FSU TEFL120 Fall 1_2020

  Sanghun warmed up with several sets of minimal pairs. After doing the pairs, the next step was generating sentences with each as we have been doing. I then asked him to find a context in which his sentence would fit. We worked through several pairings primarily focusing on the ‘l’ and ‘r’ sounds. Next Sanghun talked to me about his favorite foods in Korea (he prepared a short discussion in advance). I took time to ask questions which forced him to elaborate on each question. He is much more comfortable when speaking about things he is more familiar with, as we all are. My primary focus when carrying out the dialogue was to get him to speak most of the time. Whenever he had issue with vocabulary or pronunciation we took our time to work through it. Finally, in order to get him thinking and talking things through we worked through 25 short answer speaking questions that I found on the TOEFL website. The questions varied from hypothetical (where would you travel to in the world if y...

Sanghun started the lesson by telling me about his trip to Japan. This was the topic he chose to focus on. He spent about ten minutes telling me about his trip. I would ask him to elaborate from time to time but mainly allowed him to guide the conversation. After he finished I told him what he did well and corrected some speaking errors that he had made. Sanghun seemed to struggle with the ‘l’ and ‘r’ noises so we did some minimal pairs exercises involving these. Not only did I have him work through each pairing, but I also asked him to productively come up with sentences using each pairing in order to apply some context. When he started formulating his own sentences I noticed he seemed to have more trouble so I had him focus on doing this more. I found he had difficulty at times with conversational English and intonation issues. We are going to do some listening practice going forward and primarily focus on these issues as well as quickly joined words.  

  Sanghun and I had a great first session. He told me he didn’t think he spoke English well and wanted to improve. Similar to my other tutee, Sanghun, wants to work on pronunciation and conversational English. He said he understands things better than he expresses them. He is South Korean and based on my understanding of South Korean learning styles, he has had a lot of experience memorizing things and learning the grammar rules however, he has not used it much contextually. Sanghun is 33 and has been in the States for seven months. He hopes to improve his English so he can contribute more to the research he does at FSU. I did the diagnostic questions with Sanghun in order to determine his level. He understands things well and formulates sentences correctly. The issue is he needs more practice. He told me that outside of class he barely ever uses/speaks English. In order to improve his conversational English we are going to do a lot of topic-researched dialogues. I had Sanghun pick...

  We spent the first part of this class further discussing his preparation for the TOEFL exam. We continued to work through the integrated speaking portions as he mentioned his weaknesses here. After four examples of integrated speaking from previous TOEFL exams we discussed strategy in how to answer them. Next, we moved onto working some conversational dialogue. We did this by going through questions that relate to daily talk (favorite restaurants, favorite pastimes, sports). We moved onto working with pronunciation and decided to work with minimal pairs again. We focused his time on ‘b’ and ‘v’ pairings. Abdulazziz worked through the minimal pairs but then came up with sentences for context. He then came up with scenarios to incorporate his sentences into. This proved to be more of a challenge and makes me realize we should focus on contextual use gong forward. I had him tell me about his plans for the next few days and we finished the session with some tongue twisters which he r...

            I met with Saad and we practiced speaking exercises. I started with a standard TOEFL speaking question and gave him time to prepare his response. After he gave his response, I gave him feedback in making sure he responds to the question and uses transitions in his speaking. Once I pointed out his mistakes, we went over some transition words to use and how to use them in context. I then gave him some time to go back and edit his response and see if he could fix the mistakes. He included the feedback and gave a noticeably better response. He liked the method I used since it allowed him to recognize his mistakes in his first response and how to improve it. He said he also noticed how his second response was much better. He enjoyed that using this method of trying to recognize mistakes can train your brain to think a certain way to prevent errors in the future. I think this was a very productive session for Saad. 

                I met with Hongru and we picked back up on our syllable lesson. I opened it by reading an article about common syllable pronunciation errors. We read through the points and then I would elaborate on the concept so that he realized the errors. He found this helpful as it gave him suggestions on how to improve and let him recognize why he is struggling with pronunciation. After that, we practice minimal pairs for Chinese speakers. It was a quick drill and he also noticed how his mouth moves in English and where he struggles with pronunciation. We ended with a short discussion on Chinese speaking in comparison to English speaking. It seemed at the end of the lesson he was more confident in tackling his struggles in English.  

            Today I met with Hongru and we did a speaking exercise. We used TOEFL speaking practice questions to do the exercise. First, I read the prompt and had him prepare his response, and then listened to his response. I noticed that he didn’t have a smooth transition, so we went over some transition words and how to use them. Then I gave him some time to go back and edit his initial response with transition words and then say it again. He was able to make his speaking sound clearer and smooth with the use of transitions. We also did a very quick syllable drill since he mentioned that he is struggling with syllables especially for his speech with Dr. Kennell. We are planning to do more syllable drills and cover phonetic symbols in our next session.

