FSU TEFL Certificate Course Summer 2, 2023

 Date: 30th August 2023 Tutee: Marcela Summary:  I feel confident in Marcela's understanding of the present tenses in English, so today we did some listening exercises. I didnt want to overwhelm her by moving straight on to past or future tesne, so I thought one more lesson of review and practice would be useful. Especially because we live together, so I will always be able to teach her so to me there is no use in overwhelming her right now, and there's no deadline. I want to go at a pace that suits her best. We watched a level-appropriate video together and then I gave her some prompts so we could discuss it, this took up the rest of our time. She is improving very quickly! During the next lesson, I plan to introduce the past tenses and incorporate more reading exercises. She also does a lot of practice in her free time so I will give her reading and listening material to use during. 

 Date: 29th August 2023 Tutee: Marcela Summary:  Today's lesson was a review of the present tenses in English. I started off by giving Marcela a level appropriate text to read that incorporated the different tenses. I read first and then she read the text, afterwards we reviewed any vocabulary the she didn't understand and pronunciation mistakes. She did a pretty good job with this, I think the text was very level appropriate, it challenged her just enough. The text was about daily routines so afterwards I asked her to create sentences describing her own daily routines. After giving her 10 minutes to do so, we reviewed the sentences for any mistakes. After that we had ran out of time. I am proud of her progress!

 Date: 28th August 2023 Tutee: Marcela Summary: Today, Marcela and I continued our review Present Perfect tense. Since it's been a few days since our last lesson I did a quick review of Present Perfect and had her create some sentences using the tense. Then we moved on to Present Perfect Continuous. She had a bit more trouble with this one than the others so I made sure to go over it again slowly and provided other examples in context. She's improving really quickly, during her free time I see her using apps like Duolingo to practice her English and whenever we talk she always incorporates English. I have been actively trying to code-switch between Spanish and English whenever we're discussing something I know she could figure out the meaning of in the context of a Spanish sentence. She's been doing really great! I'll include a snippet of the lesson plan below.  Present Perfect Continuous: Introduce the present perfect continuous tense by explaining that it is use...

 Date: 24th August 2023 Tutee: Sandra Summary:  Sandra and I havent been able to meet as often lately due to a change in her schedule, so I'm so happy we were able to meet today! Sandra's parents left to Colombia so she no longer has child care and has to stay home and look after her kids. During the lesson I could tell she was stressed and overwhelmed due to this adjustment so I made sure to make today's lesson very laid-back. We listened to a podcast audio (B1 level) together and then discussed the topics within it. Then we played a game together where we had to describe an object in our homes while the other person tried to guess it. This was a bit challenging for her so I'm glad we played it again. 

 Date: 23rd August 2023 Tutee: Marcela Summary:  I enjoy tutoring Marcela. She has a high level of intrinsic motivation to learn English because she just moved here and needs to learn in order to work and make friends. It's also convenient that we live together because during our conversations she tries to incorporate the English she has learned and I'm able to guide her or correct any mistakes. During today's lesson we started off by completing a review of Present Continuous with fill in the blanks and creating sentences. Then we moved onto Present Perfect Tense. So far nothing has been too difficult for her, these tenses are able to be directly translated to Spanish so she hasn't had trouble understanding the context in which to use them. Her only difficulty has been with pronunciation but I plan on incorporating some reading exercises once we finish our lesson on all the Present Tenses. I am including a sample of the lesson plan below for more context. Present Contin...

 Date: 17th August 2023 Tutee: Marcela Summary: Today, Marcela and I continued our lesson on the Present Tenses in English. We quickly reviewed the Simple Present we learned last class and then we started on Present Continuous. Both of these tenses were easy for me to explain to her in the context of Spanish, they are similar. The only thing she had trouble with was the [ŋ] sound in words like 'cook-ing' and 'learn-ing'. We practiced it a few times and she was able to improve. I was able to finish teaching her about the tense but we didn't have enough time for in-context examples and practice so I will start our next lesson with that. I am including a sample of my lesson plan below for more context.  Simple Present Tense: Introduce the simple present tense by explaining that it is used to talk about habitual actions, general truths, and routines. The simple present tense is used to talk about actions that happen regularly or habits. We use it to express general t...

