FSU TEFL 120 Certificate Course Summer 2, 2021

 Since. learning jeah loves to draw today I started the morning with her drawing three activities she did today and writing a sentence about it. After, we worked on writing sentences using the words like "and" because when she writes she says " I like play" instead of "I like to play"

Trying to further my evaluation of Jeahs skill we completing a reading assignment. Where we rfead brief articles and answered questions together. This testing her comprehension, which she is pretty good at. I've noticed if she reads out loud she seems to understand stuff better.

 Today we focused on using periods, question marks, or exclamation points. I shared a worksheet with different sentences and we worked on placing the right punctuation with each word. She was the most unfamiliar with the exclamation point 

 July 23rd Today we did a virtual amusement park trip were Jeah got to see different rides and animals virtually. We focused on speaking today so I would have her tell me about each one or if she would like to ride each roller coaster or not.

p August 28th Today Jeah wrote a lot, I had her create a make belief story to tell me. She struggles finding those in between words like "and" or "a" so we practiced using those or being more mindful and use them correctly.

 July 30th When working with Jael I realized on paper her English is almost perfect she can write sentences, uses some grammar, and knows a wide array of words. Her biggest issue is speaking and having conversations, so today was all conversations and reading. Jeah read a couple short stories and we just had a conversation about them.

 August 3rd Today Jeah and I met after a brief break, we worked on learning new words and what they mean. She loves to draw so I let her draw the new words she learned. 

 August 5th Today I share screened on zoom and Jeah practiced typing sentences on a google doc we both had access to at the same time. She typed about her daily activities like what time she wakes up, brushes her teeth, and all those kind of things.

August 6th Jeah and I worked on reading, I was originally going to practice speaking but she lives super close to the library and told me she has been visiting it often. She likes to read so today we read 5 short stories about animals and fairytales.

 August 9th Today we worked on fluency and trying to get her conversations to be less choppy, and more fluent. We just talked, she was drinking a mango smoothie. So we ended up talking about foods for a while and I learned more from her then she did from me today.

 August 11th Like all other meetings we worked on fluency, for JeAhs homework she wrote sentences about her activities she completed over the past couple days. After, we just talked I like doing this because I get to form a better connection with her also its perfect for her to practice her English and talking. She likes to create rings with beads to hold keys so we talked about that and she explained how she made them.

 August 13th Todays meeting was only 30 minutes long because I had an outside activity to complete. Like usual we focused on reading and getting that fluency to where it should be. Today I let Jeah pick animals to learn about and we read small like infographic articles about them. To keep Jeah interested we also watched short youtube videos about them,

 August 16th  Jeah was very tired on this day, I was struggling more than usual with her responsiveness. As usual we worked on reading and just getting her "speech" to match her writing level. Today we read the play "the boy who cried wolf"  where she was the boy and I was the father. We also watched a short clip of the animated short film to expose her to some of the characters before we started reading.

 August 18th Todays lesson was focused on 'reading and pronunciation, like ive stated before Jeah is very proficient at composing sentences, grammar, and writing but her speaking does not match this level. I've been putting most of my time trying to help her with that. Today I read to her a children's book with illustrations and then she read it to me. After, she wrote 4 sentences summarizing what the book is about.

 August 20th zoom Today since it was JeAhs and I last time meeting it was very relaxed. We went over her three sentences she wrote stating things she did during the two days we did not meet. We then read a couple pages from a children's book called "the magic school bus". Jeah loves to draw, so new words she wasn't familiar with we wrote down learned how to pronounce and spell it and drew a picture of it.

Date: 8/19/2021 Time: 1-2 pm Location: over Zoom Topic discussed: At first, we discussed our weeks and our living arrangements, as I had just moved. Today we also focused a lot on food! We compared our favorite American and Korean dishes.  Cultural and/or linguistic topics you and your partner learned:  I eat no meat except chicken, but I learned there weren't many vegetarian/non-meat based places to eat in South Korea. My partner was telling me how surprised she was at the amount of vegetarian options in America. She also told me good Korean places to eat here, and I told her good places to get American food (like barbeque) here. 

Date: 8/12/2021 Time: 1-2 pm Location: over Zoom Topic discussed: I was with a new partner, so we introduced ourselves. We discussed Tallahassee, our majors/careers, our family, and where we want to travel.  Cultural and/or linguistic topics you and your partner learned:  I learned about the weather in South Korea and some destinations to travel to there. My partner is going to Disney and Universal with her husband, so I gave her some tips on what to do and bring! We also compared and contrasted Korean and American stereotypes and if they were true or not. 

 Date: 8/11/2021 Time: 12:30-1:30 pm Location: Vox Tallahassee Topic/Skill:  Pronunciation and culture Feedback provided to tutee: While eating our pastries, we discussed Hollywood actors and actresses with good pronunciation for her to listen to. She mentioned Emma Stone, and I mentioned a few British actors, because actors who studied theater tend to have very clear pronunciation. We also compared Western k-pop culture to Korean k-pop culture, and I corrected her word usage occasionally.  Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned:  When discussing culture, I have to be careful about some topics because students may have strong feelings I don't know about. For example, I did not realize she held some animosity towards Chinese idols in k-pop groups. I have to be aware of political or societal feelings with whoever I teach. I also need to look up some actors' monologues who have good pronunciation to show to students in the future.

Date: 8/11/2021 Time: 11-12 am Location: French bakery Topic/Skill:  Speaking and grammar Feedback provided to tutee: My tutee mentioned she had not been to a bakery in the US yet, so for our final lessons, we picked up some pastries from a French bakery. We spoke about a variety of subjects, and I corrected her grammar and word usage along the way.  Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned:  I have noticed that my tutee knows a lot of English vocabulary, but doesn't always quite understand the definition of a word or which synonym is best to use in a situation. That is something I have worked on with her in both the areas of writing and speaking. This seems like a common situation with students (I had the same experience during the class I taught).

At this point Heewon had stopped answering me and had ignored my many texts to her that I sent over three weeks. I emailed Dr. Kennell about it and did not receive a response. I decided to ask my friend who lives in Australia for help and used him as my final session with a conversation partner. He is an international student from Vietnam and is studying tourism and hospitality in Adelaide, Australia. He showed me a video of food from Vietnam and we talked about world events. He talked about what he was seeing on social media during 2020-2021 regarding American politics. We discussed the state of the US in terms of how it affects the rest of the world. We also discussed racism that he experienced as an international student in Australia. We talked a lot about Vietnamese food and how it is popular throughout the world now and we mainly have a connection through our shared ethnicity. He talked about public transportation and how Adelaide is a rapidly growing area in Australia.

Heewon and I met on July 17 12-5pm and I took her on a road trip to St. George Island.  In the third hour of my road trip with Heewon I took her to the beach. We mainly talked about how she had never been to a beach in Florida before and how she used to go to the beach often in South Korea. I got to know more about the various places to travel in South Korea. I asked her if she had ever been to Jeju Island, which is a place I knew only from popular Korean culture. She has been but said not to go in the Summer. We just stood in the water on the shore because we did not come prepared to swim. 

Heewon and I met on July 17 12-5pm and I took her on a road trip to St. George Island.  In the second hour of my road trip with Heewon, I took her to an oyster bar in St. George Island. We introduced her to the area's oyster industry and the recent Supreme Court fight over the Apalachicola river.  I told her about the history of the area with the Spanish, and how Florida has not been inhabited until relatively recently. I bought her oysters and crab cakes.

