to the others I have observed so far, with 5 students present.     Today the students were doing mostly independent work in preparation for a presentation they will be giving next week. The assignment is titled Speaking to Two Audiences - after giving their initial presentation, they have to then modify it for re-presentation, this time to the children of Dr. Rios.      The students were able to choose their own presentation, based on what they knew of the children's interests. For example, one student has a background in film, so she is doing a presentation on the archetype of the hero's journey in film. But, to customize the presentation to her audience, she is focusing on the archetype in the context of Marvel films, because the kids are fans of the franchise.     It was interesting to see a real-time example of an instructo...

Date/Time: June 26th, 11-11:50am with Dr. Rios Topic: Reading & Writing Compression Activity: The class began with summarizing the agenda, reviewing what was covered last class, and explaining what students would be writing during the class. Dr. Rios reviewed the rules for summarizing articles on the board, calling on students to explain what they remembered and making any corrections necessary (e.g. using your own words, past tense, focusing on main ideas, and never including opinions). The topic of how to summarize research articles was also reviewed, including how to choose what information to use when summarizing, and how long the summary should be (10 sentences). Students had the rest of class, about 30-40 minutes, to write their summaries Feedback: Dr. Rios gave feedback on student answers and questions when reviewing at the beginning of class, and walked around to see what students were writing. At one point, he stopped to remind everyone that if you start a sentence with th...

      Today I observed Dr. Ciappetta's 4B Reading class. I nearly went to a wrong classroom again, but managed to realize my mistake before the class started.     While the last class I observed had more Arabic speakers, this one had more Chinese speakers. I witnessed a student creating a personal bilingual glossary of unfamiliar terms, much like had been mentioned in our textbook. The synchronicity was neat to observe.      Dr. Ciappetta teaches Composition as well, and used class time to allow students to work on the reading components of their final Composition project, which is to write a research paper. While the students did this, I had the opportunity to view the different methods the students used to accompany their reading. One student utilized the split screen feature on her laptop to take notes while reading, while another annotated the reading directly by using editing tools like  highlighting. It was interesting to see the freedo...

Date/time: June 23rd, 10-11am Location: Online Topic/Skill: We discussed my tutee's relationship with English and goals for learning, how often she uses it day-to-day, and what she likes/dislikes about English. She noted that reading/writing English is much easier for her than speaking, and that it's especially difficult to remember what she's learned in high-pressure situations (like her job). We decided to review English verb tenses and covered all 4 present and 2 past tenses. I reminded her of the conjugation and usage for each one, and we came up with several examples for each. We also discussed what contexts were most appropriate for using each. She wanted to know if sentences written in the past continuous tense required 2 clauses. I didn't know the answer but promised to find out (I originally thought "no", but her grammar teacher said otherwise, so I didn't want to contradict them). I admitted that at least in casual conversation, they may not requ...

 Date/Time: June 21st 10:50 a.m in Dr. Rios class Topic: Grammar Summary: This was my first class observation. It was very interesting to observe the class from an outside perspective since I've been a student my whole life. The activity students went over in this class was a fill-in-the-blank practice activity and the second half the students reviewed their responses with Dr. Rios in an open discussion.

Date/Time: June 22nd, 2:00pm-2:50pm Topic/Skill: Listening (Notes and Lecture questions) with Ryan Flemming in class 4A. Teacher Presentation: The teacher gave a presentation on the FSU Museum of Fine Arts (MOFA) and the field trip they will be undertaking tomorrow. The teacher went over the rubric for an assignment the students had completed the night before, going in-depth about what he was looking for and the flexibility of his expectations.  Classroom Management: The teacher had the Class actively look at the notes they previously took and the feedback he already provided while standing at the front of the class going over his own notes he took alongside the students. The students were very involved with the instructor because he even went as far as to sit next to all of the students while giving instructions to create a friendly and open atmosphere just like Dr. Rios did in an earlier class I observed. I seem to notice a trend with all the classes I am observing that an open a...