 Date: 16th August 2023 Tutee: Marcela Summary: This week I moved into my new apartment, I am living with my boyfriend and his mom. His mom just immigrated here from Colombia, and she is determined to learn English. I told her we can have tutoring sessions and I can help her with her English until she is able to enroll in classes at TCC. She only knows a few phrases in English so today we started from the beginning with reviewing present tense. I am grateful that I speak Spanish otherwise I would not have been able to explain these concepts to her. I taught her Simple Present and then we did a fill in the blank activity together to test her comprehension. We also reviewed a little bit of pronouns just so she could conjugate properly. It was an interesting lesson, I'm so glad I am able to help her!

      Earlier today I met with Je Ah over WhatsApp video call. The lesson for today was all about idioms. I went with sports-based idioms, because I know that Je Ah watches baseball sometimes. Though idioms are kind of intimidating, I figured they could be a novel way to introduce vocabulary in a subject the tutee already has background knowledge of.     I made a list of nine idioms, ranging from baseball (to already have two strikes against you) to boxing (to be down for the count.) After explaining each one briefly, including some definitions, it was time to practice using them.     Applying them was a bit tricky, which was not unexpected. Regardless, she managed to use a few correctly and learned from her misuses, which was good.     Following the main chunk of the lesson, we did some reading comprehension exercises surrounding some girls talking about their experiences playing sports.     I concluded the lesson by doing a quick ...

 Date: 9th August 2023 Tutee: Sandra Summary: During this session with Sandra, we picked up where we left off from last session. We finished reading our passage together and then reviewed pronunciation mistakes and vocabulary she didn't understand. Then we practiced conversation by discussing our families and our friends. We shared stories with each other until time ran out. Whenever she didn't understand how to articulate herself or made a mistake, I made sure to give her time to figure it out herself but whenever she couldn't figure it out or asked for help I would draw attention to the mistake, repeat it, and then say the correct answer if she still didn't understand. Then we would review the grammar behind the correct answer. It was a good session. 

Date: 8th August 2023 Tutee: Sandra Summary:  Lately, Sandra and I have been focused on reading. I noticed that it really helps improve her pronunciation when I chose a level appropriate text, read a paragraph and then ask her to read it after me. Then we go over pronunciation mistakes and vocabulary words she didnt understand. I think she is a high B1 level in English. She understands about 75% of the text and the parts that she doesnt are new vocabulary words she hadn't been introduced to previously. During this session we started off by reviewing her homework answers and practicing conversation by discussing our weeks since the last time we saw each other. Then we read a text which ended up taking the rest of our time. We didn't end up finishing it but I planned to review it next session. I am proud of the progress Sandra has been making!

Date/Time: August 20th  Sunday 2:30pm-4:30pm. Tuttee: Ye-Won. Location: Hecht House. Topic/Skill: Reading and Speaking. Feedback provided to tutee: I corrected my tutee’s reading speed and understanding of words that are used as a name in the story but has another meaning such as "Aurora". I also had the tuttee use more decoding skills to try and guess the pronunciation of long words such as "Maleficent". I alsohad the tuttee do activities that showed the importance of reacurring characters that are not shown in the illustrations but are mentioned in the text only.  Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: This lesson I unfortuantely forgot my prepared materials at home. I had the wonderful opportunity to use an early reader version of the story of Sleeping Beauty. I think the lesson overall went well and I may continue to use the book in the next session as the tuttee really liked the story and was engaged for the duration of the session. Even though ...

  Date/Time: August 13th  Sunday 2:30pm-4:30pm. Tuttee: Ye-Won. Location: Hecht House. Topic/Skill: Reading and Speaking. Feedback provided to tutee: I corrected my tutee’s reading comprehension and vocabulary in use. I tried to have the tutee use context to find the meaning of certain complex words such as "castle" and "dandelion". I also tried to have the tuttee use visually creative exercises to connect with characters in a story and their given personalities. I wanted to have the tuttee be able to go beyond the reading and make a personal connection with the story.  Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: The creative activity I did with the tuttee was good at keeping the student engaged and builds a connection to the characters in the story. I will unfortunatley not do it again in the future though because it did end up taking more time than anticipated and I think a different activity that involves more english skills would be better for learnin...

