Bobby_TP_#16

Last Monday I tutored P.J. for the last time this session. We didn’t have any of the usual articles or homework to go over like we usually did, so we just read a story from his reading book about a boy, his grandfather, and a family of seals. P.J. read well, as usual, but still reading comprehension poses a problem. I stopped after every page to ask him comprehension questions about what he had read. He could usually answer the questions I asked based on information readily presented in the text, such as “What did Ben and his grandfather see at the harbor”, but questions like, “Why do you think Ben enjoys going to the harbor with his grandfather”, were more difficult for him to answer. For questions like the latter I tried to guide him toward answers based on questions about his own experience, such as “Do you have anything special you like to do with your parents/grandparents/relatives?” Sometimes instead of answering the question to the point of the story he would go on a tangent and I would have to reel him back in toward the topic. I think the key to helping him with his reading comprehension is teaching him how to think about what he’s reading to make inferences that could most likely be true. When asked to answer questions that don’t immediately correlate to what he’s just read he seems to make wild guesses.

Craig_TP_#14(C)

Today I tutored Yunseo at the public library. We started a 'Tangled' universe book, where Merida and a suitor from a friendly clan steal emeralds that make some nearby springs clear. After the emeralds are taken the springs turn from clear water to dark, murky water. The main characters are either Irish or Scottish so we discussed: kilts and why people wear them, what clans are and why it is important to the story, what lochs are, and some general archery terms.

Thoughts: Yunseo is a great student and I believe she is very representative of children who are students. She's usually very fidgety and enthused about coloring and interacting. She is also easily distracted by noises in the library and sometimes(not often) I have to tell, not ask, her to read.

Craig_TP_#13(C)

Tonight I tutored Yunseo at the public library. we read mostly fun books today including one where the main character was traveling through the desert and picks up friends on the way to a story telling competition. We also read a Curious George story with the man in the yellow hat takes George to the beach.

After these stories we went back to The Great Mouse Mistake, where Gus and Cinderella go into town to buy Lady Tremaine new flowers. In the village, the people are preparing for a big fair and everyone is very excited. Gus sees a big cake and cannot control himself from having a small nibble. He knocks the cake over and Cinderella is blamed. Cinderella then promises the baker to fix the trouble she's caused. She gets all her animal friends to help her make a lot of tiny cakes and gives them to the baker who is very satisfied.

Craig_TP_#12(C)

Today Yunseo and I finished the Great Mouse Mistake, a cinderella princess story about mice in Cinderella's house and the hijinx they get into. In the story Cinderella meets and takes in a mouse who means well but often causes trouble. The mouse(gus) wants to do something nice for Cinderella so he cuts down some flowers. He does not realize that the flowers are very important to Cinderella's stepmother, Lady Tremaine.

Thoughts:

I usually give Yunseo a coloring sheet and crayons before we start to keep her busy while i'm reading. We have kind of an agreement that i'll read the longer pages and she reads the shorter pages. We also sometimes switch it up by me reading the dialogue and Yunseo reading the non-dialogue passages. 

Craig_TP_#11(C)

Tonight I tutored Yunseo at the public library. We started to read a book called Cinderella: The Great Mouse Mistake.

This book, basically a spin off of Cinderella, which is French in origin. Therefore there were a lot of French words(maison, madame, tete). We also discussed new English words(courtyard, step sister, stepmother). I think Yunseo in generally interested in learning so it's very easy to teach her. I think that this is a trait mostly found in children. This is something to watch out for once learning becomes something mandatory instead of something intrinsic. I think it could be a challenge to motivate students who are forced to be in extra after-school programs against their will.

Craig_TP_#15(C)

Tonight I read with Yunseo at the public library and we read a bit more of the book about the Emeralds. We discussed some of the stories smaller points such as Merida's relationship with her mother. Yunseo really enjoys Disney princess stories.

Thoughts:
Tonight I found out that my tutee's father( Mr. Shin) used to work for the Department of Education in S. Korea which is one of the places i'm most interested in going. They also gave me a very thoughtful card and a gift certificate to Starbucks. This is my second to last tutoring session and I think i've come a long way from the beginning. Yunseo seems to understand what is expected of her and it seems that she enjoys our time together.

Craig_CO_#3

Today I observed Ms. Jerry's Group 2 Listening class. One of my conversation partners was in the class, Fahad and we spoke briefly before class. Priya had a much different approach to teaching that either Ms. Kim or Leslie. Priya let a lot more slide than either of the two other teachers.