 Heewon and I met on July 17 12-5pm and I took her on a road trip to St. George Island.  The first hour of the car ride consisted of us talking about the area and the parts we passed on the way there. I explained the various aspects of nature on our drive, such as that there are prescribed burns in the forests to prevent forest fires. We talked about American culture for a bit. I showed her clips of various accents from America. She found the creole accent to be interesting. We talked about immigration in America and various foods that came out of it, such as "Cajun" food. 

 Heewon and I met for lunch at Sonny's BBQ on July 3. I wanted her to meet with my tutee Zhou, and my native-speaker friend James. We got to know more about her interests and her parents and friends. We talked about how they felt as non-native speakers in the US. We discussed food and differences in the culture surrounding it. I wanted to take her to a BBQ place because the following day was the Fourth of July. I asked if she had any plans for it and she said she had plans with people from her church. I found out that the church she goes to is the same one James's friend goes to. The church is a Korean one in Tallahassee and has a lot of the Korean community. I asked if she had gone to the restaurant in Tallahassee called "Korean BBQ." She had not gone there and I introduced her to various Korean restaurants and Asian markets. 

 Heewon and I met at Lucky Goat Coffee on June 25 from 3-4pm We got to know each other and talked about our lives. Heewon's parents went to school at FSU and she had already gone to college in South Korea. She wanted to continue her education in Tallahassee because she said South Korea lacked in education for female athletics. We talked about cultural differences and any language barriers she has felt. Her English is relatively good and I had no trouble understanding her. We bonded over our love of K-Pop and K-Dramas and talked about our favorite groups. I got to know a lot about the Korean culture and about her interests. 

My second class observation was with Felicia Ciappetta on June 23 from 1-1:50pm. She taught a beginner level class. The lesson was about personal information and students had to answer questions that she showed on the board. She would ask questions about the students as well as asking students to answer questions about their classmates. She would give feedback on what students got wrong and gave them ample time to correct their mistakes. 

 My third class observation was with Ryan Flemming on June 23 at 2-2:50pm. He mainly gave his students feedback on a prior lesson where they took notes on a lecture. He gave feedback and critiques on students and their paraphrasing skills. He continued this by showing a lecture and asked students to get into groups to work together by discussing it and answering questions. 

 My first class observation was with Dr. Angel Rios on June 21 from 10-10:50am. He taught phrasal verbs and did so with various charts. One chart was on separable phrasal verbs and students had to fill in the blanks in the chart, while the rest of it was filled in by him. He called on students and asked them to fill it in and if they got it wrong he would ask them to clarify and give them a second to think about the answer. The phrasal verbs were either together, separated by a noun, or separated by a pronoun. 

Zhou and I met at Bubbly Tea on August 5 from 4-5pm.  Zhou in a prior session told me that he was going on a road trip with his friends throughout the South and to various mountain ranges. I decided to teach him Southern style language and speech patterns. We mainly had a discussion about American history and culture. He did not have any knowledge of the regional differences in the US such as the Midwest, West Coast, or the South. I decided that since Zhou and I are the same race it would be easier to have a discussion about discrimination to prepare him for any awkward encounters while he travels in more rural areas. 

 Zhou and I met at Lucky Goat on August 3 from 3-4pm.  I taught him reduced form and speech patterns in this lesson. I read off each reduced form and asked him to repeat it to me and if he knew what it meant. I would clarify what each reduced form was and then ask him to use it in a sentence. He did not know that there was a term for this American speech style. I then taught him speech patterns for various contexts. I decided to teach this by referring to a list of speech acts. I taught him how to greet, apologize, and write a text. Zhou already has experience with emails and academic settings, so I decided not to teach him about speech patterns in professional settings. I decided to teach him how to show emotion by applying his knowledge of curse words in showing anger. Zhou mentioned to me that he struggles a lot when trying to show emotions in his speech. I also taught him about passive aggressiveness. Many native speakers often try to save face by using passive aggressiven...

 Zhou and I met at Greenwise on July 26 from 4-5pm I then did minimal pairs with Zhou today. I took notes on the specific sounds he was failing to make and read off minimal pairs. I asked him to write them down and then differentiate and define them for me. He found this activity to be somewhat challenging. I looked up a list of words with the r/l sound, the l/w sound, g/k, and b/v sound. I gave him feedback on each word. He would oftentimes fail to listen to what word I was saying. His trouble lies mainly in listening rather than speaking. The only sound that is a significant issue is the r/l sound. I finished with a short verb tense exercise again from Owl at Purdue to be consistent. The exercise this time was based on a longer paragraph so I asked him comprehension questions at the end. I recorded two minutes of what he was saying and gave him feedback.

Date: 08/14/21 Topic discussed: Entertainment  Cultural and/or linguistic topics you and your partner learned: Today we discussed the different types of media we consume and our favorites. I told Sara how hooked I am on reality dating shows and how my friends and I love to plan "Bachelor Nights" where we watch the Bachelor or Bachelorette and she told me that they have the same version of The Bachelor that she has been watching with her sister since they were little. We shared different podcasts that we listen to and noticed a huge difference in our interests (mine being true crime and hers being news). Since I don't speak German, she translated what the last podcast she listened to which was about the UN report on climate change. I told recommended her some podcasts and American shows to watch and we are starting a series together this weekend :)

Zhou and I met at Greenwise on July 23 for two hours from 3:30-5:30pm.  For the second hour Zhou and I worked on his pronunciation. I also decided to teach a more culture based lesson. I had done prior research on how to help Chinese native speakers to pronounce their R's/L's more clearly. I showed him a video and he read off tongue twisters after I repeated it to him. We did a minimal pairs exercise again. I had a list of r/l sound words and asked him to say them out loud using the knowledge he gained. I coupled the video with exercises I found on the internet. The lesson on pronunciation showed some improvement in the clarity of his speech. I ended the lesson by teaching him obscene language. I asked him if he knew anything about certain words regarding race and ethnicity. He shared that he already was informed on the nature of slurs in America so I only taught him curse words that were used regularly. I also taught him that some curse words had a religious origin and to avoi...

 Zhou and I met at Izzy's Pub and Sushi for lunch on July 24 from 1-3pm.  I started the session off with another verb tense activity. I continued to solidify his grammar skills by reading off sentences and asking him to put in the correct verb tense as well as changing the whole sentence's tense afterwards. I did another activity similarly with subject-verb agreement. His grammar usage with these two grammar rules had improved at this point. Verb agreement and tenses are his main issues. The activity continued to solidify his grammar usage. I recorded two minutes of his speech with the  subject-verb agreement exercise and gave him feedback on pronunciation. 

 Date: 08/11/21 Time: 10-11AM Location: Zoom Topic/Skill: Olympics/Reading/Vocabulary Feedback provided: For our last lesson, I still wanted to provide Dave with a culture lesson but I wanted it also to be something he knew or could relate to in some way. Sports are a big deal in the U.S.  and the Olympics are played by teams worldwide. First, I showed Dave a video of American fans reacting to Olympic gold medal wins so he can understand just how much it is celebrated here. Then, we worked on a worksheet that introduced new sports vocabulary to Dave while we watched videos of Olympic sports that he had not heard of before. He read a short article on these sports and answered comprehension and matching questions. 