 Date/Time: August 25th @11:30am w/ YeonHee Location: Lucky Goat cafe Topic: Reviewing written essay and conversation Summary: In this session, we went over her essay that she wrote. I gave her a two part prompt: 1. write a summary of a movie and 2. rate the movie and whether or not she would recommend and why. She showed me her essay and first I read it on my own and then we went over it together to cover each section to make sure we didn't miss anything. As we went through the whole thing, most of the small things we had to go over were plurals with certain words when "they" or "them" or clarifying the subject of the sentence. It was cohesive and a great written piece but some sentences just needed one or two words to add clarity. We went through it together to help her understand where she went wrong. Compared to the first written piece she ever did for me, this was a great improvement and I was able to see her growth! Lessons Learned: Today, I learned that p...

Date/Time: August 24th @11:30am w/ YeonHee Location: Lucky Goat cafe Topic: Speaking Summary: In this session, we practiced conversation with the use of the new idioms and vocabulary we have covered over the past. I wanted to get a grasp of how far she has come along before I continued teaching her new idioms and vocabulary. Over the past few weeks she has made significant progress! She is becoming more comfortable with saying what’s on her mind and has greatly improved her flow when it comes to expressing herself. I am eager to see her written essay in our next session so I can see how her grammar and written flow have improved! These last two sessions will be focused on encouraging natural flow and nitpicking the last few things she sometimes slips up with while talking.  Lessons Learned: Today, I learned that it is important to make sure the new vocabulary and phrases we learned can be used in context. Sometimes it can be easy to learn something new but hard to know when it is a...

     This morning I met with Je Ah. I started out by reviewing the rules of capitalization. She understood the basics of capitalizing proper nouns, but would make mistakes on smaller things. Like, when I gave this sentence " has mr. williams ever been to new york?" and asked her to retype it, she capitalized everything she was supposed to except for "Mr." So, we just went over what proper nouns are, and how titles like Mr., Dr., Mrs., and so on are treated as though they are names and must also have their first letter capitalized.     Next we did some reading. I know that Aesop's fables are a big cultural thing, so I found one called "The Cat and the Old Rat." Unfortunately, I messed up by not reviewing vocabulary beforehand well enough, so the reading proved pretty difficult.      Because the reading activity ended up being more time-consuming than I'd anticipated, I ended the session with what Snow what refer to as an "emotionally reassuring...

      This morning I met with Je Ah over WhatsApp video calling. We had worked with adverbs in the previous session, but I found that her knowledge of adjectives needed refreshing, so I worked with that. I experimented a tiny bit with something I had read in Snow's book, which was utilizing the host language in small ways to further explain a concept.      For example, I noticed that Je Ah had some trouble with attributive adjectives. She was able to use adjectives in the predicative form, such as "The man is bald." But if it was "the bald man", she had some trouble.  Luckily, one of the the first points of grammar I had learned in Korean was using adjectives in the attributive form by adding on a certain suffix. So I was able to demonstrate that the word "smart" in the phrase "the smart student" was performing the same grammatical function as " 똑똑한" was in the phrase "똑똑한 학생", or "큰" in "큰 도시" or whate...

Date/Time: August 21st @11:15am w/ YeonHee Location: Zoom Topic: Idioms and Speaking Summary: In this session, we had a short session again and we continued watching the video called "Super Useful Idioms & Expressions" (https://youtu.be/9_Ti0Fss3lI). In this video we went over the following idioms: to blow off some steam, it's not rocket science, and to table (something). For the following idioms I used background knowledge to help build her understanding of them. For example, in cartoons and movies they always show smoke/steam blowing out of the ears of someone or something that is angry. So that phrase "to blow off some steam" means they want to feel better and not be angry any more because they have too much "steam" or emotions bubbling up inside of them. This video we are watching on YouTube is good because the teacher uses movie clips to show examples of when people say these phrases so it gives her more context. We will spend one more session...

