Jennifer- CP 11

I’ve had a lot of fun working with Biou over the past few weeks! I really enjoyed being able to share different aspects of our lives and culture together. Biou is very fun and energetic, and we’ve been able to share a lot of different experiences together. I really enjoyed getting to see her perform at the Mid Autumn Festival and all of the talks we had over dinner. Biou is a very social girl and always has some sort of entourage with her where ever she goes. I’ve had a great opportunity to get to know several different students through her and at the same time observe the different ways she interacts with each of her friends. Biou still has another semester at CIES and we’ve made plans to get together throughout Nov/Dec. Overall, it’s been a lot of fun getting to know her!

Jennifer-TP 12- 10/9/10

I have really enjoyed working with Woon Jee the past few weeks! Woon Jee has always been a very interested and excited student which makes her really easy and fun to work with. I have definitely learned a great deal from her and I hope that I’ve been able to help her out a little as well. Since Woon Jee was working on the Doctoral level, I’ve had to brush up a great deal on my editing and even some of my vocabulary (the field she works in has its own set of jargon that I’ve come to learn while reading her papers). Woon Jee and I still meet on a regular basis, and we’ll probably continue to do so as long as we’re both in Tallahassee. Overall, I’ve had a blast working with Woon Jee and look forward keeping up with our weekly meetings :)

Jennifer - TP 11- 10/8/10

For my filmed lesson I decided to try out a new lesson on Halloween (specifically on Edgar Allen Poe). I found a narrated version of The Tell Tale Heart on youtube that we watched; and I also made sure to have a print out of the short story for everyone after the film. My tutoring partner Woon Jee was willing to be a part of the activity and for the most part she did really well. I think she was a little distracted by the other students and for a while she kept saying she didn’t understand the story (which she really did but she was trying to read too much into it). I thought it was interesting that no one thought that the story was scary; they just found the characters really strange. We ended the lesson with a group discussion on scary stories that students shared from their own culture.

Ali- CP #11

Overall my experience as a conversation partner with Mandy has been really fun! I was able to experience some of her culture through the Chinese festival that was held a FSU and show her some American culture through food, sports, books, music, and my friends here. She is a very sweet girl and we got along well. Tea time was a good time for us to talk about our week and what was going on with classes. Taking her out to eat and to different events was also fun because most of it she hadn't experienced before, and the same went for when I was at the Chinese festival! Helping her with her English fluency was another thing that we worked on and I plan to continue to meet with her periodically before her test this December.

Ali- TP #12

Overall, my experience with Karis as a tutoring partner has been great! I've really been able to learn a lot from her and hopefully I've been able to help her as well. I've been able to get into the 'teaching' mindset when going over her work and helping her work through some of the problems she was having with her English. I have surprisingly learned a lot more about the English language through tutoring her than I thought that I would. Having to think about grammar/language rules ad aspects that I hadn't before was really interesting and hard at times, but rewarding in the end. I was able to introduce her to different American foods, and some culture and she made me my first Korean meal and taught me about her culture as well!! I look forward to keeping in touch with her and helping her with her work as she needs. :)

Ali- TP #11

Karis was nice enough to be apart of the lesson that I taught and videotaped. It was easy because I scheduled it on the night that we normally met so that it would be ok. There were two others in the class as well, one other from South Korea and one from Singapore. The lesson was on cultural diversity and identifying some inter-cultural differences. We worked through a questions handout and Karis spoke a good bit which was great! I was happy that she was willing to participate and that we could help each other out in that setting. She was able to work a bit with the other girl, Woongee, from Korea on some of the questions and explained their reasonings for their answer together. My goal was for her and everyone else to feel comfortable with each other and the topics, and I think that it went over well. She had to leave towards the end and is now in Korea for 3 weeks visiting family. I think that we will meet for a few more times when she comes back because she is still working on her research with school.

McKenzie- Tutoring- 13

This was my last meeting with Abby as a tutor. She brought her husband and son to meet me, and gave me a cookbook as a thank you present because she knows I love to cook!
Her husband and son played with ducks by the lake as we did a few last activities.
We did a mock interview, and Abby did really well. I pretended she was applying for a job as a teacher. I learned a lot about her, like she used to teach Korean at Berlitz in Seoul.
I brought in an issue of Rolling Stone magazine and we looked at some current events. Abby likes when we talk about issues in the news because she only watches Korean news and she likes knowing what is going on in America.
Lastly, I re-typed an essay of hers that she had written at the beginning of the semester, with all of the original mistakes still in it. I gave her a copy and had her correct it and she did a great job! She corrected every single mistake that she made when she wrote the essay a couple of months ago.