 Zhou and I met at Greenwise on July 23 for two hours from 3:30-5:30pm.  For the second hour I read the third part of the story. I then asked him comprehension questions and clarified anything he was confused about again. I followed this up with another dicto-comp activity. I chose some easier paragraphs for him to take notes on since the story consisted of language he was not too familiar with. We then had a discussion about English/American literature and the difference between that type of language with academic language. I thought it would be somewhat valuable for Zhou to understand more poetic and symbolic language to expand his knowledge of the English language. He is primarily exposed to academic language, so this was an opportunity for him to gain interest and potentially continue exposing himself to literature. He told me that the lesson with The Monkey's Paw  was valuable to him because he had never read any form of English literature before. He had only read so...

Date: 08/09/21 Time: 10-11 AM Location: Zoom  Topic/Skill: Halloween/Listening Feedback provided: Today we discussed Halloween. I knew Dave had heard of and probably celebrated Halloween so I focused the video to introduce today's topic by discussing the origin of Halloween and how it has changed over the years. I had Dave listen to the video and fill out a dictation exercise. I was happy to see that he was so interested in the topic since it was his favorite American holiday. After the exercise, I pointed out an idiom they used in the video as well as reduced forms that were mentioned. After that, we went over Halloween-themed idioms and their figurative meaning.  Lesson learned: This was a great lesson because it had unintentionally been a review of many of the topics and lessons we had been going through. Because it was familiar to Dave, he responded very well and accurately with the questions. 

 Zhou and I met at Greenwise on July 23 for two hours from 3:30-5:30pm.  For the first hour I continued to read The Monkey's Paw. I read the second part and repeated what I did in the last lesson since Zhou learned a lot of vocabulary in this activity. I reviewed the first part of the story to refresh his memory. I followed up the reading of the second part with comprehension questions again. He did not understand certain words that required more of a cultural understanding. Since the story was written a long time ago, the language was somewhat antiquated, but many of the words that he was confused about are still used today. When I read out the word "sergeant" to him, he could understand it, but when I showed him the written form of the word he became confused. There were many words like that which he only knew exclusively in written or spoken form. We reviewed part two and skimmed it for additional clarification. 

 Date: 08/0621 Time: 10-11AM Location: Zoom Topic/Skill: Active and Passive Voice/Grammar Feedback provided: For today's lesson Dave and I talked about Active and Passive Voice. In the PowerPoint we went over why we use passive and active voice, the difference between the two, and how to change a sentence from active to passive voice and vice versa. We went over examples together and then after I played a clip from Ratatouille. After the clip, I had Dave fill out a worksheet that pertained to the clip where he wrote sentences in the active or passive voice and changed them to the opposite voice. 

 Date: 08/04/21 Time: 10-11 AM  Location: Zoom  Topic/Skill: Reduced Forms/Speaking/Listening  Feedback provided: Dave is not in school and does not have any specific goals other than working on his English skills particularly listening like he mentioned in the beginning of our sessions. Today, I wanted to work on listening and speaking. I went over the concept of reduced forms which Dave had never heard of before but noticed he used two out of the ten that I introduced to him. I showed him a video of reduced forms being used in the real world during the vice presidential debate and went over examples of reduced forms. Then, I played the song "Shake It Off" and "I Gotta Feeling" and asked Dave to listen to the reduced forms in the song and list them. In the end, I read a short story and had him again listen and identify the reduced forms. 

 Date: 08/02/21 Time: 10-11 AM  Location: Zoom  Topic/Skill: Idioms/Listening Feedback provided: Today Dave and I worked on food and weather related idioms. Without giving him any context, I displayed a couple of idioms from the passage we were about to read and asked him what he thought the idiom meant. Once he finished going down the list, I wrote sentences with each of the idioms and Dave either saw he was correct or change his answers using context clues. Then, I read aloud the passage and stopped when we saw a food or weather related idiom as Dave used context clues again to figure out it's meaning. In the end I put fill in the blank questions and he had an easier time identifying which idiom went in each blank space.  Lesson learned: What I learned from last session is if I wanted Dave to apply what he learned in context, he needed to be exposed to the term or phrases multiple times and in different ways. The schema building activity done in the beginning reall...

Due to many scheduling conflicts with Zhou, we began to meet for two hours to complete two sessions. On July 19 we met for two hours from 3-5pm at Lucky Goat Coffee. During the second hour I continued to work on The Monkey's Paw with Zhou. On specific paragraphs I did a dictocomp activity with him. I would re-read short paragraphs and ask him to take notes and piece it back together. The lesson was meant to improve his vocabulary, practice his listening, and introduce him to English literature. Since the language is very different from academic science language, the story was somewhat difficult for him. The story is often used in American schools to teach writing and reading skills as well as expand reading comprehension from literal understandings. I asked him questions associated with the story; it consisted of comprehension questions and subjective thematic questions. 

Due to many scheduling conflicts with Zhou, we began to meet for two hours to complete two sessions. On July 19 we met for two hours from 3-5pm at Lucky Goat Coffee. For the first hour started off with another Owl at Purdue verb tense exercise and gave him feedback on his answers. We picked up on The Monkey's Paw. The story has three parts, so I read each part to him and then asked comprehension questions. I would stop on certain words that he might not have understood to discuss it with him. I read to him the first part of the story for the first hour of our session. 

 Zhou and I met at Greenwise on July 15 from 7-8pm. For this session I decided to teach him how to listen to various accents. I focused on the southern accent, midwestern accent, northeastern accent, and New York accent (from pop culture). I decided dedicate more time on his comprehension of the southern accent due to the fact that he will be working as a researcher in Tallahassee (which is in the South); I also decided that his comprehension of this specific regional accent would be useful to his ability to socialize with others. I built his schema before showing him clips on Youtube by asking him questions about the materials used. I mainly used clips from various shows and movies. I showed him clips and asked him comprehension questions afterwards. Later, I discussed some social cues with him in various contexts. I taught him social cues that are common among young people, and social cues that are common in academic/professional settings. 

 Date: 07/28/2021 Time: 10-11 AM Location: Zoom Topic/Skill: Idioms/Writing/Listening Feedback provided: Last session, one of the videos I played for Dave mentioned a couple idioms and metaphors that were unfamiliar to him. So, this week we worked on identifying idioms and figuring out the meaning of them using context clues. First, I showed him a BrainPOP video on idioms and paused it when they mentioned an idiom. Using context clues, Dave would decipher the literal and figurative definition of the idiom. After this, I read a short passage aloud and would stop once I mentioned a different idiom. Again, using context clues from the story, Dave figured out both the literal and the figurative meaning. With some linguistic support we were able to figure out each idiom. At the end of the lesson I wrote sentences with blank spaces where an idiom would be and asked Dave to chose an idiom from the story to fill in the space. Even though he was relatively accurate at figuring out the figur...

 Zhou and I met at Lucky Goat on July 11 at 3-4pm. I read off some sentences with blanks to him in order to practice his subject-verb agreement and verb tense usage. I used the resources from Owl at Purdue. I gave him feedback and corrected his mistakes and provided further examples to explain his mistakes and solidify his understanding. Zhou is a graduate level researcher and can read and write English very well, so he understands English grammar. His issue is mainly just the usage of grammar rules in his speech. When I explain things to him he shows that he understands and can remember the grammar rule, but often makes the same mistakes. I recorded 2 minutes of his answers to the verb tense exercise and corrected his mistakes. I then introduced him to a piece of American literature to expand his knowledge of English vocabulary. I read to him an excerpt of The Monkey's Paw  to introduce it to him, as we would be covering it in future sessions as well. 