Date/Time: August 18th @12:15pm w/ YeonHee Location: Zoom Topic: Idioms and Speaking Summary: In this session, we had a short session again and we watched a video called "Super Useful Idioms & Expressions" (https://youtu.be/9_Ti0Fss3lI). In this video we went over the following idioms: piece of cake, all set/good, to run late/behind, to get the hang of something, to sound like a broken record, and to pitch in. She already knew piece of cake and all set so we were able to discuss completely new topics and information. I had to remind her that usually idioms are not literal and mean something completely different than what they say with a deeper meaning. The reason I reminded her about this is because when I asked her what she thought the meant beforehand, she usually had a more literal perspective such as thinking to get the hang of something referred to hanging something from the ceiling. However we went over each one and discussed the definitions, used it in context, and...

Date/Time: August 17th @12pm w/ YeonHee Location: Smoothie Time Topic: American Culture and Speaking Summary: In this session, we had a short session where we watched a video called "American Culture You NEED To Know" (https://youtu.be/uCXjxMw9wak). It was a good video that introduced some new information for us to discuss about American culture. The topics included things such as, "more bang for your buck", "I plead the 5th", John Hancock, calling shotgun before getting in a car, take me out to the ballgame, Benjamins, and other unique things. She knew a few good ones, but we got to discuss some that she never heard of before like calling shotgun and the idiom "more bang for your buck". After our discussion, we decided to we will watch one last American culture video for our next session then we will move on to more focused subjects. Lessons Learned: Today, I learned that there are many idioms that I have forgotten about but are still important ...

      Earlier this morning I met with Je Ah over WhatsApp video call. I began by resuming what we had been working on earlier this week, the intensive reading on Ellis Island. I ended up cutting that to the first couple paragraphs, because it proved to be fairly challenging, but I think it was still good practice.     Following that, I continued with the main thing today: adverbs. I went with this because I knew that Bella had done adjectives with her already, and we talked about verbs lots when conjugating into different tenses, so combining the two and going with adverbs seemed like the next step.      I began by introducing some high-frequency adverbs, along with an example sentence for each. Then, I proceeded with some fill-in-the-blank questions to evaluate her ability to use adverbs properly in the context of a sentence. She did well at this, so then I moved on to the main activity: mad libs! I mad some sentences with certain parts of speech...

Date/Time: August 16th @11:30am w/ YeonHee Location: Lucky Goat Cafe Topic: American Culture and Speaking Summary: In this session, we spent most of the time practicing her conversational skills while I helped her by nitpicking certain things she would make small errors on. We also got to cover the American concept known as ESE (exceptional student education) classes in public schools because I have a new job working with ESE kids and I was able to discuss this norm with her. Based off of the new idioms, prepositions-in-use, and vocabulary we have covered the past two weeks, I gave her a writing assignment to work on over the week so that we can go over it together on Monday.  Lessons Learned: I have been making an effort to use the terms and phrases that I teach her in my own sentences and I notice it helps her understand the concept better. When I frequently bring up subjects we covered in the past it helps her retain the information that we covered. I have also notice she is beg...

Date/Time: August 6th  Sunday 2:30pm-4:30pm. Tuttee: Ye-Won. Location: Hecht House. Topic/Skill: Reading and Speaking. Feedback provided to tutee: I corrected my tutee’s understanding of sounds in words such as "care" and "scare". I also used the game Hangman as a simple game to help them understand words they found difficult by having them use the book to find key vocabulary. Character names were also corrected as the tutee had difficulty with names such as "serendipity".  Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: The improvement over the course of the tutoring has been tremendous as the student has been "upgraded" one level in difficulty in books. I think what I have been doing has been working and I am getting a lot better at having the student sound out complex words to say them aloud. I was really happy with the tuttee's drive to read as several times they noted the difficulty they were having but refused to go down in book ...

      This  afternoon I met with Moussa at the Hecht House. We had been doing a lot of reading and speaking in previous meetings, so I chose to open up with dictocomp this time, to get some practice with listening and writing. He had not done dictocomp before, but given his promotion to Group 3, he will likely be encountering it soon, and hopefully he will be extra comfortable with it when it happens.     For the exercise I used a very short clip, around one minute long, from Friends, the TV show. The dictocomp went okay. The problem was with getting him to accept that it is okay to paraphrase certain parts of dictocomp, as it is a bit different than pure dictation, and therefore getting the general meaning of the dialogue across is most important.     Following the dictocomp, I chose a reading topic that I thought would promote discussion afterwards: teachers being replaced or supplemented by robots. I began by going over some vocabulary, providi...

