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.

McKenzie- CP- 10

Elly and I went to the Greek Food Festival today. She really liked it! I picked her up from her apartment and she invited me in for the first time. I was surprise that her and Billy share a room.
When we got to the festival, we wanted to try everything so we bought a spinach and cheese pies, baklava, moussaka, greek salad, and more! Elly was super adventurous, which I like, trying food that she had never heard of. There was a weird looking thing on top of the salad that Elly took a bite of that turned out to be a fish.
We went into the Greek church and Elly told me it was the first time she had ever been in a church. I was raised Catholic which is really similar to Greek Orthodox so I was able to explain a lot to her about the hymnals, crucifix, eucharist, idols, etc. Right when we sat down in a pew, the priest came in to do a free tour of the church which was pretty cool. He spoke too fast for Elly so she asked me to explain a lot of stuff to her.
It was a learning experience for both of us. We looked at books of photos from the Greek islands, saw Greek dancing, and listened to Greek music.

McKenzie- CP- 9

I met Elly at tea time today. It is a new session. We started by talking about written languages and alphabets. Elly wrote her and my names on a paper in Taiwanese characters and I copied them. I taught her a few phrases in Spanish after that and she had fun rolling her "r"s. She told me she has the most trouble pronouncing world and people in English.
We talked about religion and holidays. Her family does not have a religion in Taiwan and they only celebrate the Chinese New Years. She has 8 cousins but they don't really get together any other time of the year. She asked me about each of the American holidays and I explained some of them, like Thanksgiving and the 4th of July.
Lastly, Elly told me about a presentation she has to do on jeans. She is going to talk about different styles, the history and companies. This led to a talk on fashion and we spent the rest of our time together online shopping on different sites like anthropologie and urbanoutfitters. We picked out "dream" outfits and tried to guess what clothes the other person would like the most.

Ali- CP #10

I picked up Mandy, Biou, and Wenbo to take them to an art opening at Lemoyne on the first Friday of October. Jennifer had to work at the event, so we met her there. Mandy said that she had ever been to a gallery like Lemoyne before, so we grabbed a program and took our time walking through the exhibit. There was also a jewelry showcase happening and the girls seemed to really enjoy looking at all of the different pieces. We even got to meet one of the artists headlining the show and he wanted to take a picture of the girls, they were good sports and posed for the camera...he was taking pictures of a bunch of different people, so they didn't seem to mind.

After the show, we stopped by CVS so that Mandy could pick up a prescription for her skin. The doctor had told her that she should be able to pick it up there, so we tried. The pharmacist was not able to check on her insurance, so she had to wait until the next Monday to contact the insurance company to make sure that it covered her needs. I tried to help her out by mediating between her and the pharmacist because they were having some issues understanding each other and she wasn't sure how t word the questions that she had, so I helped her with that aspect. We left CVS without her medicine, but the girls had found plenty of candy and soda in the mean time!

Ali- CP #9

I went to see The Town with Jennifer, her conversation partner Biou, and her friend Wenbo. We thought that it would be a good movie to see because it ad gotten good reviews and Biou said that they liked Ben Affleck. :) The movie was good, but the use of the 'f' word was used consistently and the Boston accent the actors had was very strong as well. The girls said that they had trouble understanding everything that was happening because the speech in the movie was very fast and mumbled, with the language and accent. The 'f' word is the main word that they were actually able to hear! So, we talked about it on our way to take them back to their apartment and explained the story of what had happened in the movie and the differences between some of the accents used in different parts of America and that the 'f' word is really a part of every day language in Boston.

Ali- CP #8

Jennifer had a Sunday lunch at her house for our tutoring and conversation partners. Her parents cooked a great “Southern” meal for everyone and the girls seemed to really like it! There wasn’t a lot of talking during the meal, but everyone warmed up more to each other as it went on. We told them not to be shy to talk if they wanted to and that we wanted them to feel comfortable and enjoy themselves! After we ate, we played foosball for a while and then moved onto Wii sports, then Guitar Hero. Several of the girls had never played either before and caught on very quickly and we all had fun with it. It was a rainy afternoon, so all of the indoor games were great and we were all able to have a good time with each other.

Afterwards, Mandy expressed that she really enjoyed it and hadn't eaten that type of food before but liked it a lot! I let her borrow some books of mine because she had asked me if I could find some good stories for her in a genre that she was interested in, which is fantasy/sci fi/romance. I look forward to hearing if she liked any of them!

Ali- CP #7

At Tea Time, Mandy and I talked about what had happened at the Chinese Mid-Autumn festival and the parts (most of it) that I didn’t understand. She explained that one of the skits the crowd was laughing at was one of a famous dating game show in China. She also told me that she was getting a doctor’s appointment for a skin condition she had on her hands. She didn’t know what it was and Thagard got her an appointment with a dermatologist. She was a bit worried that the doctor may not be able to help her, but I told her that they would do their best and that hopefully everything was alright. She was still nervous about her upcoming speaking exam to become a TA at FSU. We talked about a few different phrases, etc. that she had heard and was confused about, but the hour flew by quickly and our meeting time was over before we knew it.

McKenzie- Tutoring- 12

Next week will be the last time I meet with Abby, even though I have enough hours.
We met at Black Dog Cafe today. We went over the recipe I assigned her for homework. She wrote out a recipe for Korean BBQ and did a really great job! I plan on trying it out sometime this weekend.
Next, I brought in a few vocabulary crossword puzzles I found online. Each one had a theme: restaurants, clothes, jobs. We did the clothing crossword together. Abby filled in a word, and then I would do one, and we just kept passing it back and forth. She says she really liked them so I gave her the other two to take home and do at home.
The last activity we did took awhile. I brought in a handout that corresponds to a chapter on immgration in a high school American history textbook. The chapter discusses early immigration in the late 19th/early 18th century America. Together, we read 6 pages and filled out a chart. It was a grid, and vertically was labeled "Regions: Asia, Caribbean, Central America, Southern/Eastern Europe, Asia," and horizontally "What countries came here, What reasons they had for coming here." We went through and using the textbook, filled out each box on the chart. For example, in the box "Asia, Countries," we put Japan and China. In the box, "Asia, Reasons," we put farming, railroad, and mining jobs.

It was interesting talking about how much immigration has changed since then. There are fewer immigration quotas, no Ellis Island, stereotypes have changed. I think this was a relevant activity because Abby got to learn a little American history and talk about immigration, as well as practice reading and writing!

McKenzie- CP- 8

I met with Elly when I filmed my final exam. It went well and I really appreciate her friends’ help and time. After, Elly and I went out for frozen yogurt again (she really likes Sunberry). She always orders the white chocolate mousse flavor!

We talked about the new session. Elly is super excited that she got boosted to a group 4. There was a meeting for communications majors and she said she is nervous because there is a lot of pressure to get a 90 on TOEFL this session to be allowed into the program. She also said that there are now 100 students at CIES, an all time record.

I talked about the friends she has made so far. Elly only hangs out with Taiwanese people and says she isn’t comfortable enough yet with English to really try and hang out with English speakers or date a local. I think she is very fluent though! Part of it is that after speaking English all day which can be very stressful, she just wants to go home and relax.

I volunteered to be Elly’s conversation partner again this session, so I will be seeing her at teatime this Thursday at CIES.