 Today was my last session with Dojun. It was a little sad, as I’ve gotten to know him pretty well over the last couple of months. I’m about to go on a road trip through some states in the southeast, so we talked for a while about some of the cool destinations around there in case he ever wanted to travel to the area. After that, we talked about some of the food in the region, like the difference between Carolina BBQ and Texas BBQ. He in turn told me about Korean beef vs American beef. Apparently, Korean beef is a high quality product, but it can be hard to get the real stuff, and a lot of restaurants will lie to sell you beef that is more expensive. Most of the feedback I gave today was on pronunciation and some of the finer things, like how people talk about money. For example, $2.50 is “two and a half dollars” rather than “Two point five dollars.”

  I met with Samuel via Zoom at 9 am on August 11.  Topic/Skill: Automaticity, self-reflection Feedback provided to tutee: Samuel and I met for the last time to discuss his time at CIES and our tutoring experience. I asked him about his favorite activities  from his CIES classes and from our tutoring sessions. I asked him what general suggestions he had for me, and he told me that I should have more visuals for learning grammar concepts. I then told Samuel my suggestions for the continuation of his English learning. I told him that he should trust his first gut response in conversations. But when he is trying to figure out what grammar tense to use for exams, he should take his time and read through different tenses in his head to see which sounds the best. He also needs to work on his simple past and past continuous conjugation automaticity. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned : I learned that it is important to check in throughout a class/tutoring expe...

I met with Samuel via Zoom at 9 am on August 9.  Topic/Skill: Automaticity, articles with body parts  Feedback provided to tutee: Samuel and I were both out of town for this meeting, so we started the session talking about our travels and our plans for the rest of the week. I mostly corrected pronunciation and grammar mistakes. Samuel was in Colorado visiting an athletic performance center in Colorado Springs before heading home later in the week. We talked about different body parts that are important for different sports. In talking about body parts, I reminded Samuel that we use possessive adjectives when referring to body parts in English, which is not an issue for Samuel most of the time because he talks about body parts using "the" in his research. For example, "Developing muscles in the leg is important for track and field athletes." Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned : I learned that it is important to contextualize a language learner'...

  I met with Ruth via Zoom at 5 pm on August 5.  Topic/Skill: Conversational fluency Feedback provided to tutee: Since this is the last time Ruth and I would meet before the end of her CIES courses, we decided to have a conversation about our future plans for the rest of the summer. We used present continuous and simple future tenses to talk about our upcoming plans. I helped Ruth decide which tense to use based on her timeline of events. We used present continuous for near future and simple future for plans that would occur toward the end of summer. I asked Ruth about her favorite activities from her CIES classes, and I corrected her conjugation of the simple past tense. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned : I learned that Ruth was very excited to give feedback about her CIES courses. I want to set up another meeting with my tutees to get feedback from their experience with me as their tutor. It is important for students to feel like their opinion is importa...

 Now that the Olympics are over, Dojun and I agreed that this year we watched less of it than any other year. We speculated whether or not it will continue to lose popularity, or if it was just COVID and the delays which had people not as interested. This also got us talking about the Delta variant, and how scary it is. Especially in South Korea where a lot of people aren't vaccinated, they can't do much more than the current lockdown restrictions. He told me a news story from a bit ago about how some baseball players had gone to party in a hotel room with a couple of girls they met, and got covid from it. Apparently it made the news and upset a lot of people, because then they couldn't participate in a tournament due to the fact that they ignored the laws.

 Dojun and I talked about a couple of Olympic sports that we had both watched today. He said that he had watched a little bit of climbing because of me, and was amazed at the strength of the athletes, especially the women. There was a female climber from South Korea who did rather poorly the first day, but did really well and topped the leaderboard in a different event. She didn't end up getting a medal, but she did give it a really good shot. I told him about how South Korea is generally pretty good at international climbing events, and usually have a couple athletes represented. We also talked about some of the other new sports to the Olympics, like skateboarding and surfing. He said that he was a little confused on how those were scored, but that they looked really cool in action.

 Dojun and I talked today about politics, and how our separate political systems worked. I asked if they had a two party system, and he informed me that while there are two parties larger than all the other ones, there are smaller parties which actually have seats in the national assembly. I then told him about smaller parties in the US, and how they seem very far from getting seats in the senate or the house. We also talked about the electoral college in the US, and he was surprisingly understanding about why we use it. He was surprised to hear that so many people dislike it, but I explained how in some states it made the people's votes feel pointless. I also talked to him about how in the 2016 election, the popular vote and the electoral college have different results. He was pretty familiar with our last president, so he said he could see why that would make people upset.

 Today Dojun and I talked about a bit of a sensitive topic, which is marijuana usage in Korea vs in the US. This came up because I said somethin about Sha'Carri Richardson, and how a lot of people in the US were upset about her not being able to participate in the Olympics. I told him that Marijuana usage is becoming more and more accepted in the US, and that it is even legal recreationally in some places, which was shocking to him. He told me about how in Korea, it was legal some places medicinally, but was far from being legal recreationally. He also talked about how the attitude of Korean people when it comes to weed is much different than in the US, and that a lot of them don't really care for it to be legalized. It is also much rarer there, vs America where you can oftentimes smell it just walking down the street.

Today Dojun surprised me. At one point I told him that he was pretty good at speaking, and he heavily disagreed with me. Despite the fact that he sounds very good once he knows what he wants to say, he takes a little bit of time to translate what he wants in his head from Korean to English. The pauses are pretty natural, but he feels very conscious about that and some word pronunciation. I was a little more nitpicky about pronunciation this time, but he seemed to be fine with it. His fluency has definitely improved since we first started talking, which is probably in part due to the fact that he doesn't use much English at work anymore. We finished off the lesson by talking about something completely different, which was places we want to travel to in the future. I told him about how I want to see more of the pacific northwest like Oregon and Washington, and he talked about how he had never been to the East coast. 

Today Dojun and I talked about how the Olympics had started, but people didn't seem to care as much about it this year, ourselves included. It's a little harder to get excited about it when it's been more than a year since it should have happened. We also had an interesting conversation about how TV worked in the US vs how it worked in Korea. He told me that there are a few major broadcasting channels, and that they are the largest and most famous things to watch on Korean TV. They apparently show a variety of programs, and are kind of different from US channels, which are more specialized. There is also some protest by the Korean people, since one of the broadcasters is funded by the government, and takes a mandatory few dollars on people's electric bills. I taught Dojun about how US channels that show news are often entrenched in one side or the other of the political spectrum, and how much people get fired up about different broadcasters here.

This session, Dojun and I primarily talked about music. I brought up some K-pop I had listened to, and he said that he doesn't really listen to modern K-pop all that much. He did, however, say that he likes a lot of older K-pop, and the music they would make in the 80s and 90s. I asked him about any American music that he listens to, and he said that it wasn't actually a lot, but he surprised me by saying he knew some country. Some of the songs he mentioned, I didn't even know. I thought that would probably be one of the least popular genres overseas since oftentimes it's so patriotic but apparently he likes how it sounds. I taught him a little bit about the song "country roads," and it's weirdly high popularity amongst people my age. I also taught him some more southern words and contractions like "y'all."