            Today I met with Saad again. This session was more focused on speaking and listen as we watched a video together discussing cultural issues as you learn English. Saad seemed to really enjoy this session. He was able to draw connections with his own struggles in learning English and writing. Also, I was able to check his comprehension as we would pause the video and I would ask him questions about what we watched. This session seemed like a good session in boosting his confidence in learning English. This session was also good at lowering his filter so that he could really express himself about the topic and practice formulating his thoughts in English. This session was very good at finding ways to boost confidence and lowering effective filters.

                Today I met with Hongru again. In this tutoring session, we read the first chapter of the little prince. I had comprehension questions prepared so after we read the chapter, I had him answer the questions to test his comprehension. During his reading, I was highlighting words that he was struggling with and would be a new vocab. After the questions, we went over these words getting the definition, part of speech, and then I would ask him to provide a sentence example with the word. We also practiced pronunciation of the word as he would repeat the way I said them. Overall this felt like a very focused session on intensive reading and vocab.

            I met with Talal for the first time today. We did the introduction sheet provided by Mr. Valentine to introduce each other. He was very interesting to chat with him. He is from Saudi Arabia and has only been in Tallahassee for one month. He really likes to travel and likes to cook as well. We spent time talking about food and traveling around experiencing different cultures. I asked him about how Saudi Arabian culture is different from American culture and it was interesting to hear how he thinks people in the US are friendlier and easier to approach. He is supposed to go back to Saudi Arabia in a week, so we’ll have to schedule according to the time difference. 

                I met with Saad again today. Today we again focused on reading and read a short article about a soccer bidding deal. It was short enough that we could read it several times and do some comprehension questions on it. He also asked for the name of a good book to read in his spare time to practice some extensive reading and learn more about American culture. Overall the session was a good reading practice. Also, he learned how having background knowledge on the reading can really help with the context of an article since he has a strong background context of soccer, he was able to really elaborate on the article and discuss it. We did encounter some technical issues with zoom although near the end, so we cut the session a couple minutes short.

                Today I met with Hongru again. This session was a little rough due to technical issues with zoom. I decided since last week we did more of an intensive reading session that we would try to do some extensive reading. We read through an anime manga together and I would clarify words or phrases that he wasn’t aware of. When we finished reading, I wanted to show him that manga in video format that way he could also see and listening to the words as they play out in animation but there was a zoom error. As we closed Hongru wanted to provide a reading suggestion for next week which we will focus on. I’m going to spend some time trying to find more level-appropriate intensive reading for him to make sure he can really practice his vocab and reading.  

                Today I met with Marcia for the first time. We had a really good conversation about food and public transportation. We also used the exercise provided by Mr. Valentine to learn more about each other. I thought it was cool to learn about Marcia being from Brazil but being Korean. Also, it was interesting to learn how she knows Korean and Portuguese, and technically by learning English she would be trilingual. Good first conversation meeting.

Tutoring session – tutee: Je-won 4, Thursday 9/24, 0800-0900hrs, Zoom. Covered:   previous material, independent speaking, new material using Korean TV show.                 His mic sucks, but I hear him.   He is working well on his pronunciation.   However, it is difficult to tell when vocabulary is new to him, and I hesitate to depend on an internet-based translation engine.   I’ve had enough experience in trying it with Japanese to know it will steer one wrong more often than not.   I had also tried to get a better feel for the time-delay and how long it adds to what I should expect to be as a response time; it’s almost three seconds, quite a bit.   So, we went over previous material to warm him up, and I expanded on it, speaking and listening back and forth.   Eventually I used a Korean TV show (which I can understand because the producers subtitle it in English) and compare con...

Conversation session – with: Hongru 3, Wednesday 9/23, 1800-1900hrs, Zoom. Covered:   Hongru’s speaking presentation about TikTok             My conversation partner has to give a talk and presentation to the CIES director.   As we went over it, I learned much about where, how, why and because of whom TikTok came about.   It tied into the Trump rally that was empty because the ticket-buyers were ghosting it; they wanted the seats empty.   The most amazing thing is that when this happened (in June) a billion people pledged to partake.   I noted to him that it would be a good addition to mention that that is at least three times the current population of the United States, and definitely many, many more times than just the voting-aged/voting population.   Anyway, I guided him a little in ideas about how to best ay it.   We laid down a decent opening and also listened to how he spoke about it an...

  Tutoring session – tutee: Hang-ah 6, Wednesday 9/23, 1430-1530hrs, Zoom. Covered:   reading, Star-Wars influence and other film, new vocab, concepts, etc.             We continued reading as much as we could.   The new materials list at the end of this session filled up a page, as the previous sessions did also.   The books characters are starting to put out more cultural ideas in their conversations, and we had to go over several Star Wars character names.   I did not spend much time on that.   As we approached the last ten fifteen minutes of session the book changed perspective and got harder to read, due to the facts of life (we had a hard time because the book made us emotional for a few sentences of reading).   We only have two sessions left and about 150 pages to go.   We might not have the time to have extra sessions just for the book, as at our rate of ~12 pages per session wil...