The main topic of priya's class was driving. To introduce the lesson she show a public service announcement about the death of a teenage boy who was killed by a driver who was distracted. She showed the video and asked some follow up comprehension questions( how old was he when he died, what was the other driver doing, etc.)

Then Priya shifted the lesson to a discussion based activity where students were placed in small groups of 3-4 and asked if men are better than women in relation to driving. Each student was allowed to speak their mind and follow up questions were asked to students who needed to develop and articulate their opinion very.

Thoughts: All in all, I liked Mrs. kim's class the best and this class the least. It could be related to the level of the students, or possible the activities involved. I didn't particularly care for the way Priya managed students speaking out of turn. This is a very difficult area because students need to learn how to handle themselves and practice speaking, but, at the same time, the class needs to be structured and there needs to be some sort of instructing going on.

Craig_CO_#2

Today I observed Ms. Wagner's foundations speaking class. Leslie's class was composed mostly of Arabic speakers and it seemed like a real challenge to keep the students from conversing with each other in their native tongue. Leslie started the class with a quiz. The quiz had two main sections: an error correction section and a section where the students were required match words from a word bank to small diagrams.

The main lesson was about money. Leslie described how to write money(using either the dollar sign or the cent sign) and different ways these can be said( one fifty, one dollar and fifty cents). She then wrote random amounts on the board and called on students to read the amounts to her.

After this the was an activity in which three items were presented (car, phone, shoes) and each student had to find three classmates and ask these students how much these items cost each of them.

Thoughts:
I think Leslie handled her classroom well, but i think it's very difficult for a young white women to control these young arab men. She implemented a strike system where each time she heard arabic she would give that student a tally mark. Three tally marks and the student would have one point deducted from final final class grade.

I think she could stand to be more strict in the classroom. I enjoyed her involvement of the class but it got out of hand at times, with students shouting the answer before the selected student could answer.

Nicky_TP_#16

12/3/14 TP 16

On Wednesday I spent my last tutoring session with Saja. We did not work on a lot of materials together except at the end of class I stayed after to watch her presentation for the end of the year final. Though during the class Leslie left me in charge while she gave oral exams in the hallway to her other students one at a time. This was a lot of fun. Though at first the other students did not ask me questions, as soon as I stood up to retrieve something from the front of the classroom, students began to bombard me with grammar questions. By the end of class they were asking if I was a teacher and what I taught. I told them I was currently not a teacher but would be one in the near future. As I made my way to the back of the classroom several students proceeded to exclaim, “new teacher!” This was really sweet and funny, and made me miss them all the more after I left. 

Bobby_TP_#15

On Tuesday after class I had my weekly session with P.J. This time the session took place at CIES, which really benefitted me because I was feeling particularly restless that day and relished the opportunity to use a room with not one but two white boards and plenty of space to excitedly walk around. I’m feeling that P.J. and I are beginning to form a healthy rapport. Once we started he quickly got over his initial tutoring blues. We started by working on his homework. I believe this went smoother than the tests we usually cover because there it felt like less of a critique of something he’d already taken and was forced to review and more like a productive, useful activity. I also think my ability to walk around the room rather than remain stuck in the chair next to him helped make finishing the homework more exciting. I eagerly made use of the whiteboard to draw graphics to help him with answering questions. After we finished the homework we went over the mistakes he’d made in two mini-magazines. I stressed the difference between “thinking questions” such as what is the main idea and the author would most likely agree with and “info questions” that could be found by scanning the reading. I hope that by being able to identify a specific type of question he can relate that to a corresponding answer strategy rather than seeing all questions as equal obstacles. We made it through these with ease, and I think P.J. actually enjoyed his time. 

Nicky_TP_#15

12/1/14 TP 15

    Yesterday was my last tutoring session with Mathew and David. I think I have a knack for teaching them now because it went really well. Though it was a little hard to originally round them up but once we started it was pretty easy to maintain the cooperation. We first worked on reading comprehension. David did his on his own but Mathew likes reading his out loud with me. After reading comprehension we worked on math which went fairly smoothly. Then we worked on their book report on De Soto. At the beginning of the session we also worked on vocabulary. Though when writing the vocabulary sentences down at first they were incorrect. But then I would make them say it out loud in a normal conversation. From there they would come to the answer on their own. They still have short attention spans but with proper motivation it was easier to manage them. Yesterday’s was that I would teach them some origami if we finished in time and we worked efficiently, so no talking unless it was a question about the homework.

    I will miss them, they are good kids. Also the mom was very put off that I will not be returning. Over all this was a great experience. I have become inducted into David and Mathew’s “cool kid club” as they were giving me tons of Pokémon trader cards on the way home. I just hope they make it through the rest of their school year without causing their mom too much stress.   