 Today Dojun and I talked more about the Olympics, since it's hopefully going to be here soon. COVID is getting worse in Tokyo, so it looks like there won't be any spectators allowed to watch the games. We also talked about how some teams might boycott the Olympics for other tournaments where people can watch. This led us to talking about the COVID situation in Seoul right now, which has gotten even worse. People are under incredibly strict lockdown, and aren't allowed to gather in groups of more than two. Dojun said that he and the other people were tired of being unable to do anything, especially since he has a baby and is trapped at home. For them it's been a year and a half without restrictions lightening up. The session unfortunately ended a little bit early, as his wife needed help with their baby, who had been crying in the background for the last half hour.

 With the Olympics coming up, Dojun and I talked about what sports we were interested in watching. For me, I do a lot of rock climbing, so I'm excited to watch that when it comes this year. Dojun is most excited about Baseball, which Korea is apparently pretty good at. We got to talking about other sports afterwards, and I taught Dojun about how American Football worked, and the culture behind watching it for a lot of the fans here. He told me that a few of his coworkers who spent time in America always bug him to watch football with them, but he could never understand what was going on. I taught him vocabulary like end zone, touchdown, extra point, and punt. We also cleared up a few korean sports terms that sound like English, but really aren't. An example of this was the "handphone" we talked about in class.

 Dojun has travelled a lot for work, especially since he works for an airline company. While we were talking today, I told him how I wanted to teach in Japan, and he talked about how much he loved the people and the food there. He also told me about how while most Koreans don't like Japan all that much, he felt a sense of connection and shared culture. I was glad to hear his positive views, and I was glad to hear that he thought the people were hospitable. We talked about different areas in Japan too. I want to be somewhere near Osaka, which happens to be his favorite city there. Another cool thing about Japan is that flights from there to Korea are only a couple hundred bucks, so it would be very easy to visit. The flight is very short, only about 2.5 hours. Feedback I gave to Dojun while we were talking this lesson was on helping him find the words to describe things in Japan.

 Today, Dojun and I talked about some colloquial terms like "redneck", which is something commonly used in the south. He had questions about things like whether or not the word was rude, which made me realize how nuanced some of these words are. It could be rude if someone doesn't apply the label to them self, but a lot of people will gladly call themselves rednecks and own the term. It's also often associated with politics and occupation, but doesn't have to be. We then talked a little bit about how politics work in the US vs in Korea, and they are similar in some ways but very different in others. Apparently, Korea has no state or city government, so the laws are pretty much the same everywhere. This is very different from America, where each state and city has the power to impose its own laws, and the federal government's power is limited by them.

In the last few meetings we had talked a lot about how COVID affected our lives, so today we talked more about what our lives were like before COVID. Dojun said that he used to play a lot of billiards, which is different than how Americans think of billiards. It is a game played with only four balls, and has no pockets. I told him about rock climbing and he said he hasn't done it before, but has seen it get more popular in Korea lately. He also has had his work greatly affected because of COVID. Because he works for an airline, their international travel has stopped, and they are now only limited to domestic. This means that Dojun no longer uses English for work, as he only speaks with other Koreans. Most of the feedback he asked for this session was whether or not phrases are commonly used or normal in conversational speech.

 Date: 07/26/21 Time: 10-11 AM  Location: Zoom  Topic/Skill: Groundhog Day/Listening Feedback provided: I had a feeling that last week Dave had already heard about Thanksgiving and knew what it was, so this time around, I wanted to center the lesson on an American tradition that was weird and eccentric that he probably had never heard of. First I asked him what he thought groundhog day was and evidently, he did not even know what a groundhog was. I played a video from the 2019 celebration in Pennsylvania and still Dave was confused. So finally, I played a video on YouTube explaining the origin and reason why Groundhog Day is celebrated by those in Pennsylvania. While he listening to the video, I had him fill out a dictation exercise with the transcript of the video. Unlike the other dictations we've done in the past, this one was extra challenging because of the speed at which the narrator was speaking. Still, Dave caught on well and got almost all the blank spaces. Final...

 Date: 07/19/21 Time: 10-11 AM Location: Zoom  Topic/Skill: Thanksgiving/Listening Feedback provided: Today Dave and I discussed Thanksgiving, a holiday celebrated nationwide in the US. First I gave him a little refresh on the origin of Thanksgiving by showing him a short video since he has learned about it already in school. Even though Dave has lived in the U.S. for two years, he has never celebrated Thanksgiving so, I showed him pictures of some popular Thanksgiving foods and he told me whether he would eat it or not. It was a fun topic and we each listed what we would have on our own Thanksgiving plates. After this, I showed him a clip from Friends where Rachel makes an odd trifle dessert for Thanksgiving. I asked him to listen for the ingredients she put in the trifle particularly the odd peas and steak to check his listening comprehension. Overall it was a fun engaging lesson.

 Date: 07/16/21 Time: 10-11 AM Location: Zoom  Topic/Skill: Listening/Writing Feedback Provided: Today Dave and I went over the summary he wrote on his own. A couple sessions ago I when I gave feedback on his summary I focused too hard on accuracy rather than fluency so I tried to be more conscious of Dave's accuracy this time. After we discussed his summary we talked about how the main idea could translate to theme and what the theme of the folktale was. Then, to build schema for the story I chose to read aloud I put up a picture of an elephant and asked Dave to describe it using som of his 5 senses, touch and sight. After this, I read the story of 6 blind men and the elephant out loud and had Dave listen to answer some comprehension questions. This story had been longer than all the previous ones we had read so far and when we got to the comprehension questions, he struggled to recall what he heard. I decided to read the story again and asked Dave to listen and take notes on...

 Dojun and I had a fun session this time. we talked about some of our favorite foods, both American and Korean. His favorite American food is burgers, and apparently he ate a lot of them when he visited the US. I told him my favorite food is Bar-B-Que, and he said he had never had American BBQ. That did get us talking about Korean BBQ though, which we've both had. His all time favorite Korean food is samgyeopsal, which means three layer meat in English. It is pork belly, with lots of fat attached, and is ubiquitous in all Korean BBQ restaurants in Korea. He struggled a little bit with the exact translation of what this meat was, but only needed a few guiding phrases from me to get the meaning across. He was surprisingly good with food vocabulary as it dealt with US food, which is not something I imagine he uses often.

Today I talked with Dojun about how life looks with COVID in Korea. He lives in Seoul, and the lockdowns there are very strict. The country has not been good with getting vaccines to its citizens, so there are still mask mandates everywhere, and people cannot gather in groups larger than 3. This is hard on Dojun and his wife, because they just had a baby, and it's hard for his parents to make the trip from Busan, which is 5 hours away by train. I asked about his days, and he said that they are mostly the same. He works from home, and there isn't anywhere open to go out even if he had time to with the baby. The only corrections I really needed to give him this session were a few pronunciation errors and a little bit of clarification on countable and uncountable nouns. Otherwise, he takes a lot of pauses but makes very few mistakes.