Ali- TP #10

For our next meeting, Karis and I went over another survey that she had created and was going to start that week. There was not much editing to do, but once we finished, she had some questions that she had written down to ask me. She explained that she had recently had issues contacting her Comcast provider because she wanted to change her plan that she was on. She was confused on whether she should use “change”, “substitute”, or “exchange” when explaining what she wanted to do. We talked about it for a few minutes and I explained that it depended on how she worded her entire explanation, but that she could just say that she wanted to “change” her plan to something else and they would know what she was talking about. We also discussed if there was a difference between “dissatisfied” or “unsatisfied”, and I said that I had heard both so we looked it up and couldn’t find an exact difference between the two, they were both given the same definition. She was exited to get her survey started amongst local restaurants and we were going to talk about her findings so far at our next meeting.

Ali- TP #9

On Monday, after our Sunday lunch, Karis and I reviewed a survey that she had created for her research. She showed signs of improvement with her tenses and plural usage. The only mistakes that were repetitive were missing articles and a few minor plurals. She was able to pick up on the mistakes that she was making and began to edit the rest of the survey herself. We didn’t have much to edit after that, but we were able to talk about Sunday and she said that she enjoyed it and so did her nieces, whom she had brought as well. She said that she was happy to meet everyone and to have that experience as well. We talked a little bit of the similarities and differences of “hanging out” with friends in Korea and here in America. There were a lot more similarities than differences and we ended our meeting shortly after that.

Ali- TP #8

Jennifer had a Sunday lunch at her house for our tutoring and conversation partners. Her parents cooked a great “Southern” meal for everyone and the girls seemed to really like it! There wasn’t a lot of talking during the meal, but everyone warmed up more to each other as it went on. We told them not to be shy to talk if they wanted to and that we wanted them to feel comfortable and enjoy themselves! After we ate, we played foosball for a while and then moved onto Wii sports, then Guitar Hero. Several of the girls had never played either before and caught on very quickly and we all had fun with it. It was a rainy afternoon, so all of the indoor games were great and we were all able to have a good time with each other.

Ali- TP #7

Instead of meeting at the library for our next meeting, Karis’ friend HotSun, whom I had met at the Sunday dinner, called me to come to dinner with them instead. I agreed and we met at the Fresh Foods on FSU campus. He was nice and used his faculty card to pay for our dinner. Karis’ nieces and HotSun’s friend also came. We were able to have a good dinner, and talked about Karis’ job at FSU, doing research in her field of hospitality, specifically food safety, and HotSun was able to ask me some questions that he had about certain things that he would say. For example, he said that there was a girl as cute as a puppy and he asked if that was ok to say. I told him that I knew what he meant but that it was best to just not compare a girl to any type of dog because she may take it the wrong way. Overall, the dinner was very enjoyable and the group was all really nice.

Ali- TP #6

Karis invited Jennifer and me to a Sunday lunch she was going to cook for her friends. She said that she would be making a traditional Korean meal, which I was excited about because I had never had Korean food before, but I was also nervous because I had heard that Korean food is spicy, but was willing to try it! On Sunday, we got there and met several of her friends, some were also from Korea, others were from China, Japan, and Malaysia. The setup of the table was full of different foods including rice, vegetables, sushi (or kimbap), and meats (bulgogi). Karis showed us the proper way to dish up our food, with the rice first and then the vegetables and meat. I was nervous because I didn’t want to do the wrong thing and followed what she and others did. The food was delicious and not as spicy as I thought it would be. There was a sauce that we tried with the meat that made was really hot, but thankfully we had the choice whether to use it with our food or not. During the meal we were able to talk to everyone and hear about their backgrounds, which was very interesting. They were all very excited for me and Jennifer and our choice to do the TEFL program and teach overseas. It was definitely a new, positive experience that I was happy to be a part of.

McKenzie- Tutoring- 11

Ayni met me at Strozier yesterday to practice writing for the TOEFL. I brought along two handouts to start the tutoring session. The first one was a handout of common prefixes such as “re, uni, bi, tele, oct, un.” We defined each and thought of examples. I also brought along a sheet of idioms for her to look at.

After we did these casual activities, we picked a formal topic from her TOEFL writing book and wrote an entire outline for it. I helped her formulate a thesis, as well as body paragraph topic statements and examples. The questions was “Do you prefer watching live performances in person or watching them on tv?” Ayni preferred at home, and the reasons she came up with included: it is cheaper, and more comfortable.

In the smart room we were renting in the library there were a bunch of math equations on the wall and Ayni tried to explain them to me. She was a geology engineer back in Turkey, meaning she worked with oil and petroleum and how they affect the surface of the Earth. Math is easy for her, and she had fun laughing at me trying to understand the math concepts (I am a history person!).

McKenzie- Tutoring- 10

Today I met Abby at Black Dog Café for tutoring for one hour. We started the lesson by looking at a blog post by the Frugal Traveler for NY Times. We read through it together and discussed any phrases or concepts that confused her, and I checked for comprehension.

Next, I printed out a copy of the “In my culture, it’s normal to…” handout that Alison presented for the culture lesson plan in class. I went through each one with Abby and we talked about traditions both in Korea and the U.S. I learned that spitting in public is dying out in Korea because only the old men still do it, that for birthday dinners, the birthday person pays for dinner for all of their friends, and that in Korea, most people still feel that men should make all the money and women should stay home.

To close out the tutoring session, I brought in a list of Korean idioms. Abby translated them for me and we talked about each one. We discussed what the equivalent would be in English. She thought that this activity was really funny.

McKenzie- Tutoring- 9

I met with Ayni to tutor her in speaking at the library. She wanted to spend an hour just practicing speaking for TOEFL. We spent the first half hour doing more casual speaking, and then more formal speaking topics for the second half hour.

For the informal section, I did mock phone conversations with her. I had done this activity with Abby before, and Ayni liked it. She was really good at reacting to the curveballs I sent her (telling her she had the wrong number, etc.) Then we read a Shel Silverstein poem out loud together and talked about it.

For the more formal section, Ayni took out her TOEFL prep book. There were speaking topics such as “What do you want to do as a career?” I read them to her and then timed her with 45 seconds for each response. After she finished each response, I asked her more questions about each subject.

McKenzie- CP- 7

I met Elly again at Tea Time today. There was live music and we had a laugh as her roommate Billy was dancing crazy. Elly says he dances around the apartment a lot as well. Elly was too shy to dance until the last song that was a "belly dance" number. I am a belly dancer and she asked me to teach her a move so I taught her a simple, cute head slide.

I asked her about the government of Taiwan for the first time today. Elly told me they don't have a UN seat because when the current government of China took over, the old government ran to Taiwan. It is still considered property of China and many who side with Taiwan run the risk of upsetting diplomacy with China. Elly said the current president wants Taiwan to cooperate with China, but Taiwan is basically divided. Elly is all for Taiwanese independence.

She is still worried about the TOEFL because she needs a score of 80 and one of her good friends who just took it got a 79.

Jennifer- TP 10- 10/6/10

This morning I met with Woon Jee at LeMoyne to go over the new draft of her pre-concept paper for her dissertation. She started right in and began reading her paper out loud; she was even catching all of her mistakes. I looked at her and told her that she was getting so much better and that she wasn’t even going to need me anymore. Did I ever jinx us! She was doing fine and then just started skipping over any of the mistakes she made (most of which were subject verb agreement and awkward phrases). She stopped about half way through and told me that she was kind of nervous about the tests she is retaking this Friday. We talked about that for awhile and I attempted to make her feel a little less anxious about the whole process. We ended up making it through her paper (she seemed to get a bit better at correcting her mistakes after we stopped for a few minutes).