    Yesterday I met with Je Ah. I began the lesson by going over the first two future tenses: the future simple and the future continuous. I began by saying in what contexts a tense could be used; for example, the future simple tense can be used when making a prediction. Following that, I introduced a few example sentences I had created.     After showing the example sentences, I had Je Ah conjugate some verbs in the tense.  Finally, I had her practice making her own original sentences. What I've found with Je Ah is that if I say "Please make a sentence in x tense", it makes her nervous and she shuts down. But if I phrase the request as a more conversational question, she is willing to try. For example, I asked her to tell me in the future simple tense what the would be doing tomorrow, and she correctly said "I will watch baseball tomorrow." This teaching breakthrough will definitely help me out in the future.

      This morning I met with Je Ah. I had been having trouble getting her comfortable with generating sentences, so I ended up going with a schema-building activity, to promote familiarity with a topic of conversation. The reading we had done when we had last met had been about a visit to a pet store, so I decided animals would be a good topic to start with, given that she was not familiar with some of the stranger ones, like scorpions. I even re-read Snow's chapter on vocabulary, but it ended up not being super necessary, because she knew most of the words for the animals.     Even though I did not get the opportunity to teach a lot of vocabulary, I do think that revisiting words we had previously discussed was helpful, because when I asked her questions later, she was able to answer them in her own sentences in English, which I was really excited about. For example, we had a short conversation about favorite animals, and if she has any pets.     I l...

      Yesterday, I met with Moussa in the basement of the  Hecht House. In anticipation of the fall semester starting in a little while, we did some review of tenses to begin. This gave me some good practice at explaining the past perfect and past perfect continuous tenses. I am still not sure if he completely gets what context to use them in, but he was able to construct sentences in them, which is still a good step towards productive use of them, I think.     Next, we did an intensive reading exercise that I had found online. I really like the ones centered around American society, because they start interesting discussions about similarities and differences between the tutee's culture and Americas. Because I was interested in hearing about the nature in Ivory Coast from Moussa, I selected a reading where a tourist narrates his visit to Las Vegas, including the nightlife, and leaving the city to see the Grand Canyon also in Nevada. The most difficult part...

Date/Time: August 10th @1:30pm w/ YeonHee Location: Online Topic: Idioms Summary: In this session, we watched an episode of Jerry Springer to watch a more natural flow of conversation and catch on to subtle idioms. Some of the ones I took note of for her were: bury the hatchet, get if off (his/her/my) chest, and backstabber. These were good because the idioms were revolving a situation where the antagonist felt guilty for his actions and wanted the innocent person to forgive him. These idioms applied very well to this situation and they were a good use of vocabulary/idioms-in-context vs. just teaching them randomly. It was a little bit of a longer video so I made sure to stop it so often and make sure she was good with the dialogue participants had accents that were even a little bit difficult for me to understand. She enjoyed the video and was able to watch a different style of conversation that was more intense and fast-paced.  Lessons Learned: It is not ideal to tutor someone on...

Date/time: August 9th, 9-10am Location: Online Topic/Skill: We discussed the past week and went over some more English reductions (like gonna, hafta , etc.) but he asked a question about "gonna" that I need to review and find an answer to for next week. We then went over some vocab and watched a video (at .75 speed) about monsters in old myths. I thought it would be level-appropriate because the presenter's speech was clear and there were lots of visuals, but there were several places he didn't understand the video. We went back and rewatched them in pieces with captions. I think the struggle came from the presenter's academic language and use of words that were likely unfamiliar to him, and names/references in some of the example myths that the presenter assumed the viewer would already know. We didn't have time to answer as many of the discussion questions as I would have liked. What I learned: I should assume listening activities will take more time. It...