 Today, Masoud and I went rock climbing again. The first time we bouldered, which is climbing without ropes. This time we used the auto belays, which are ropes that basically operate by themselves. That means that the walls are a lot higher, but the moves are easier. He showed no hesitation when it came to jumping or going for big moves, and had a surprising amount of grip strength. Also, he liked being up so high.  He got to meet a few of my friends at the gym, and they all loved him. Even the staff at the gym were good about catering to the fact that he doesn't speak a lot of English, and made sure to gave him an orientation in simpler, slower English than usual. I'm sad that we won't be able to do anything else before fall since I'm going home for the end of summer, but it's been great getting to know him and getting to know more about Saudi Arabian culture!

 It has been raining a lot lately, so Masoud and I met in Strozier and talked like we did on our first meeting. He wanted to go to the beach, but unfortunately it's a little too far away and neither of us had a whole day to make the trip. He did, however, have his birthday last week, and he went to Chili's with his roommates. They get along really well, and he shared with me a picture of them at the restaurant. He told me in a previous meeting that in Saudi Arabia they don't usually do much to celebrate birthdays. That's because the families are large, and there would be too many birthdays to be making cake all the time. He has 8 brothers and sisters! I thought that just one was a lot, but I guess I should think again about that one. Family must feel a little different when it's that large and far apart in age.

For our fourth meeting, Masoud and I took another walk around campus. We were going to talk inside, but the weather cleared up and we figured it would be more fun to stroll around. Apparently, Masoud met a friend from his same town in Saudi Arabia! Unfortunately the friend only had a week left in Tallahassee, so he will have to leave soon. He did tell me that he's moving soon though, and will get some roommates. I hope he likes them, I know it can be scary getting thrown into an apartment with randoms, but he's really friendly and I'm sure he'll do great.  I told him about an escape room that I did the previous weekend. He seemed really interested, and I told him that we could maybe get a big group together and go once his English is a bit better. He's great at problem solving, being that he's getting a Ph. D. in Mathematics, but a lot of the riddles in those are wordplay. Hopefully he'll keep improving so that he can participate in fun things like that!

 Date: 07/14/21 Time: 10-11 AM Location: Zoom  Topic/Skill: Listening/Writing   Feedback Provided: Today I started Dave with a listening warm-up and dictation activity on hippopotamuses. He did well and this time because I made sure to go over some vocabulary before we started because I wanted him to make sure he understood the words and how to write them. After that we watched a clip from the movie "Inside Out" and I asked Dave questions about the sequence in which the emotions appeared as well as comprehension questioned that tested his memory and listening of the clip. After this, I read him a short story that sparked a lot of conversation about folktales. He had read the folktale before but noted that this version had different facets to the story and a slightly different ending. I explained to him that many folktales and myths work like that and how a lot of the time, the retelling of them might be slightly different but have the same message. Last week Dave and...

 Date: 08/11/21 Topic discussed: COVID-19 Cultural and/or linguistic topics you and your partner learned: Today Sara and I talked about how differently COVID-19 was handled in Austria versus specifically Florida. Even though cases are starting to rise again in Austria, we realized how the places we live in vary when we both say that cases are rising. She told me that in the beginning, the lockdown in Austria was incredibly enforced and she did not leave her apartment for a long time. Compared to Florida, out lockdown did not last as long as hers and there was a difference in how the population of the US and Florida reacted to the lockdown and pandemic in general than the population of Austria. She was confused to hear that in Florida our governor is trying to fire administration and teacher for enforcing masks in school and that in Austria she is still taking her classes online unlike some of her friends who say that mostly everyone wears a masks to class willingly. 

 Date: 08/04/21 Topic discussed: American vs Austrian University  Cultural and/or linguistic topics you and your partner learned: Sara had a big exam this week that she was extremely stressed over which has us talking about university. She told me how shocked she was when she found out how much I paid for attending FSU as a Floridian and even more shocked when I told her how much non-Florida residents have to pay. I told her that that was just considering a public university and we looked online to see how much private American university tutions compared. This was all shoking to her because university in Austria is free. One that she did mention however that though it is free, the university experience that she receives back home is nothing compared to that the she had at FSU. She said that even though FSU can be extremely expensive especially to her, there are so many free activities and programs that the school offers that Austrian universities do not. She mentioned th...

 Date: 07/29/2021 Topic discussed: Journaling and Family Cultural and/or linguistic topics you and your partner learned: Today Sara shared with me some journal entries that she wrote during her time in America. My favorite entry featured a family tree that she drew of my dad's side of the family. For Thanksgiving, I took Sara with me and my family to North Carolina to spend the holiday with my aunts, uncles, and cousins. She talked about how much she loved my family and remembered all their names. She said that she remembered how loud we were and how at the table there would be 20 different conversations happening at once which she loved. She compared it to her small family and told me how usually when the holidays came around, she would have two separate dinners with her mom and sisters, then with her dad and step mom. Because she had such a small family, there wasn't as much commotion as mine and dinners so big. She said that it was crazy how big we made every meal especiall...

Date: 07/25/21 Topic discussed: Culture shock and Tallahassee homesickness  Cultural and/or linguistic topics you and your partner learned: Today Sara and I talked about when she first got to Tallahassee. We reminisced over the first time we met and how she was outside in the pouring rain and walked into the wrong apartment to find a shirtless boy and his dog. She told me that when she first went out she remembered being shocked at how the girls dressed at the clubs in America versus in Austria. It was interesting to know because after, she told me that she realized how much she felt judged back home when she came back. She recalled her first night out with friends and said that she felt judged by other when she wanted to let her hair down and dance. She told me that she felt like her friends were criticizing her and how in America no one cared how she dressed or what she did. She also mentioned that her first week back she felt like she couldn't be herself. Still, she said th...

Date: 07/22/21 Topic discussed: Education and language learning Cultural and/or linguistic topics you and your partner learned: Sara is from Saltzburg, Austria and was my roommate in Tallahassee for the 2020 fall semester. Even though we became close, there were a lot of things about her life prior to coming to the U.S. that I didn't know. Especially after meeting with my tutee and seeing how their level in English compared to one another, I wanted to know more about how she became so well at speaking English. Sara mentioned that it was a requirement in school to take English classes which she started at around 12. She told me how much she loved it and how it made her realize she wanted to be a teacher. Because of that, she is now majoring in Education and English. Currently, she is studying for exams at school which is a huge deal in Austria. They have massive exams at the end of their term that they study all year for and that is why Sara and many Austrian students are under so m...

 August 13, 2021- I met with Davi today over Zoom for about an hour. Davi asked if he could invite a friend for our last meeting so Masoud joined us! It was fun having an extra person in our conversation. We talked about the vaccine and the status of covid first and our observations, concerns, etc. That led to a conversation about American health care, insurance, plastic surgery, and beauty standards. So many tangents today, but it kept the conversation interesting! We used the chat box often when there were new words or expressions. We ended by saying goodbye in all of our languages and thanked each other. I really enjoyed my time with CIES and meeting so many fun people. It was so cool to share a conversation with people from opposite corners of the world. The students at CIES work so hard to practice and learn as much as they can about English while they're here. I am grateful to have been a part of their English learning journey.

 August 6th, 2021- I met with Davi over Zoom for an hour. I asked him how he was and said he really didn't do a lot that week so I told him about my move back to Jacksonville and getting a job. He asked me about my "plan" for this next year and where I want to go to grad school. That sparked some other conversation. He had a harder time finding words this session and mentioned that this was the first time he practiced English this week since the CIES semester ended. He said he was taking a little break this week from English and asked for some tips to practice English. I told him what I do to practice Spanish when I'm by myself, which is talk to myself outloud in the car and listen to all kinds of Spanish music. I ended the session by planning our next meeting and I said "last one best one!". That was a new expression for him that he liked. Davi does a good job about asking questions if he doesn't understand something. He is also really good at catching ...