Jennifer- CP 10- 10/1/10

Around 8:00, Woon Jee and her friend Julie came to look around LeMoyne for the First Friday opening. By this time we weren’t quite as busy so it wasn’t so difficult for the girls to walk around throughout the galleries. Woon Jee had previously told me that she really likes jewelry and was really excited to look at the exhibit. Both she and Julie said that they really liked all of the jewelry on display but the pieces they wanted were too expensive. I said I knew how they felt; there was a pair of earrings for $80 I wanted but couldn’t afford. Woon Jee really wanted to know which earrings I wanted so she picked up the catalog for the show and went off to try and find them. She came back awhile later and excitedly told me that she was able to find the earrings that I wanted, and that she liked them too. I was really proud of her for figuring out the labeling system and making her way throughout the gallery (there are many Americans who come into the gallery and struggle with this).

Jennifer- CP 09 - 10/1/10

Tonight was the opening of the Jewelry and Ed Franklin Exhibit at LeMoyne. I had to work but I really wanted to try and share this experience with both my tutoring and conversation partners. So, for the first hour Alison, Biou, Wenbo, and Mandy all came to look around the gallery. They came around 6:00-7:00 that evening, which also happened to be when we had the most people come through. Since we were so busy, I let the girls walk around and would randomly meet up with them to answer any questions and to let them show me which pieces they liked the best. They were all very curious about the red dots that I would randomly place on different wall labels as the night wore on. I explained to them that the red dot meant that the piece had just been sold and was no longer available for purchase. Biou was able to pick out several of the pieces that she found very interesting and showed me the different images she took with her camera. They all seemed to really enjoy walking around and looking at the art. Biou was really happy and explained to me that she used to go to gallery openings a lot back in Beijing. I told her that during the next First Friday (in November) I would take her over to Rail Road so that she can see all of the different galleries that over there.

Jennifer- TP 09- 9/29/10

Tonight I met with Biou and her friend Alan outside of Strozier to go over some speaking questions as practice for their upcoming TOFEL test. They took turns speaking and timing each other and we tried at least one of each category of questions: Description, Preference, Agree/Disagree, Why/Do you think. After each question, we would all listen to the playback of the speech and they would critique each other and then ask what I thought. I would repeat some of the phrases they said incorrectly back to them and they would immediately know what was wrong once they heard me say it aloud to them. There were also a couple of words that they had trouble pronouncing: internet, computer, important, support, and a few others. They did a really good job answering the questions completely and there were only a couple that they struggled understanding (for the Agree/Disagree I told them it would probably be better if they picked one side to argue instead of trying to argue both sides). Alan struggled with one particular phrase, “that can help make people’s lives more convenient.” It didn’t matter how many times Biou and I said it to him; he struggled with it each time. He was starting to get discouraged when I reminded him that he was doing a really good job and to be proud of himself. I told him if it was in Chinese I would probably struggle a lot more than he was…he then proceeded to translate the phrase into Chinese and had me attempt to say it over and over again. Yeah, they had a good laugh at my horrible pronunciation :)

Jennifer- TP 08- 9/29/10

Today Woon Jee and I decided to go over different idioms and see if she could figure out their meanings. For the most part she did really well but there were a few that she came up with really funny translations for.
-Bite off more than you can chew: she thought this met a type of greedy person who takes more than they should
-Cup of Joe: when I told her that I had a cup of Joe with breakfast she asked me, “So you ate Joe?”
-Dogs days of summer: for this one she got a little seriously and asked me, “You know about some Koreans and dogs, right?”
-Method to Madness: she struggled with this one for awhile and so I tried to explain this to her, eventually I had to use my office desk as an example…
We went over quite a few more and then I asked her if she had any Korean idioms that she could share with me and I would try and guess their meanings.
-Dog with shit critiques dog with leaf: she told me this is the equivalent of “Pot calling the kettle black”
-You fix the fence before you loose the cow: she told me this was a very important one concerning the idea of preparation
Later, Woon Jee let me know that she really enjoyed this lesson and would like to do more of these types of activities during our future meetings.

Jennifer- CP 08- 9/26/10

This afternoon I invited my conversation partner (Biou and her friend Wenbo), tutoring partner (Woon Jee), and Alison’s partners (Mandy, Karis, and two other girls) over to my parent’s house for lunch. While we waited for everyone to arrive, I took Biou, Wenbo, and Woon Jee around our house and we ended up in my room. On our first meeting, one of the first things Biou did was show me some of the pictures she had taken while in the US. With this in mind, I showed the girls different photo albums I had created with my friends. They really enjoyed looking through this, and especially found it funny how much Alison and I had changed over the years. During lunch most of the girls were pretty quiet. They had assumed that they were supposed to act this way while we ate but we quickly told them that wasn’t the case. After dinner we took them out on the porch to play foosball. Most of the girls had never played before, so they each took turns trying it out. Two of the girls ended up being really good, and so my brother and I decided to play against them. They absolutely loved this and thought my brother was the best player ever (they kept calling him MVP). We also turned on the Wii for them to play; most of them had already played this but they still had a lot of fun taking turns with the different games we had. Later, while I was driving Wenbo and Biou back to their apartments, Biou told me that she had a great time but wondered how exactly she was supposed to address my parents. I explained to her that she could address my mom as “Stella,” “Ms. Stella,” or “Ms. Infinger.” I asked her how I would address her parents if we were in Beijing and she told me that I could call them “Auntie” and “Uncle” and didn’t have to worry about trying to remember/pronounce their actual names.

Ali- CP #6

I went to the Chinese Mid-Autumn festival with Jennifer and her sister. I knew that Jen’s conversation partner, Biou, was performing and we were going to watch the event. I didn’t know if Mandy was going to be there or not because she had planned to go to the beach with the CIES group that day but didn’t because she didn’t feel well. So, I saw her at the festival and she helped give me information on how to get extra tickets, since I had not bought one prior to the event. Once inside, we were a bit overwhelmed by the large crowd and the fact that everyone was speaking Chinese and we couldn’t understand anything. We saw Biou perform a dance and she played keyboard during several songs at the every end of the event. By the end of the event I was honestly drained because I couldn’t understand half of what was going on, but had still enjoyed it and definitely intended to ask Mandy in further detail what some of the skits were and what they had been talking about.

Ali- CP #5

I met with Mandy the following Thursday at Tea Time and we discussed the Halloween holiday and what trick or treating was. She was curious because the Chinese Autumn festival was coming up and she wanted to know how we celebrate this time of year compared to China. She thought that people dressing up in the costumes sounded like fun, but didn’t really see the point. I told her that people just like getting in character and then going to Halloween parties and decorating their homes.

We also talked about potluck dinners and why Americans specifically have potluck dinners. She had just been to her first potluck dinner and really seemed to like the idea and the conversation turned into different types of food depending on the region of the country and then what exactly Southern food included. She tried to explain one dish that she had tried and really liked, and we knew it was a type of casserole, but couldn’t figure out the name for it because she couldn’t remember all of the ingredients. We also decided what days we would meet from then on so that we had a more concrete schedule, especially since she doesn’t have a car and needed to plan ahead if we were to meet somewhere.

Ali-CP #4

I had dinner with Jennifer, her conversation partner Biou, and Biou’s friend Wen bo. I had invited Mandy, but she had previous plans with one of her friends at Alumni Village. Jen and I picked up the girls from Alumni Village and had planned on taking them to a restaurant for dinner because it was around 6pm, but they told us that they had already been eating and weren’t hungry. Jen and I were hungry so we wanted to take them somewhere that we could hang out still but get a bit of food as well. We meant to go to The Winery and Tapas at Midtown, but didn’t know that the management had changed and so the entire restaurant was different. We decided to stay and try something new together. The restaurant was pretty empty because an FSU game was still playing and we figured it would fill up later. We ended up ordering several appetizers to share and actually liked the food! J We were able to talk to the girls a bit, and tried to keep the conversation going, but there were some spaces that were fairly silent, mainly due to us eating! After dinner we were going to walk to The Cupcakey, but it was closed in observance of September 11^th. So, we went to Lake Ella and walked around the lake and took pictures. They taught us the Chinese word for crane and friend, and we had fun with learning different words and phrases from each other.