 Thursday June 22, 2023 Class Observation of Dr. Angel Rios Recorded June 21, 2023 Group 4 Reading Goal: Difficulty ESL students have making friends in the United States Richard Hudson, TEFL A full agenda and synopsis was provided to the students with detailed subtopics for discussion.  The instructor did a brief review of the previous day and the continuation of the discussion for today. The instructor used a white board as a visual aid for students to use .  The instructor was clear and concise in his delivery of the material.  He presented many questions pertaining to the review of the subject matter.  Students were engaged and able to participate in that discussion and answer the questions. The lesson involved not only grammar review as a built in component but also provided a sample of working knowledge of mathematical grammar.  The students appear to comprehend the technical terms of the mathematical translation from their home language to ESL. The st...

Date/Time: June 22nd, 1:00pm-1:50pm Topic/Skill: Speaking (Career Presentation) with Olivia James in class 4A. Teacher Presentation: Explained the goal of the class (Career/University Presentations) in a concise manner as students have been working towards this goal since before the class I am observing today. There was no singular presentation of the exercise being completed and I assume that it has already been explained in a prior class. The multiple teachers did more individual statements of purpose to each student while trying to lead their presentation in a specific direction.  Classroom Management: The teacher had the Class sit around the center and would approach students while speaking. Her confidence and clear diction engaged the class while explaining the activity students are expected to do. She approaches students directly and asks them about their prospective majors and goals so that she can give proper feedback to the students about the content of their presentations...

Date/Time: June 22nd, 11:00am-11:50am Topic/Skill: Reading (About Homelessness) with Ryan Flemming in class 3A. Teacher Presentation: The teacher presented the reading and went over the responses that students gave on a survey. The teacher also presented specific vocabulary that he wanted students to focus on in their readings in the future. The teacher gave activities and also presented the online resources he used to the class if they wanted to learn more outside of class.  Classroom Management: The teacher stands at the front of the class and gave students materials to work on together while he prepared other materials for later in the lesson on his computer. He also walked around, answering questions when needed.  Materials: Computer, Projector, Readworks, Google Forms.  Student  Participation: Students went over an assigned reading that they went over in the previous class. The students answer questions on the text to test their reading comprehension and match v...

Date/Time: June 22nd, 11-11:50am with Dr. Rios Topic: Reading Comprehension Activity: Class began with discussion and notes about the topic of a news article students were going to read. Students took turns reading sections of the article, after which the contents were discussed. The article concerned the overt discrimination of international students on U.S. college campuses and the struggle of international students to make friends with their American peers - a topic that is highly relevant to the students in class. Additionally, certain words in the article were highlighted, and students were encouraged to guess their meaning based on context clues.  Asking students for their thoughts/ideas always came before giving the answer.  Reading comprehension and understanding  the main points of the article were emphasized while grammar accuracy was given less attention.  Notably, students were encouraged to share their opinions on the article and whether c...

Date/Time: June 22nd 10:00am-10:50am Topic/Skill: Grammer (Articles) with Dr. Angel Rios in class 4A. Teacher Presentation:  Used a whiteboard to say how articles are important based on the context of the sentence. Always kept things short and simple in his explanations so they were easy to understand and also leave a lot of interpretation to the student so they can learn effectively.  Gave the students an opportunity to practice with instruction given on any error in a friendly and open manner.  Classroom Management: The teacher Constantly called on the class to answer questions to examples in his lecture so the students are directly involved in the classroom. He also allowed the students to talk out of turn as long as students were on topic and created a friendly atmosphere for communication. He did not hesitate to sit in the rows with the students while they worked, bridging the gap in between student and instructor.  Materials: Microsoft Word, projector, com...

      For my first observation, I attended Riley Michelin's 1A Listening class. The first thing which struck me about the class was the small class size. This class only had four students in it. Another thing I noticed was the all-male composition of the class, though the instructor told me that was just happenstance, and that the program is typically more mixed.     The class I attended broke down the four aspects of listening - pre-listening, active listening, post-listening, and understanding. Pre-listening was a surprisingly thorough process, taking up the whole class period.     I was curious about how an instructor would handle instructing a class whose students were all quite new to English. The instructor handled this by speaking slowly and precisely. When class first began, the way she was talking sounded strange to me, but as I adjusted to the flow of the class it began sounding more natural.     It was interesting getting to see th...