Date/time: August 7th, 8-9am Location: Online Topic/Skill: I had him do a spot-the-difference activity where he had to find the differences between 2 pictures within 5 minutes and then explain the differences to me in English. It helped him use to more vocab in context and created less pressure to be perfect, in my opinion. We reviewed some vocab from last session and went through questions using it. This took up far more time than I thought it would. The article was also from last session, so the review was more brief. I had him answer comprehension questions by speaking, but provided some phrases to start each answer to help him. I don't know if this was too much or too little support, as it's a struggle to get him to speak in full sentences without explicitly asking, even when I provide phrases to help him in class (like "I don't understand" or "Could you explain this?"). Because of this, it can be hard to tell what his actual speaking ability is. Wha...

Date/time: July 28th, 10-11am Location: Online Topic/Skill: We went over some vocab for an article about cultural differences in business communication (including words like crucial, etiquette , and insincere ). I formatted it as a matching activity, which let us think through and discuss the words more in-depth. Next, she read paragraphs of the article out loud, after which we discussed any words/phrases she didn't understand and went over some discussion questions. This took up our whole time. What I learned: I think activities that require learners to think through words and vocabulary help the meanings stick more and give a good opportunity to focus on the words that aren't immediately understood. I also liked using an article that let us discuss differences and personal experiences between Columbian and U.S. culture. It's fun and engaging to talk/learn about other people's cultures.

      Yesterday afternoon I met with Moussa in the basement of the Hecht House. The lesson was focused mostly on receptive language skills of reading and listening, but there was also some speaking practice.     I began by using a lesson plan I had initially made for the Reading unit of the TEFL course. It was an intensive reading exercise about the history of immigration at Ellis Island.     We began by looking at a virtual tour of Ellis Island, with lots of photographs of what it looked like in the past, and what it looks like today, in its new occupation as a  museum.     After that initial schema building exercise, I had Moussa read aloud a passage on Ellis Island, and then answer intensive reading questions I had created for it.     I was happy with how this lesson went. It was challenging enough that he had to reread some sections to find the answers, but not so difficult as to be discouraging or frustrating.   ...

      Yesterday morning I met with Je Ah again. While we had been working on the past tenses earlier this week, I had put an irregular verb in there just to see if she was familiar, and since she was not, I decided that that could be the next lesson.     I made a list of high-frequency irregular verbs, with an example sentence for each one. After discussing these, I had her do some highly-controlled practice, in the form of filling in the blank in a sentence that was missing its verb.     After a bit, I tried to move towards giving less linguistic support, and having her construct sentences. She was clearly uncomfortable with this, as her grammar ability seems to outpace her vocabulary knowledge at the moment. When we meet next, my plan is to have a lesson focused around vocabulary relating to a certain theme, to hopefully facilitate sentence construction around a specific theme.

Date/Time: August 3rd @4pm w/ YeonHee Location: FAMU/FSU Engineering Building Topic: Prepositions Summary: In this session, we worked on the following prepositions: towards, between, amid, since, and via. We are finishing up from our activity on Monday and working on creating sentences with minimal assistance. This is a good brain stimulating activity for her so I will try to create these "make your own sentences" activities more often with different types of English grammar. What usually happens is she will work on creating the sentences then after she is done we will go over them together so we can discuss different ways to adjust them to her liking. One thing we got to review again from her previous education is present perfect and using past participles.  Lessons Learned: The tutees may struggle with the work you give them but it is important to let them be independent and figure out how to work it out for themselves. They will only get better if they keep improving their...

     I was having trouble scheduling with some of my tutees, so Bella was nice enough to put me in touch with one of hers, Je Ah. This was to be my first time tutoring other the internet, so I was pretty nervous.     Luckily, I had some knowledge of what Je Ah and Bella had been reviewing previously, namely, the present tenses. By jumping right in with grammar review, I was able to get a good idea of Je Ah's level, which will definitely help me fine-tune future sessions.     When going over tenses with Je Ah, I got the impression that she is most comfortable when given lots of linguistic support, and kind of shuts down when it is not present. To work on this, the next time we meet, I will provide a more in-depth scaffolding structure. I think switching to a different platform will ease this process. Jessica recommended Google Teams, so I want to try that.