Jennifer- CP 07- 9/24/10

Biou had mentioned that she’d really like to go see a movie so I gave her three different movies to choose from: The Town, Wall Street 2, or You Again. Biou ended up picking the new Ben Affleck movie, The Town and we decided to go to AMC that night to watch it. She had said that she really liked Ben Affleck, especially in Pearl Harbor and she seemed really excited about going to see the movie. Throughout the previews she had a few comments; she got really excited about the new Johnny Depp movie with Angelina Jolie but wanted to know why he had gotten so fat. I tried to quickly explain to her that he was dressed to look older because of the character he was trying to portray. Throughout the entire movie she didn’t really have any questions, but I caught her whispering to Wenbo every now and then. I didn’t want to overload/distract her so I didn’t say anything to her until after the movie. Later, she told me that she had a difficult time understanding the way they talked as it was different from what she heard in Tallahassee. I explained to her that different regions of the country spoke with different accents, and Alison and I being the people that we are couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try and talk to them in the various accents  They found this extremely entertaining and funny, and explained that this was similar back in China but they had Chinese subtitles for all of the movies because some of the accents/dialects were so different. They were also kind of taken aback at how many curse words there were, in particular, f*** was used basically every other word. They said they struggled understanding what the characters were trying to say but that they could catch that word every time because the actors used a lot of emphasis when they used that word. We tried to explain to them that in this case the word wasn’t so out of the ordinary, and told them that movies that took place in the Boston area tended to use that word quiet a lot. We laughingly suggested that next time they can work on their grammar skills by picking out the different ways the word is used in the movie- subject, verb, adjective, adverb, expletive, etc.

Jennifer- TP 07- 9/24/10

Tonight Woon Jee and I met at LeMoyne to go over her paper. We started out as usual, Woon Jee began to read aloud her paper and would stop and correct any mistake she found or if she read over something I would ask her to repeat herself (she’s quickly picked up that anytime I ask her that there’s usually something she’s missed). I noticed that it was taking her a bit longer to get through her paper and that she didn’t seem quiet focused on the topic (she kept missing mistakes that she would normally pick up). I stopped to ask her what was going on and I found out that she had failed one part of her prelims and is now going to have to retake them again in a couple of weeks. She seemed really discouraged about this and was looking to gain approval or validation to continue studying for her degree. She said that she had spoken with her advisor and was looking to receive some sort of encouragement but hadn’t gotten any response and so she was starting to seriously doubt herself. I tried to explain to her that sometimes American professors aren’t as encouraging as students may desire, and that there might be some sort of extraneous personal situation that might be bothering her advisor. She takes her tests again in a few weeks so I told her that we can go over anything she feels is needed in an effort to prepare her for the tests.

Jennifer- TP 06- 9/22/10

Today I decided to switch it up a bit and I met Woon Jee for lunch for our tutoring session. I wanted to try and simulate a casual lunch experience that she might encounter with another one of her American friends. I brought a part of the Tallahassee Democrat (specifically the Limelight section) for us to read over together and discuss as we ate. I explained to Woon Jee that the Limelight is a section of the newspaper that comes out twice a week, Wednesdays and Fridays, and usually contains a list of all the activities that will be going on that weekend (movies, art exhibits, special festivals, music concerts, plays, etc). I let Woon Jee have the paper and asked her to read out any of the events that she thought sounded interesting. She found an 80’s party that she thought sounded fun, and she was also very excited when she found a write up about the Art&Soul event for LeMoyne. She did have a few questions about some of the titles for the small articles they had about the upcoming movies that debuted that week. I told her that most of them contained some sort of play on words that pertained to the movie that they were associated with (ex. “Owl of a Story” for the Legend of the Guardians:The Owls of Ga'Hoole).

Jennifer- Classroom Observation 3- 9/20/10

This morning I observed Marilyn’s AE-LI Grammar class. Marilyn started out the class by writing the agenda up on the board and passing out a worksheet that the students were going to use for class today. During this time she was also answering any questions that the students might have and writing and pertinent information up on the board. For the most part the students were relatively quite during this first part of the class, and Marilyn had her back to the students as she was reading the instructions aloud for them. As the class progress, Marilyn seemed to warm up and become more interactive with the students; giving them positive feedback for correct answers and encouraging them to continue with their work. Their assignment was to create boarding house rules using modal verbs. She had the students work together in groups (they already seemed to know which group they belonged to without her having to say anything) to create their own rules using the different verbs. I noticed that most of the students in each group were from various international locations which I thought was a clever way to ensure that they primarily spoke in English since it was the only common language they shared. The students wrote their rules up on the board and they reviewed the list as a class- any corrections were done as a collaborative effort of the entire class.

Jennifer- CP 06- 9/19/10

Today I was invited to eat lunch with Karis, Alison’s tutoring partner. Karis not only invited us into her home but she also cooked an authentic Korean meal for us. This was my first experience eating Korean food and I was both excited and a little nervous (I had heard that it was supposed to be extremely spicy and I don’t do spicy). The food was actually really good and not spicy at all (Karis had left the spicy sauce off the food and instead left it in dishes for dipping the food into if we wanted). Karis patiently took the time to explain each of the dishes and how we were supposed to eat them.
There were several other people, from various international locations, that ate with us today. They were extremely interested in us and what we were doing with CIES. They had many questions for us about the program, where we wanted to teach, what we were interested in, etc. I really enjoyed talking with each of them and learning about where they come from and how their life differs now that they’re in the States. All in all, today was really fun and I enjoyed my first experience of Korean food!

Jennifer- CP 05- 9/18/10

Tonight was the Mid Autumn Festival at FSU. For a brief three hours, I felt like I knew what it would be like to be in China. The festival itself was very interesting and entertaining. There were lots of different acts and people performing (singing, dancing, acting, rapping, etc). My conversation partner, Biou, was performing in several of the acts so I didn’t have a translator for any of it… Unless, you count my sister who is in the fourth week of her Chinese high school class and can count up to ten (this actually did come in handy when they were calling out the ticket numbers for the raffle). For the most part we were all able to figure out the general idea of what was going on, but there was definitely a lot that we missed out on (especially when the entire crowd would erupt with laughter and we’d just sit there smiling and looking around).
Biou actually ended up performing in two different acts; one with a dance group and another where she got to play the keyboard. The dance that Biou participated in was honestly not what I had expected, especially from a girl who loves heavy metal music. It was a very upbeat pop song that was a little more contemporary than I had anticipated. Later, she played the keyboard while her friend, Wenbo, sang; I thought she seemed a lot more comfortable and excited about this part of her performance. After the festival was over, I found Biou in the front hall with her friends and she came bounding over to me. She was very excited and happy that I was able to come out and watch her performances. I told her that I thought she did an excellent job and that I could tell that she spent a lot of time dedicated to her performances. The Mid Autumn Festival as a whole was very interesting and I actually enjoyed being able to experience it with Biou.