Nicky_TP_#14

12/1/14 TP 14

    Yesterday I worked with Saja at 1:00 pm in Leslie’s class. We started the class with my teaching evaluations. It was very hard explaining the definitions and concepts that the students were to write on the evaluation. It probably would have been better had they been a fill in the bubble evaluation. After this we worked on self-corrections for the lab we worked in last week. For the most part Saja was good on her own but every once in a while she would ask me why something was incorrect or if her correction was correct. Afterwards we worked on some interview questions for people in class. So Saja asked me what I ate everyday for breakfast, what I bought last week, etc. And then I did the same but for her. We finished earlier than the other students so I proceeded to ask her what she was going to do after the semester ends. I think she still thought it was a test question so she responded with her usual, “I will go to Saudi Arabia”. She asked me afterwards if I was going to be in class on Tuesday for her presentation. I said I could not, but it’s nice to know that she wanted me to be there. 

Bobby_TP_#14

This past Monday I met for the first time with one of my CIES tutees, Helal. Helal is from the United Arab Emirates. At 31 years old he is much older than any of the other CIES students that I've had as conversation partners or tutees. He has three children and a wife who studies childhood education. When I met Hilal at the Hecht House he had his books and notes from class on the table, but when I asked him what he wanted to go over in the tutoring session he implied that he mainly just wanted to speak with me. Based on his text messages I assumed he spoke English pretty well; he texted more fluently than anyone else from CIES did. When I we began to speak, however, it became clear that he is at a very basic speaking level. He told me about his camping trip to Georgia, about how he hunts rabbits in the desert with a falcon, and a little about his family, among other things. We had to resort to drawings, gestures, sound effects, and if all else failed translation in order to communicate. He would often mispronounce words or simply lack for them, so the conversation broke down quite frequently. I wrote a few words down along with the drawings (tent, deer, gun, bullet, scope) to help him remember them and tried to make corrections or suggestions when speaking became unintelligible or broken down. He invited me to play pool with him sometime and to meet his family. I would gladly oblige, since he seems to want an English speaking conversation partner to practice with, but I would also like to work with him on his homework and classwork in order to feel more satisfied as a tutor and see veritable proof of something being accomplished. 

Bobby_TP_#13

Last Monday I went over another reading test with P.J. All of his reading tests follow the same format. There are two short texts with accompanying relative questions and a final essay question for the students to answer based on those two texts. After the last tutoring session when I had my heart to heart with P.J. I was determined to make a breakthrough this time. I had the test and some reading material to cover, but I really wanted to focus on the test since P.J. always makes the same mistakes. I started by going through and getting him to answer the questions that didn't require another reading of the texts right away. We went through some vocabulary questions and some questions dealing with prefixes and suffixes before getting into the reading comprehension. The two questions that both texts have in common are something along the lines of, “Which sentence best summarizes the author’s opinion?” and “Based on the text, the author would most likely agree that”. It’s clear that P.J. isn't really soaking in what he’s reading because he misses these two types of question and leaves the essay portion almost blank on every test. After having him read the texts again and going through the rest of the questions he’d missed, I really tried to focus in on these two questions and the essay portion. I’d hoped that by examining those two aspects of the test with him I’d be able to make some ground. He did a little better, and seemed to take a few baby steps in the right direction. I gave P.J. a little more wiggle room for conversation and tangents this time so he wouldn't get so burnt out and frustrated with tutoring as he’d seemed to be getting, but by the end he was over it anyway and all he wanted to do was talk. This session I learned that it’s important to give the tutee a voice, even if they are a child, because if you can't see where they’re coming from it's a lot harder to get them where they need to go. 

Bobby_CO_#3

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving I observed Joshua Valentine’s group 3B listening class. His class combined with another listening class that day so the classroom was packed with around 30-40 students. It was a pretty relaxed class since it was right before the Thanksgiving break. The first thing on the agenda was to watch A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Before starting the movie, the teachers explained a little about what usually happens on the Thanksgiving holiday. The movie took about 25 minutes to complete. After we watched the movie the teachers asked the students what they had learned about Thanksgiving from the movie, about what was new to them, and if they’d learned something about tradition. The gist of the message was that Thanksgiving is not just about family, but that friends will often come together as well to share in the festivities. The next part of the lesson was a listening exercise. Students listened to part of a song on YouTube and had to fill in the blanks in the lyrics. Students were divided into groups of 4 or 5 with one scribe to write down record their answers. The objective of the exercise was to practice listening accuracy. The songs were a mix hits that included Under the Bridge, Hey There Delilah, Sound of Silence, If I Were a Boy, and Have You Ever Seen the Rain. It was a very fun and easy class. I don’t think the students would have wanted to sit still and work hard on the day before their break anyway. 

