FSU TEFL 120 Summer 2 2019

Today, June 24th, I observed Leesa Truesdell's grammar lesson for Class 2A. The lesson for today covered the simple present tense. Leesa began the class by having her students write five sentences in five minutes about food. Following this, the students were instructed to construct a personal narrative in ten minutes. These activities were succeeded by an inductive review of the simple present tense, wherein the students had the opportunity to explain the usage of the tense themselves before the teacher did it for them. After this brief inductive lecture, the instructor drew a chart and had the students write a verb in first person singular, second person singular, third person singular, and all of their plural equivalents (except for second person plural, nice job, English). Students could volunteer words as well as their own participation in the exercise. Leesa closed the lesson with another brief review of the tense, covering some of its third person exceptions (-ies, -es, -s). ...

Seokbin Kang and I met back at the student library at 3pm Sunday the 23rd. After our break, we decided to work on more organic conversational learning. Kang is very interested in baseball, and so we discussed all of the colloquial English terms for baseball ("pop fly", "giving up a run", "umpire") in an informal exercise which involved normal conversation and also the learning of new vocab words. After this we practiced Kang's speech by having him tell me about the baseball game he had watched the night before. As he explained the game, I would interrupt and correct any speech issues or vocab issues. It was very productive because he was able to practice speaking and engaging in small talk, and he was also able to listen to my explanations of the errors and details of his story. He seemed quite satisfied with this exercise.

Seokbin Kang and I met on Sunday the 23rd at the Stone building at 2pm for tutoring. Unfortunately the building was closed and we were unable to get in. This actually proved useful though as we walked to the student library, and this walk allowed us to practice some casual conversation (something Kang is very excited about). Once we arrived at the library we entered into an activity involving identifying words in songs! I played Father and Son (Cat Stevens) and Starry Starry Night (Don Mclean) and had Kang listen and follow along with a worksheet I provided. The worksheet had the lyrics of the song, with a few words blanked out here and there (idiomatic phrases, and hard to catch words). He enjoyed the experience but felt that simple conversation would be better for him. After this exercise we took a brief break.

Caleb Dros and I meet at the CIES center Thursday the 20th at 2:30 to get to know each other. We initially discussed a little bit about Tallahassee, my hometown. We spoke briefly about various inequalities that are the result of segregation. This heavy topic caused us to change our discussion to something less depressing, and the subject turned to alligators. Caleb has yet to experience this Florida Classic, I suggested he go to St. Marks Wildlife Refuge to snag a glimpse of this prehistoric creature. I learned a bit about the wildlife in St Martin (Calebs hometown); lots of iguanas roam the island apparently! Perhaps a wildlife safari is in the cards for the future.

I had originally planned to meet with Hyeon-Seop at CIES on Saturday, June 22 nd for our first meeting. However, since the building was closed, we decided to go to Starbucks for our initial meeting and diagnostic. I asked him what skills he would like to focus on during our sessions, and he initially said that he would like to work on his speaking and listening skills the most. I decided to go back and forth asking each other questions to gauge his current level of ability. I noticed that he was struggling with articles and some grammar tenses. I explained that this would be a good place to start for our upcoming sessions together after we confirmed a schedule for when we would meet up again. As we were finishing up, Hyeon-Seop decided that he would also like to work on his writing skills. I asked him to work on a writing sample with the topic of what his time at FSU has been like and to bring it with him to our next session so that we could go over it together.

I met with P.J at his home on June 21 from 12-1:00PM. The topics we covered were both vocabulary words and a reading text I found online discussing matter. I prepared a vocabulary sheet of nine words, and we went over them before the reading. I tried to relate the words with concepts introduced earlier; however by the end of the session he wasn't able to define most of the words we covered. Therefore, I will cover them again during the next session alongside a different reading.  The reading explained what matter is and the difference between a physical and chemical property. After the reading, I pointed around the room and asked him to make descriptions of both the physical and chemical properties of various items in the room. He was able to label physical properties, but had trouble with chemical properties. I plan on focusing on chemical properties and diving into chemical reactions during our next session.    

I met with P.J at his home on June 20 from 12-1:00PM. The topics we covered were both vocabulary words and a reading text I found online discussing galaxies. I had him complete a short matching test on words we had covered so far. The test had 20 words and he only got three words wrong. We then discussed the following three words he got incorrect: orbit, revolution and ellipse. After, we covered galaxies, and I showed him images to describe the differences between a spiral, elliptical and irregular galaxy. The primary focus was on the adjective, and he was able to identify them from the pictures. We then covered a reading on different types of galaxies and I asked him questions about what he read.