Jennifer- TP05- 9/17/10

Woon Jee ended up being about 45 minutes late to our meeting this time, and insisted that we go out to dinner before we start working on her paper. We had a really good time talking over dinner; she had the opportunity to vent about her program and her roommate. We talked about her home town and about her family. She wants to become a professor just like her dad, and would be interested in either teaching her or back home in Korea. We then got on the topic of teaching abroad and by the end of our conversation she had moved me in with her parents in Taejon and teaching at one of the two universities there…I told her that I’ll have to think about it some more after this class is over.
We ended up going to Barnes & Nobles to go over her paper (she wanted to go back to my office but since she had never been to B&N I convinced her that we should at least try it once). This time I let Woon Jee do most of the talking. She started right in, reading her paper out loud and asking questions or pausing whenever she was confused or unsure about something. She had misused the word “contractions” in her paper and had read right over it thinking that it was fine. I asked her to read the sentence again and she was confused as to why it was wrong. She ended up looking up the word in her dictionary and quickly realized that wasn’t the word she was trying to use. For our next meeting I thought I would bring the Limelight section of the Tallahassee Democrat for the two of us to go over so she’ll know where to look if she wants to try and find something to do on the weekend.

Jennifer- TP04- 9/15/10

For this meeting Woon Jee and I met in my office to go over a current event topic (something she had expressed interest in during our first meeting). I decided to try out one of the lesson plans that I had already submitted to see how it would work out. We went over a short video that covered the issue relating to the mosque in New York. I let her watch the video twice before giving her the article that explained in greater detail what the issue was about. I wanted to make sure that the video focused primarily on the facts of the situation, and found one on voanews.com that was pretty good. After Woon Jee watched the video twice we talked about it for a few minutes. I gave her the article to read over and once she was finished reading it she felt more confident in talking to me about it. There were a couple of terms she was unfamiliar with, “ground zero” and “sharia.” She also had some difficulty understanding the information the video gave when they described the mosque being rebuilt into a “modern day Medieval Cordoba.” I explained this to her and told her a lot of people would probably struggle with this concept and that the only reason I knew about it was due to my Islamic Art class I took as an undergraduate.

Ali-TP #5

I had been talking about different types of food with Karis, mainly because her research focus involves restaurants and food safety and decided to go to dinner with her during the week. We both decided on Chik fil A because we didn’t feel like sitting down at a “formal” restaurant at the time. She had never been to Chik fil A before and I told her that it was one of my favorite places to eat and that it was a very popular place to eat in Tallahassee as well. We ordered and she got the spicy chicken sandwich and fries and she loved it! She ate her fries first and said that they were very delicious; she saved most of her sandwich for lunch the following day. Jennifer came after her own tutoring session and ate with Karis and me. We talked about different cultural restaurants in Tallahassee as well as listened to Karis talk about some of the culture differences she had noticed between Tallahassee and Seoul in particular. We talked for a while and Karis invited us to a traditional Korean lunch that she was going to make that weekend and we were exited because neither of us had eaten Korean food before! So, we had good time and good conversations and Chik fil A gained a new fan. J

Ali-TP #4

During our 4^th meeting, Karis and I went over an article that she is currently writing. We were really only able to cover her introduction paragraph. She had minor errors, but they were repetitive and some of the sentence organization took a while to explain because I didn’t want it to get confusing and had to have her explain a lot of what she was trying to say before we reworded or reorganized the sentences. The continued issue of articles is something that we worked on, and I had brought her a paper with rules, uses, and reasons for article use in sentences. I thought that she may be able to use it to know when to use a, an, or the. Another issue that was repetitive was plurals, but once I pointed out the first few plural mistakes and explained why they were wrong, she was able to point out most of the rest herself. It was productive session and I asked her to send me a digital copy of the article so I could look over the next few pages before we met again so I could be prepared with examples and better reasons and advice for her.

Ali-TP #3

My third meeting with Karis was very relaxed, we were both tired after work all day and just wanted to talk for our hour we were meeting. We discussed our weekend and she asked me if I was excited for any tv shows that may be starting back soon with a new season. We found, through this discussion, that we both like Grey’s Anatomy and were able to talk about the current storyline, characters, and I was able to answer some content questions that she had about the previous season. It was interesting because she said that, in Korea, they have pop ups that have information about topics the show is covering, or definitions to medical words, etc. while the show is playing. I told her that I wasn’t aware of that in America, but that it was a great idea to have, especially for an English speaking show in a non-English speaking country. We also briefly covered the difference and uses of semicolons and colons. She is good about always bringing questions that she acquires throughout the week and asks me, so we usually have plenty to talk about.

Ali-Observation 3

The third class that I observed was Maria’s Reading class for Level 2 learners. The class had a pre-planned practice TOEFL reading test that day, so I wasn’t able to observe any instruction, but I did have a chance to talk to the teacher while the students took the practice test. I received a copy of the test as well and did notice that the level of the reading passage was much higher than the fluency level of the majority of the students in the class. They were given 30 minutes for one section, which is much longer than what they would get on the normal test, but it was only practice. Maria old me that even though most of those students were not going to take the real TOEFL yet, they needed to practice and see what the test will really be like so that they can prepare themselves and not be shocked when they take the real test. Some of the students seemed to be doing fine during the test time and some of them visibly gave up in the middle of it, saying it was too hard and they didn’t understand. Much of the language used in the reading was on a higher educational level, so it was interesting to watch them to see how they continued to react. She got responses after the test time was over, and made sure to clarify why they had taken it and they would need to continue practicing to succeed.

McKenzie- CP- 6

Elly and I went to Sunberry for Frozen Yogurt today after she was done with classes at CIES. I asked her if she had witnessed any cultural clashes since she has been here, or had any issues that involved cultural differences. I was shocked with the story that followed! She told me that last week, a friend and her were on one of the FSU buses speaking in Chinese. The girl in the seat in front of them turned around and with a really mean tone and face, hissed at them to “stop speaking f***ing Chinese because this is America. I hate the f***ing Chinese.” Elly and her friend didn’t respond, and Elly said she was really upset for the rest of the day! I told her this was so strange because typically, opinions about Asian Americans or Asian stereotypes are very positive! I told her some good stories of me getting called a gringo in Ecuador and feeling out of place. Other than that, Elly has not had any problems though.

We talked about differences in schooling culture. Elly said she was shocked the first time she heard a student correct a teacher at CIES. In Taiwan, you are never allowed to oppose the teacher, even if you know they are incorrect. Also, you are not allowed to speak up in Taiwanese classes. Teachers lecture, and students memorize; that is all they do. I explained that classes here are more interactive.

Elly passed her driver’s test and got a driver’s license, but is starting to really worry about the TOEFL exam in November. There is a lot of pressure on her because if she doesn’t pass, she has to return to Taiwan, and she really wants to stay in Tallahassee for two more years. So much stress because of one exam!

Tutoring

I met with Tuba for tutoring. She had an essay she had written on what makes a person successful. She is trying to practice for the written portion on the TOEFL exam. Her paragraph structure was good, but she is still having a problem with singular and plural.
I circled the items that needed to be corrected. While she was correcting them, I wrote out sentences that were similar to those she had written incorrectly.
The only one she missed was in a sentence that used people. So we went over why people was already plural and why she did not need to have an "s" on the end to make it plural.
I think she is a little stressed about the essay portion of the TOEFL, as well as the speaking portion.
After we corrected her essay, I asked her a similar question and asked her to speak her answer to me as she would do on the TOEFL. She seemed to really like this exercise and asked to do it again the next time we meet.