 Today, Masoud and I went rock climbing. I also took my roommate, Francisco. We went to Alchemy Climbing in Tallahassee. I go climbing a lot, but it was Masoud's first time. We went bouldering, which is climbing with no ropes. Most first timers have trouble with the fact that they could fall, or the fact that they're up so high. But Masoud was fearless. He isn't very tall, but he had no problems jumping for holds or falling. He also could climb harder stuff than most beginners. He told me that he used to be overweight, but put in a lot of work to get into shape. It definitely showed, as he could climb stuff harder than what most beginners could. I took a picture of him at the top of the wall, and he sent it to all of his Saudi friends. They hadn't seen anything like it before, and were really impressed.

I decided to introduce Zhou to my conversation partner and friend named James (who is also a native speaker) because he has expressed his desire to become more comfortable socializing. I took them to Sonny's Barbecue on July 3 from 12-1pm. I talked about the cultural significance of July 4 and we talked about their lives. I asked Zhou if he had any questions about his class. He asked me to clarify to him what an adjective clause is. He could not understand why it is more concise to write with this sentence structure. I did not know the answer to this so I decided to come back to it in another session. This session mainly consisted of cultural conversation due to the fact that Zhou was concerned about holding a conversation outside of his social circle/Chinese speakers. 

 Zhou and I met at Bubbly Tea on July 1 at 5pm. We looked over an article and he asked me various questions about it. I explained words, terminology, and idioms that he did not understand. I discussed colloquial speech vs academic speech and how many native speakers use idioms. I did a schema building activity with him by asking him questions about a video related to his field of research and then watching it. I followed this up with comprehension questions and then showed him another video without building schema. 

 Zhou and I met at The Sweet Shop on June 28 at 4pm-5pm. I recommended Zhou some podcasts and music to listen to. I also recommended that he should watch some American sitcoms without the subtitles. I introduced him to NPR podcasts as well as The Daily by The New York Times, which both have clear and somewhat less clear pronunciation. We did another debate style activity. I took notes of grammatical errors and tried to solidify his verb tenses again. I asked Zhou what he did in class. He was introduced to AAVE (African American Vernacular English) and I expanded his knowledge of this by showing some clips of AAVE and explaining how it relates to culture. 

On Friday, August 13, at 4:30pm, I met with Masoud on campus. We spent the hour talking about weekend plans and the present perfect tense. Masoud is still a beginner with regards to English, but is crazy smart and picks these kinds of things up very easily. He said this material was completely new to him, so I did my best to go slow and make sure he understood all the steps. The lesson was really just a primer, but I made sure to explain how the tense is used and also when it is not used. After that, I had him do an exercise distinguishing between the past continuous and present perfect, then had him write his own sentences. Overall, he seemed to enjoy the lesson and asked all kinds of good questions, indicating to me that he understood. 

 On Friday, August 13, at 3:00pm, I had my final tutoring session with Charles on zoom. We spent the first part talking about our friend Lane, who was on his way to Tallahassee to stay with me for a night, then went on to discuss Charles' potential return to the states to see the two of us. After that round of catching up, we moved onto the substance of the lesson, which was a review of the past continuous tense and the present perfect tense, topics I have also been working on with Masoud. Charles is good at speaking, but has not used the language regularly in quite a while and I noticed that he has had trouble with the difference between them in our past lessons. I came up with descriptions, examples, and exercises for the two tenses and we spent more than an hour on them. Overall, he was really grateful for the lesson and felt much better about it afterwards. 

Isabela de Oliveira Soares (Brazil) 8/12/21 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM Today Isa and I were talking about the different holidays in our respective countries. I told her about some of my family's traditions for Halloween in particular since they are probably the most extreme. Our biggest Halloween tradition is carving pumpkins and putting them outside our house.  These are some of the example pictures from my family's Halloween pumpkin carving sessions. While we were on the topic I also told Isa about Trick-or-Treating, pumpkin catapults, and costume parties.  Isa then told me about her family's traditions during Easter time. She told me that they would each get giant chocolate eggs that are the size of footballs. She said that the grocery stores will have a cage like structure above all the aisles and that the eggs will be tied to the structure. She said that there are so many suspended chocolate eggs that they would block out the light and make the aisles darker. I do remember the ...

Isabela de Oliveira Soares (Brazil) 8/10/21 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM For today's conversation partner session I once again talked with my good friend from Brazil, Isa. Isa expressed to me that she is feeling more confident in speaking in English because of our sessions, though she might still be shy if talking with a stranger. When I first met Isa it was very hard to connect with her because she was too embarrassed to attempt speaking in English, and to boot my Portuguese skills were still very rough. In fact, after our sessions we will continue to chit chat but we will almost immediately switch to Portuguese.  Today I had my last session with my tutee from South Korea, Hang-ah Kim, where we talked about prom, homecoming, and school life in America. I realized that I never really talked about this with Isa and thought it could be a cool conversation topic. As I thought, almost all of Isa's knowledge on the topic was from TV and movies. She said that all of her knowledge regarding Amer...

Hang-ah Kim 8/10/21 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM Today is the last session of our sixteen session, and Hang-ah and I have become pretty friendly. I will actually miss these sessions. I decided that I would like to try teaching in Korea after doing some research. Hang-ah even offered to help me with my Korean.  As promised, for this session I explained the difference between prom and homecoming, as well as answered some of Hang-ah's questions about American schools. I showed her pictures from my own homecoming/prom as well. In addition to this, Hang-ah and I watched one more SNL skit that looked at the concept of "Debbie downers". I liked this particular skit because it took place at Disney, an American staple in of itself, as well as was centered around a family reunion. The video also had many American quips and idioms. Overall it was a very stimulating video that led to multiple discussion points with Hang-ah.  Finally, we wrapped up our final lesson with another shadow box. It r...

Hang-ah Kim 8/9/21 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM For a few lessons now, Hang-ah and have had conversations before or after our main lesson about different cultural aspects in the US. For example, Hang-ah expressed how she thought it was weird that Americans ask "how are you doing?" but actually are using it interchangeably with "hello". For the last two lessons I am going to show some SNL skits that showcase exaggerated versions of some phenomenon that are pretty exclusive to American culture. The way that I broke it up was that I picked three short SNL videos that we would watch individually and then talk about.  The first video talked about the American girl doll franchise, that when I was growing up was a major part of little girls' social circle. Hang-ah was very amused at the idea of a doll that you would make to look identical to yourself, that you would take to salons, and also have meals with.  The second video was making fun of American lifeguards and some of thei...

 Hang-ah Kim 8/4/21 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM For this session, Hang-ah and I returned to an activity that we did early on in our sessions where I put together a roleplay. In this roleplay I give her a situation where I play a role, and she has to respond while in character using vocabulary words that I provide her with. I then write down her answers on the shared doc where we can go back after the roleplay to correct her answers. I like this activity because it promotes speaking, while also having something to go back on and correct. Today's roleplay was centered around a shopping experience at Macy's, and the interactions that Hang-ah might have had with the employees there. Here the words in parenthesis are the words that Hang-ah had to use and the highlighted words are Hang-ah's corrected responses. Shopping at Macy’s -Hello and welcome to Macy’s, what can I help you with today? (Overalls, aisle, corduroy) - Hello I’m looking for corduroy overalls, which aisle would that be in?...