Bobby_TP_#12

This past Friday I tutored Joey on the use of the if clause plus the conditional and the use of shall, may, will, and can. We began with a few exercises that made use of shall and will. I explained to her that shall is used only with “I” and “we”, and that it is hardly used in speech anymore. If it is used it is used more formally, though often in facetious way. Knowing what personal pronouns to use shall with, she made it through the shall vs. will exercise easily. The next one we did together was may vs. can. I explained that may is used for permission and that can is used for ability. I gave the cliché example of the student asking if he or she can use the bathroom, teacher asking, “I don’t know, can you?”, and the student’s response of, “May I go to the bathroom?”. She understood this easily as well. I still had to help her out a little with the exercises, but we didn't hit a wall like we did with the gerund and to – infinitive. To my surprise, she also did exceedingly well on the if clause à conditional exercises. She was presented with a multiple choice selection and had to choose the correct conditional. I explained that when the simple present is used in the if clause, the simple future will be used in the dependent clause. If the simple past was used in the if clause, the conditional would or could would be used in the dependent clause. If have or had + past participle were used in the if clause, conditional + have + past participle would be used in the dependent clause. She understood all of these concepts, and I left extensive notes in her notebook explaining it all. We touched briefly on the subjunctive as well. I told her that most people don’t know how to use the subjunctive tense, and a man waiting for his coffee inside Starbucks with us unsolicitedly agreed. 

Bobby_TP_#11

Last Wednesday I tutored Joey more on the use of the gerund and the to – infinitive. She did much better with this subject than she had in the past few sessions, so I believe she’s getting the hang of it. After we’d gone over an exercise or two with the gerund and to – infinitive we moved on to the passive voice. She had to complete several exercises changing sentences from the active voice to the passive voice, filling in the blank to complete the passive voice, and translating sentences from Korean in the passive voice. She breezed through these exercises fairly quickly and with little help from me. The concept seemed much more attainable. Her English speaking and listening skills also seem to be improving. While she still takes careful time to organize her sentences while saying them and her speech is very deliberate, I find myself having to ask her to repeat herself or telling her that I don’t understand much less frequently. 

Nicky_TP_#13

11/24/14 TP 13

    At four today I met Mathew and David for tutoring at the public library. They did not have any reading homework today but I was going to help them get a head start on a project covering De Soto. Today was a very frustrating day. It seemed that Mathew did not want to sit still. He went to the bathroom, constantly requested to look for books, and eventually told me he did not want to research De Soto anymore and resorted to doing math homework. The problem was though is that he had a question regarding his math homework that I was unable to answer. As a result I worked primarily with David with the work on De Soto. David is actually great at reading comprehension. I was switch off reading with him paragraph by paragraph and then ask him to summarize what happened in one to two sentences. He did remarkably. I praised him for his work and he responded well too. He does still need some work on his handwriting but otherwise David behaved extremely well. It was Mathew who was rambunctious today.  

Nicky_TP_#12

11/24/14 TP 12

    Today I went to the computer lab with Leslie’s class. They were to have a small quiz and then return to the classroom. During the discussion part everyone was to converse with someone random in the class without looking at them through a computer speaking program. I was assigned with Saja, as last time Saja was accidentally paired with some guy in the class.

    Once we returned upstairs we started going over what you say when you are feeling sick and need to see a doctor. Once we covered a few terms we were handed a handout with a cartoon strip of a man going to the doctor. We were to create our own dialogue in order to later present our conversation to the class. Unfortunately we did not get very far, as Saja was unsure what fever and sickness meant. I managed to explain fever well but sickness was a little harder. She could not grasp the difference between a sickness and symptoms. I’m not too worried after today as this was probably the first day they were given this new vocabulary. Tomorrow I will be teaching their class on the subject of Thanksgiving. 

Craig_TP_#10(S)

Today I did a one on one tutoring session with Alyce(from Brazil). Her main motivation behind improving her English is passing the Toefl exam. I met with her and her friend(Melissa) at Atomic coffee as a convenient location with internet.

I found a practice test online which I thought had potential to be very good practice material for Alyce. We read the first passage together, and then went through the fairly simple questions about about the passage. She was having trouble retaining information esp. vocabulary and syntax.

I gave her my toefl question sheet that explains the different types of questions normally found on the toefl exam. At the end of about 45 minutes answering the questions, we went through the answers and finding or explaining the support for each of the answers. There were only a few questions she didn't completely understand by the end of the practice but she also had been studying for a couple hours previous to our meeting.