 Date/Time: June 21st @10am w/ Dr. Felicia Ciappetta Topic: Grammar Summary: In today's class, the focus was on creating sentences in the present continuous tense and seeing if the students figured it out at the end through an inductive approach. For the first part, an individual student would act out a sentence (charades style) and the other students would write a sentence about what they think it is. After each student performed their sentence, they would act again and people would start guessing out loud. Dr. Ciappetta focused on trying to get them to use specific verbs and adding the -ing for the continuous form. Since there were only three students today, the professor changed the format for the second sentences to where they played Pictionary and guessed out loud instead of acting and writing them down. For the last activity, they had to pull up five pictures and create sentences for each of them. Dr. Ciappetta gave feedback continuously throughout the process rather than wai...

Date/Time: June 21st, 10:50am with Dr. Rios Topic: Grammar (Articles) Teacher presentation: The class began with reviewing the rules for articles and how they're used. Activity: Students completed a fill-in-the-blank practice activity in which they chose the correct article for each part of a sentence. Everyone wrote at least one of their answers on the board. The later half of class was spent going over the answers and discussing what students got right and wrong. Feedback: Students were always asked whether they agreed on the answer first, to open the discussion. Students seemed familiar with article rules but struggled with a couple special cases. For example, the phrase "He once saved a boy from the fire," where "the" was changed to "a". The instructor had to explain that "fire", which is normally uncountable, became a noun because it referred to an accident, rather than literal flame. It is important to remind students that grammar is ...

Date/Time: June 20th @1pm w/ Dr. Felicia Ciappetta Topic: Speaking Summary: In today's class, each student presented on a topic of their choice for a maximum of three minutes while the other students watched. The professor would repeat the instructions before each presentation and give a gesture as a warning of when they had one minute left. The teacher took notes during each person's presentation and would ask the other students if they had any questions after each presentation. The first two presentations did not get questions so she made it mandatory for each person to have one question ready and she would randomly choose someone to ask and encourage engagement. I learned that students did better when they presented on a topic personal to them rather than a general topic about the word. The conversation also flew more authentically if they were not focused on the board, but tried to use their own words more often. I also noticed that most of the students had good vocabulary ...

Date/Time: June 18 th  Sunday 3:10pm-4:00pm. Tuttee: Ye-Won Location: Hecht House. Topic/Skill: Reading and Speaking. Feedback provided to tutee: I had to help my tutee with complex words that were one step above her reading level such as "electricity" and names such as "Thomas Edison".  I also had to model sentences about describing her day and her preferences.  Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: I learned that students can have a hard time reading books with unfamiliar vocabulary even if the book is rated for their level. In the future, I will try and use books with more relatable children's story, for this lesson I used a book about Thomas Edison's invention of the lightbulb and compared to the previous sessions's book containing a silly duck's day, the student had trouble especially with the names in the book along with the new words that may be a step too high. The conversations came a bit easier with the lessons learned from...

Date/Time: June 18 th  Sunday 2:00pm-3:00pm. Tuttee: Ye-Won Location: Hecht House. Topic/Skill: Reading and Speaking. Feedback provided to tutee: I corrected my tutee’s pronunciation of certain words such as would, around, again, etc. while reading a short story together. I also corrected her use of "a" before singular nouns such as "for a breakfast" and other instances of singular nouns while practicing conversation. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: I learned that students have a hard time differentiating different noun types and it may be worth focusing on explaining that a bit more in the future, I also learned that the student was much better at making sentences when given freedom on the format but struggled to format answers to questions. Overall the student was attentive the entire session but seemed to be overwhelmed with trying to use new vocab in normal conversation. I will try to integrate new vocab slower into the future to k...

 Well first week down.  Great information in my first two classes.  Learning the span of knowledge that teaching TEFL requires is both daunting and exciting.  We discussed methods and the categories of the teaching structure.  My first quiz went well.  Submitted my homework to Professor Kim.  Working on my first lesson plan assignment due tomorrow June 19. Fingers crossed I do it well.  I've been reading additional materials as well.  I am so excited to keep pushing forward.  Setting up my tutoring with my student this week!  

 Class has officially started! Read chapters 1 and 12 in the workbook. I enjoyed chapter one as it was more  instructional learning and teaching philosophy.  Chapter 12 based on the reasoning of teaching grammar effectively and the individual components necessary to present grammar in a learnable and logical format to students. I'm very excited to continue the class and learn these teaching methods and philosophies.