Tutoring

I met with Tuba for tutoring. She needed to go to the bank and asked if I would just go with her and we could talk today for tutoring. As we walked she told me about her weekend. She said that she had some friends over and they made a chocolate cake. The cake turned out well. She was very happy about this because she used the recipe that was given to her verbally in one of her speaking classes. She was a little concerned that she had not copied all of the directions down correctly, but she said that it turned out well.
I asked her if all of her roommates were also students at CIES. She said they were. I also asked her if they spoke English when they were not in school. She told me they try to speak English as much as they can. She said sometimes, depending on the topic, it is just too difficult to speak completely in English. She also said that it is difficult because they are all not as proficient in speaking as they are in reading and writing. She is a little apprehensive, as well because she and her roommates feel that they may be practicing incorrectly.
I told her I thought it was great they took the initiative to speak English at home. I shared with her the things that I have learned in class about the importance of speaking English outside of the classroom setting. She seemed very happy with this information and said that she would continue doing this at home.

convo partner

I met with Sultan for conversation. I asked how his BBQ went over the weekend. He said that he slept through it and did not show up until the last 10 minutes. Apparantly he had the details handled by someone else and his presence was not needed.
He is very busy this week preparing to go to New York. His will be attending New York University on a scholarship from his country and will be studying engineering.
He is trying to coordinate getting all of his personal items shipped to his new address, so he does have to take as much on the plane. He also wants to go to Orlando, although I am not quuite sure how he is going to fit that in.
He is very excited to be going to New York. He is looking forward to being in a bigger city again where there are so many things to do.
After he gets settled, he wants to take a trip to Vegas. Then, after the New Year he wants to go and visit Hollywood.
I asked him if there was anything I could help him with as far as getting to his new destination. He seems confident in waht he is doing and I have to admit that I am impressed by his confidence.

convo partner

This session I met with Asena. She has been very busy lately. She spent the last few days shopping when she says she should have been studying. She is studying to get into the FSU School of Business to earn her Masters in Business Administration. She met with them a few days ago and is really excited about entering this program.
She is enjoying the change in the weather, but had to go shopping because she does not have any winter clothes. So, as I mentioned above, she went shopping and was wearing all new clothes today.
We spent some time talking about what the weather is like this time of year in Turkey. She had a few questions as to what to expect from the weather in Tallahassee. She has been enjoying the last few days of "Fall" weather and is looking forward to the end of this term in CIES.

Tutoring Ayni

On Thursday I met with Ayni from 3-4 to tutor her as usual. She wanted me to read over one of her papers that she wrote in class. Her errors were the still the same as I mentioned before, but now if I point to a word that is misplaced, non-existent, or incorrect she will usually correct it on her own. This tutoring session was a bit different than previous ones with her. Ayni became very frustrated with speaking English and just wanted to speak for a while instead of going over her written work. I told her that the best way to improve her speaking skills is to practice. I suggested that we just casually talk for the remainder of our tutoring session. She liked that idea. I thought we should talk about a subject that she is very familiar with first, so we talked about where she is from (Turkey). I asked her 100000 questions and she was able to give me an answer for each one. I was impressed! Whenever she would say a sentence with grammar errors, I would correct her through rephrasing what she had said into a question with the correct grammar structure. Ayni picked up on it and responded well to the corrections. She decided that maybe on Tuesdays we should work on writing and on Thursdays work on speaking.

Conversation partner 4

Yesterday I met Lu at the bbq for the CIES students at Alumni Village. Lu has been wanting to meet my boyfriend and friends for a while now, so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to get them together. My friend/roommate Kelly and my boyfriend Alan have also been wanting to meet Lu and the CIES students that I tutor. I wanted to introduce them to all aspects of TEFL, which has now become a large part of my life. We showed up around 6 and Lu ran up to us full of excitement. I hadn't seen her in a week, so her and I caught up while we ate the delicious bbq. Kelly and Alan chimed in with several questions they wanted to know about her and her country. It was nice to have these two different parts of my life finally integrated. I'm usually an impatient person as Kelly and Alan well know, so they were very surprised/impressed with how I patient I was with Lu. There was a funny moment over dinner though. Lu said she wanted to come over and cook for us and my roommate Kelly asked if she liked cats because we have one at our apartment. Lu had a puzzled look on her face and looked to me for a translation for the word 'cats'? Alan who is from Spain said, "You know, like gatos?". Out of pure instinct he had translated cats into Spanish. We all laughed. Even though there was a little bit of a language barrier between Lu and Kelly and Alan, I am glad that they all finally met!

McKenzie- Tutoring- 8

I met with Sultan in CIES on Tuesday. I came prepared with some activities for him but he had enough to do as homework so we worked on that instead.

The first assignment he had to do related to differentiating between which and whose. I taught him that whose is the possessive version of which, and which can also be used with prepositions (in which). We went over a lot of examples of this.

Next, he had a writing assignment. I am not sure if it was TOEFL or not, but he had to read a statement, and then either write for it or against it. He did not like having to choose because he says he was both for and against most of the statements he was provided. Statements included "Parents are the best schoolteachers" for example.

Tutoring

This session, Tuba wanted to practice ordering in a restaurant. As I have stated in my other blogs, this is a common fear among the CIES students.
Tuba had a conversation scripted she had memorized. I rearranged the script and then asked her questions. She had taken so much time making the conversation, I felt bad not using it.
Then, I told her that I wanted to just role play with her. I was the server and she was the restaurant patron or person ordering.
We went over what to expect when the server comes to your table. We talked about what to do if she had questions about the menu items. I told her not to get nervous and if she needed more time to ask if she could have another minute.
Some vocabulary words we covered were, straw, hamburger, grilled cheese barbecue, and the term "all the way".
In Turkey, everything is a hamburger. I explained the difference between burgers, sandwiches and wraps. Then she asked about barbecue. We spent some time talking about barbecue in terms of a barbecue sandwich and what it means to have a barbecue.
She did a pretty good job ordering. I had to remind her that she did not have to be so formal when ordering. A simple, yes, no or thank you would suffice most of the time.
She was able to order a drink, sandwich and tell me what she wanted on her sandwich or burger, as well as the side item.
I felt like we covered a lot of ground today and am proud of her progress.

Tutoring

Today Tuba wanted to practice speaking. She has beeen listening to a cd of English conversations at home that she uses to practice. She had dictated quite a bit of the dialogue, which was impressive. We went over the few questions she had regarding some vocabulary.
After about fifteen minutes, I told her that I did not want to go over prescripted conversation. I thought it would be much more helpful to her if she would answer the questions as I asked them.
The conversation theme was a party theme. She did a pretty good job, but she is spending too much time thinking. I asked her to just say whatever she was thinking and we would correct it as we went. I told her that sometimes when people are learning a second language thier worries and fears about producing speech incorrectly is actually more inhibitive than actually producing incorrect speech. This seemed to help some and she began to loosen up and not think quite as much.
The other problem she is encountering is trying to use such formalized speech when she is in a casual conversation. I spent some time helping her to know when the correct time, places and events when formal language is more appropriate and when it is not.

Tutoring

I met with Tuba today and went over some of her class work from the past few days. She was having trouble with the proper use of because, so and so that. I went back over the lesson with her and discussed the differencew between the three options.
We went over the classwork she had been given and made corrections where necessary.
While she was doing that, I wrote ten more sentences and asked her to fill in the correct answer in the space given. She was able to this without making any "beautiful mistakes".

convo partner

I met with Sultan for conversation. He was very excited about his upcoming BBQ. We spent some time role playing party conversations.
He brought his lunch, which he does most days. He really enjoys cooking. He said the ingredients for some recipes are difficult to find here, so he is learning to improvise.
We spoke a little while about food and restaurants here in the US.
He was having some of the same problems as the other students as far as being nervous about ordering in a restaurant. I happened to have a take out menu with me from a restaurant I had ordered from the night before. He had some questions about the items that go on top of a sandwich, what the difference was between sandwich, burger and a wrap. I also went through the various condiments that were offered and explained what they were.
We practiced the proper way to order and how to answer the myriad of questions that are always asked when ordering, especially any kind of sandwich or wrap.
All in all, he seemed more confident by the end of our time together.