Hang-ah Kim 8/3/21 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM For this lesson Hang-ah and I completed the final part of my four-part debate/expressing opinions lesson. The four parts included the introduction of a sample/the vocabulary phrases, Hang-ah debating against herself, a partial oral fluidity roleplay, and finally today's improvisation session. For this activity I gave Hang-ah a topic and gave her five minutes to get her argument together. As opposed to last class, I did not leave the phrases on the board this time. Before the roleplay, I provided Hang-ah the topic as well as some background information on the topic. The topic was gun control. This activity was a culmination of the past three sessions, as it incorporated Hang-ah's new vocab phrases, her speech fluidity, and her ability to self correct. Additionally, this activity was good practice for comfortable conversation and expressing opinions. Overall, the activity was a success. I think Hang-ah has really gotten the hang of the concep...

 Date/Time: 7/31/21 1PM- 2PM Location: Zoom Topic discussed:  Getting to know each other Cultural and/or linguistic topics you and your partner learned:  The volunteer program I am apart of helps Ukrainian students learn English. We, as volunteers are tasked with taking note of their language and using correcting techniques for their speech. We ask them questions and we get to know each other which gets them talking more. For this session, I learned that Iryna studies German and English. I shared with her my major and the type of classes that I take for that major. We also talked about how to introduce ourselves in our 1st language. While speaking I noticed that Iryna stops herself when she gets stuck and she thinks about the correct form. Even when she doesn't know it immediately she goes to search it up. She relies on me as one of her last option. I also noticed that when she wants me to explain something to her she likes to hear the background and the context in which ...

  Date/Time : 7/24/21 1PM- 2PM Location :  Zoom Topic discussed: Getting to know each other Cultural and/or linguistic topics you and your partner learned:  Iryna and I met each other in late March and we learned a lot about each other. I learned that in the Ukraine, university means higher education and college means trade school. So when talking to her I had to be conscious of my word choice. In terms of education, Ukrainian students finish high school at 16 and 17. Also they study 20 subjects at a time each school year.  I also learned that in the Ukrainia culture they are less friendly than Americans. They also mentioned that they view Americas friendliness as weird. At first impressions, Ukrainain are more conserved and cold. However, when meeting Iryna she was the opposite of that and she was extremely welcoming.

I met with Samuel via Zoom at 3 pm on August 5.  Topic/Skill: Editing personal academic writing  Feedback provided to tutee: Samuel and I read through his final paper for his composition class and edited grammar errors, word choice errors, and restructured his paper to improve readability. His research about talent selection in collegiate sports was very interesting and put together very well. I congratulated Samuel on completing such an intense piece of writing in a foreign language. I also helped Samuel with his pronunciation as he read the paper aloud to me to practice his speaking.  Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned : I learned how rewarding it is for advanced level students to complete a research paper in a foreign language. It helped Samuel in his career by increasing his receptive and productive vocabulary related to his area of interest. In addition, he got to work on his writing skills, grammar production, self-editing, and revision skills....

 On Thursday, August 12, at 7:00pm, I met for the last time with Maher on zoom. We ended up having quite a lot of fun, discussing cultural differences, languages, and sports. We talked a bit about the fall, and how his kids had just started school. We then talked about his schooling and the money he received from the Saudi government to be in the US to learn english. Then, we discussed the differences between the job markets in the US and Saudi Arabia, with him saying that it was weird for anyone to work more than 1 job in their life. I said that it was encouraged to have multiple jobs throughout your life, which he thought was quite bizarre. We moved onto a discussion of languages and Duolingo, with both of us saying how great it was. We finished up talking about sports, more about soccer and transfers and me finishing with telling him about FSU football. He seems very interested in the sport, and he signed off from the meeting saying that he wanted to take his kids to a game, whi...

 On Thursday, August 12 at 2:30pm, I met once again with Charles. Today, we did the Afghanistan reading lesson plan that I created for the reading lesson this summer. I had him read almost the whole article out loud to practice, skipping a few parts because it is quite long and I wanted to hit the important parts. I first gave him the powerpoint presentation, highlighting the important background context and the difficult vocabulary in the article. We talked about each of the discussion questions in the article as he read through, checking to ensure that he was understanding what he was reading and that there was nothing about which he needed clarification. After that, I had him write a summary as well, practicing writing skills he had not used in quite a while. It was an enjoyable lesson for both of us, as he really liked practicing his speaking, reading, and writing. 

 Zhou and I met at Bubbly Tea on June 23 at 7pm-8pm. We did a debate style exercise to practice his fluency and listening skills. I picked topics that he had schema on at first to make him more comfortable with the exercise, then moved on to topics that were more challenging. Because Zhou mainly struggles in communicating his thoughts with speed and understands advanced grammar rules, I gave him feedback on small mistakes to solidify his grammar. Before the debate exercise I reviewed tenses and subject verb agreement with him. Zhou communicated that he found this exercise to be very useful for him as he struggles to debate and share critical thoughts on the spot in academic settings. 

 All Saints Cafe June 21 3-4pm Zhou and I met up and got to know each other. He shared his concerns with me about his language skills and how it prevents him from being able to socialize comfortably with native speakers. He wanted to express more emotions in his speech as well as show some level of cultural competence. I got to know where he was from and we discussed his background. I assessed his language skills and took a 2 minute recording and followed it up by providing feedback. I asked him about what he was learning in class. He is a student in the Advanced Listening class. His main obstacle is listening. He struggles to follow conversations and stories, but is successful in lectures. Zhou showed comprehension of many grammar rules and he was able to fully hold a conversation, but he lacks in listening skills and cultural comprehension. His pronunciation is clear but some sounds in the English language remain a challenge to him. He uses advanced language but is hesitant to sp...

I met with Samuel via Zoom at 3 pm on August 4.  Topic/Skill: Possessive pronouns  Feedback provided to tutee: Samuel and I talked about how, in English, the possessive pronoun only refers to the person that is possessing. I presented a slideshow about Possessive Pronouns and Possessive adjectives, including their placement and number. In Spanish, you make the possessive pronoun plural if the object of possession is plural, and so this concept is confusing for English learners whose native language is Spanish. Samuel practiced filling in the correct possessive pronoun and possessive adjective using a worksheet that asked for both.  Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned : I learned that it was helpful for Samuel to have a visual powerpoint to take notes about the topic before completing the worksheet. Samuel really enjoyed taking notes and referring back to them.

  I met with Samuel via Zoom at 3 pm on August 2.  Topic/Skill: Indefinite article usage  Feedback provided to tutee: Samuel and I discussed when it is appropriate to use an indefinite article in reference to job titles in English. We created example sentences together using indefinite articles and job titles (i.e. "She is a Civil Rights lawyer." and "He is a chemistry teacher.") To practice, Samuel told me about three of his friends. He told me about their profession using indefinite articles. I provided linguistic support when Samuel struggled with pronunciation or made a grammar mistake. He then completed an article usage quiz from 1-language.com to tie in our definite article lesson from last week.  Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned : I learned that Samuel is good at self-correction when he is instructed to correct something, but he does not automatically correct most of his mistakes. Sometimes he gets overwhelmed with intricate grammar error...