Tutoring #7 and 8

On Tuesday from 3 to 4, I met with Ayni as usual.  We went over one of the papers she had written.  It seems to me that writing and speaking are two main concerns.  Her paper topic was "Does failure lead to success?".   She had some good ideas in the paper, and it was pretty well written for the most part.  The mistakes she tends to make are when to make a word plural and when to use 'to' plus a verb.  She has improved some since I started tutoring her.  When I read Ayni's papers, she now can point out some of her errors.  

Yesterday I met with my tutoring group at the Multicultural center.  The group always has different people in it each week with some returning tutees, which makes it difficult.  I try to think of activities that everyone can learn and benefit from.  I was trying to think of what I could possibly do for the Wednesday tutoring session when I suddenly remembered the video that we watched in class.  The video mentioned idioms in the U.S. and abroad and how confusing they can be.  So I looked up several idioms/ common sayings in the United States and typed them on a piece of paper with the meaning of each one.  I made many copies so I could give them out to each of my tutees after we went over them.  They really enjoyed learning certain phrases like "spill the beans" and "play it by ear" because they had heard them before and not known what they meant.  After we went over each phrase I asked them to use them in a sentence.  They all did very well with the idioms.  I then asked them if they use any of the phrases in their country or if they have any different phrases.  Hyejin said that in South Korea they say, "Are you eating honey?" for "Cat got your tongue?".  Ayni also came to this group meeting and she said that in Turkey they say, "Forgot your tongue?" for "Cat got your tongue?".  It was really neat to hear phrases used in other countries!  Overall I think the exercise went well. 

Ali-Observation #2

Another class that I observed last Tuesday was Ryan's grammar class for advanced level students. They did an interesting activity with noun clauses where the students asked a question, and no matter what, their partner had to respond with "I don't know". The students had fun with it and Ryan later said that he enjoyed the activity and that it keeps the students on their toes when coming up with questions to ask.

The students also created a survey with their group members and Ryan walked around the class while they were working and chimed in when he felt like help was needed or the group was getting off track. He seemed well-liked by the students and was not thrown off task when students kept asking difficult questions concerning the grammar rules that were not on the original agenda. Ryan mentioned that he made a mistake with one of the example sentences because it had a second possible answer that he hadn't considered and the students brought it up, so he said that if he could do it over, he would have considered the sample questions more carefully.

He provided me with some good grammar resources like: EnglishPage.com and Practical English Usage by Michael Swan, because I asked him how he develops a successful grammar lesson with diverse examples. He also uses the CIES book that he helped develop and it seems pretty extensive and inclusive of all the information that the students would need for basic language building. Overall, it was a good class.

Ali-Observation #1

I observed Ah Young's speaking class for intermediate to advanced level students last Tuesday. When I came into the class she handed me a feedback form to fill out because one of the students was going to give a 20 minute long presentation in class that day. She wanted me to take notes on her grammar, intonation, pronunciation, phrasing, and any other comments that I had. Ah Young introduced the class and had a very approachable personality and teaching style. I could see that the students responded well to her when she spoke and listened to her, as well as joked around with her. As an observer, it seemed like a classroom environment that I would want to be a part of.

The presentation was on Pixar, so the majority of the class paid attention throughout it because the students did keep it entertaining by including pictures and videos. Ah Young was also taking notes during the presentation as well. I noticed that her pronunciation of certain sounds like "th" and "or" were repeatedly wrong, and made note of it. There were several chunks of time that were dedicated to watching the videos, so that she did not have to speak for the entire 20 minutes. As a teacher, I would have limited the use of videos in the presentation and how long that video could be, only so that the student would have to prepare to speak for the majority of the presentation and not rely on a video to speak for them.

After the presentation ended the class was about over and the students started editing mistakes that they had made in a previous lesson and then Ah Young wanted me to briefly discuss my notes with the student. I did so, and she was very nice and receptive of what I said to her. I emailed Ah Young afterwards and she also liked giving tangible feedback; she said that she would like to have allowed more time for editing; and she also said that she allows for plenty of class discussion to give the students an equal amount of speaking time. Overall, I think that the class went well.

McKenzie- Observation- 3

Yesterday was my third and final class observation. I observed Michele’s composition class. She was the first teacher to really acknowledge my presence in the classroom; she had me stand up and introduce myself and made all of the other students introduce themselves as well.

The thing I noticed about Michele’s teaching style is that she excels in communication. She communicated with the students better than any teacher I have ever observed! She wrote things on the board and clarified them as students brought questions up, She gave very specific instructions for assignments, was really clear about where she was in the grading process, and when students would get back old papers. She communicated with the students their entire schedule for the week. When she gave them an assignment, she communicated the pace, difficulty, and expectations in advance. As a result of her excellent communication skills, all of the students were on the same page.

The writing class started with journals. Michele stressed that they would not be judged on grammar, she just wanted them to write. After that they focused on the integrated writing. Monday, they would focus on the reading portion, Tuesday on the listening portion, and they would combine the two on Wednesday. The whole class did one example together (like Ramin tells us to do) and the last two examples were left as homework for students to do individually.

McKenzie- Tutoring- 7

Abby and I met at Black Dog Café for tutoring today. It went really well and we decided to meet there from now on. We met on a Tuesday this time because I will be out of town this weekend.

To start the session, I played her a recording of Shel Silverstein reading his poem True Story. I gave her a copy of the text with some of the words blanked out. She listened to it twice and filled in (she only missed two of the words!) We then went over the poem, discussing its context, some of the words she was not familiar with (den, swamp, swooped, and quicksand).

After this, I brought in a handout on countable and uncountable nouns. Using know when to use “a” is a big problem for Abby. I taught her that you can use “a” with countable nouns, but not uncountable nouns. For example, dollar vs. money, song vs. music, job vs. work, tip vs. advice, view vs. scenery.

To close up our session, we went over a list of idiomatic expressions I brought in. Abby had actually heard of a few of them but didn’t know what they mean! I made her use each in a sentence and we named a few situations for each in which she could use the phrase. They included:
Make yourself at home.
Do you own thing.
Make the best of something.
Do one’s best.

Tutoring #6

I met with Edgar to tutor him for the first time today. He wanted to go over a graded paper of his from his writing class. He wanted a further explanation on gerunds, past tense and if/when you use 'to' in regards to verbs and in what tense. I was able to successfully explain to him what he wanted to know. He basically just wanted to go over the specific examples in his paper because he didn't have much time today. Other errors I noticed while speaking to him and in his paper involved his grammar. Edgar is from Mexico, so a lot of the time he would use Spanish grammar in English instead of English grammar. I have encountered this problem many times before with friends and relatives, so it was easy for me to help him with that. Hopefully next time we will get to meet for longer time period.

Tutoring

I met with Tuba for tutoring during her lunch break. She ahd been studying interviewing and wanted to do an interview with me. She had several questions written down to ask me. I suggested that it might be good practice for her if she would write down my answers.
She really did an excellent job asking me the interview questions. When she was finished we went over the answers she had written down and made a few corrections. Then, I asked her the interview questions. She had a little problem with sentence structure that we corrected. She also had a few problems with answering in complete sentences.
Overall, she did really well and I can tell she is becoming more and more confident about her speaking ability.

Convo partner(7)

Today I met again with Sultan. He had many questions ready for me. He really does a great job with his speaking. He wanted to know about Orlando and the Disney World attractions. I told him it had been a while since I had been there, but I explained how much tickets cost, the different kinds of tickets you could buy,what parts of the attractions were included with the price of the ticket, the hotels that are on Disney property, etc. It was basically an Orlando 101 class. Then we covered how far Orlando was from Tallahassee and the different transportation options that are available.

The next big topic was where to get his hair cut. I never really stopped to think about how difficult or frightening something so simple as getting a haircut could be. He did not know where to go, so I told him a few different places. He asked if men and women went to the same places or if they were separated by gender. I told him where I go and how to get there. He found a picture of a soccer player that is famous in Portugal. He told me what he liked about this guys haircut and how he could tell the stylist to style his hair that way. I explained the terms he would need, such as what cutting the hair close to the head means and what length means. He wanted to be able to "spike" his hair and needed to know how to tell someone that.

In the end, I think that we were able to get it all sorted out for him. I am looking forward to seeing if he go and gets it cut before I see him again.

Convo partner(6)

I met with Sultan Friday after classes for conversation. He was not feeling well, but really wanted to stay and talk. He had his computer and we looked at his Facebook page and he showed me pictures of all the places he has visited.
He also feels that Tallahassee is "boring" compared to Istanbul. He feels it is small and does not offer much opportunity for diverse activities.
He had many questions about cities in the US. He wanted to know about Vegas and Hollywood. He was under the impression that Hollywood was more of an attraction than an actual city. He was not totally incorrect, but he did not realize that was an actual functioning city. I explained about the movie studios and there were many famous people in Hollywood, although most of them owned homes in other places.
We spent the rest of the time talking about the barbecue that he wants to have. It took me a few minutes to realize what he was talking about because he kept saying that he wanted felt like "throwing up a barbecue". So, I explained that usually you "throw a party" or "have a barbecue". I further explained the meaning of his statement about "throwing up a barbecue". We also talked about the different foods that are present in a typical American barbecue

Convo partner (5)

I met with Asena again during the lunch hour at CIES. We brought our lunch and sat in one of the classrooms with a couple of her friends. She had been feeling a little homesick for Istanbul. She thinks Tallahassee is too small and there is not as many things to do as there is in Istanbul. We also talked about how much easier it is to travel and visit other places when you are in other parts of the world. They felt that travel is much harder to do in the United States.
I answered a lot of questions regarding things to do in the area. I told them about Wakulla Springs, Vortex Springs, a few of the state parks and some of the other larger cities that are close enough to visit over a weekend.

Jennifer- Classroom Observation 2- 9/15/10

Today, I observed Debbie Carretta’s reading class. Since a few of the students were missing, I had the opportunity to sit at one of tables and look on with one of the students. Debbie started the class by taking attendance, but since she couldn’t access the website she ended up passing around a sheet of paper for the students to sign. The students were reading an article from the Tallahassee Democrat about the Integration Statue on campus. I had never really given much thought to the statue, but I found the lesson pretty interesting.

The lesson was trying to get the students to think critically about what the article was saying and the controversy behind the statue and its design. Before the student’s read the article, Debbie went over the term segregation and gave the students some background on American history. The students then read the article from the newspaper and were asked to start on the questions that went along with the article. Most of the students started to struggle when they got to this part, they were unsure about what the questions were asking and how to answer them. Time was just about up and Debbie explained to the students that they would work on this again as a group tomorrow. Later, she told me that they usually spend the last 10-15 minutes listening/reading along as she reads Holes aloud to them.

Jennifer- CP04- 9/13/10

This afternoon I was supposed to pick up Biou so that we could get some coffee and talk. However, when I got to CIES I ended up picking up Biou and her friend Alan and they were both very hungry so we ended up at Panera. When we got to the restaurant Alan asked if we could have a few minutes to go over the menu before they went up to order. We ended up spending a good 15-20 minutes going over the menu and all the different options they had. They had a few questions about some of the different words used on the menu (tangy, the different types of chicken, etc), but once they knew what they wanted they had no trouble ordering for themselves.

I actually had a lot of fun talking with Alan and Biou as we all ate together. Biou and I went through our normal routine of naming all the ingredients in our food, but this time I had her go through and tell me what she knew first. We got on a discussion of fruits, trying to guess what the fruit was by giving each other hints. Alan was trying to get me to figure out a special fruit that they ate back in China but I couldn’t figure it out even though he described it in every way possible (I did some research and found that it was the hawthorn fruit). We also got on a discussion as to what each of our names meant. Alan’s name means “big snow,” Biou’s name means “blue/green seagull” and I told them that mine means “white wave.” Biou really liked the fact that both of our names had a color and had something to do with the beach. The next time we’re going to meet up is for the Mid Autumn Festival at FSU this weekend where Biou is going to preform. I'm really excited to see what she's been working so hard on these past few weeks!

Jennifer- CP03- 9/11/10

Tonight, Alison and I took Biou and Wenbo to dinner over at Mid-Town. We ended up eating at a new restaurant/bar called the Filling Station (we had originally planned on taking them to the Winery but it had closed). They had the game on one of the big screens and we ended up talking about their first FSU football game experience. Wenbo said that she kind of liked it but would have enjoyed herself more if she had better understood the rules of the game. We all went over the menu together and ended up each ordering something different so that we could all share. I’ve quickly learned that Biou is very interested in naming each of the ingredients in her food so we spent a good deal of time going over what was in everyone’s food.

After dinner we took the girls over to Lake Ella so that they could walk around for a bit. It was actually a really pretty night and we talked as we walked around the lake. They filled us in on what life was like for them back home versus what they’re experiencing here. They taught us a couple of words in Chinese, the word for crane and friend. We took pictures and listened to the old gentleman playing the drums in the gazebo. We walked around for a bit more discussing the different trees and ducks and then made our way back to my car to go home.

Jennifer- CP02-9/8/10

Biou and I met for dinner before I took her over to LeMoyne (where I work). This was her first time going to Jimmy Johns so we spent a good bit of time going over the menu before we purchased our food. She was very self-assured and confident as she ordered, and didn’t need any help from me. After we had picked a table, Biou had me go through each of the items on both her sandwich and mine (she’s very curious!). We had a pretty good conversation about what kinds of music we like, what movies we’re interested in, what types of food she’s tried, etc. We also briefly talked about a Chinese festival she’s training for, apparently she’s going to dance and play the keyboard during the ceremony. I’m really excited to learn more/ watch her performance that will be coming up in the next few weeks!

Biou ended up really liking LeMoyne. Once she got out of the car she started dancing around and talking excitedly. I think she really enjoyed walking around in the sculpture garden, which made me think to suggest that we go to Maclay Gardens one afternoon.

Conversation Partner 3

This past Thursday Lu and I went to get frozen yogurt and then to go watch the Florida State women's lacrosse practice. She waited for me in Strozier and did homework until I got out of the TEFL class at 7. The lacrosse coach said to come to the practice around 7:30ish, so I asked Lu if she wanted to get some frozen yogurt. She enthusiastically agreed. Lu had never been to Hiro's on Tennessee before and absolutely loved it. At Hiro's you get to make your bowl of yogurt yourself, which she enjoyed. She mixed all sorts of flavors and toppings together! From there we went to the practice and she was amazed. I tried to explain the game to her as she was watching it. I figured verbally and visually showing her would help her understand this sport which she had never heard of before. Lu borrowed one of the girls sticks and tried to play. I told her it takes a lot of practice to play like the girls she saw on the field. She was a good sport about trying to play. Lu took out her iphone and started taking pictures of me, the stick, the team, the field. She loved it so much she wanted a picture of her with a stick! The girls were so nice to her too, helping explain and asking her questions about where she was from. I was overjoyed to introduce to her something that I am so much in love with. I think she could tell how much I loved being there on the field. From there I took her home. She invited me inside to see her house and meet her roommates. Lu showed me her room which was immaculate. I could not believe how clean it was! I told her that her room puts my messy one to shame. We plan to cook together soon- she wants to teach me how to use chopsticks. I can't wait!