Craig_TP_#8(S)

Today I tutored two of my tutees (Ben and Xiaoyan) as well as one of Harrison's tutees(Sephora). I choose to do a lesson about common phrases in English, usually used in conversation. I think this is a awesome lesson for group 3 & 4 students because builds their schema and it also increases their breadth of knowledge. We warmed up with a recap of climbing and some of the vocab we learned. We also covered a few vocabulary terms that you might encounter while hiking or camping. (tent, flashlight, campfire, backpack, etc.)

We then went into the main lesson which consisted of a short list of common phrases:

24/7

Touch Base(baseball)

Shopping Cart

Hike a price up

Math vs. Maths

About time

All set?

Nature

Second nature

Make ends meet

Make something from scratch

Worst comes to worst

I explained each one, gave an example, and asked if they could form a sentence. After we finished the explanations, I exercised their new knowledge in several ways; I described a scenario and had them answer with the best phrase, I asked them to construct their own sentences using one scenario(hiking, climbing, camping) and one phrase. I think this was a very successful way to reinforce the lesson.

Craig_TP_#7(S)

Today I observed Harrison and his tutees because none of my tutees showed up on time. Ben and Xiaoyan showed up late. Harrison warmed up with a game of taboo specifically designed for lower level English speakers. This was a good idea, but I think it could have been better if he had given a rationale for the game. The game teaches a very important skill(to describe something when you can't say the actual word). The first few rounds were a little rough but after that the students effective learning levels were lowered. Some of the words that we used: circus, helicopter, and sushi.

After this we worked on Toefl speaking practice. Harrison first modeled the procedure to formulate the speakers response. Harrison would then read the question and give the students 15 seconds to respond. In this session there were 6 students and each one would formulate a response and we would have a group discussion about the goods and bads of each students response. Each student answered four or five questions each.

Nicky_TP_#11

11/19/14 TP 11

    Around three o’clock I met with Heelee. Though normally I am her conversation partner she decided to use me to help her with some homework. She figured it would be a great opportunity to get a native speaker to help her with pronunciation. She is really struggling with the pronunciation of Rs and Ls. Her teacher had given her a worksheet on tongue twisters. She did fairly well except she would focus so much on the correct pronunciation of one word in the sentence that all the rest of the words starting with R or L were ignored. I tried giving her other common examples of words that have the re sound, such as rewind. I said if you can pronounce rewind then you can pronounce the beginning part of the word reaped. I also tried giving her the definition of certain words and how they mean completely different things if they are pronounced with an L vs and R. For example, fright vs flight.

   Ultimately I gave her a few tips on songs she can practice pronunciation. I found songs helped me with my Spanish accent the best. I suggested a really silly song by Lady Gaga called Bad Romance. I told her Lady Gaga videos are really strange so don’t watch the video but the lyrics would help her immensely. Now there is one curse word but I told her this is a song usually listened to young Americans that is very popular. I would not suggest this song to a class but for a friend I thought it would work.The more I listened to this song the more I realized that this is such a good song for Rs and Ls in the chorus.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6IZzqMGj84

Nicky_TP_#10

11/19/14 TP 10    

    Yesterday I worked with Saja in Leslie’s class once again. In order to practice the cost vs costs concepts Leslie made the class into our own four store department store by using a dialogue activity. While the boys practiced being salesclerks and customers, Saja and I worked on switching back and forth being customers. She seems to have a good grasp on the concept. And even when a made a few minor suggestions like saying, I’m sorry, when your store does not have a certain product Saja remembered the first time. I told her it is polite in America to apologize rather than simply saying no we do not have it. The only thing I believe she still struggles with are colors.

    After we both ran through our shopping lists and asked each other how much each item costs we reviewed a little future tense for the upcoming test on Monday. It was funny at one point after asking her three things she was going to do tomorrow that she was quick to not let me get away with telling her what I was going to do tomorrow as well. 

Bobby_TP_#10

This past Monday I had another tutoring session with P.J. The reason for his resistance to the tutoring session this time was that Ms. Kim had a tooth ache and he thought tutoring would be cancelled. To his great dismay, the show went on. I was given a book about fruit, two articles, and a test to go over with him. Knowing that he would loathe reviewing the test we started with the book. We took turns reading so that he wouldn't get burnt out too quickly. The articles were great and really entertaining (to me), and the best thing about them was that there were questions already included for reading comprehension. The last thing we got to was a speed reading exercise. He read without any issues, but when I tested his reading comprehension the whimpering, which made sporadic appearances throughout the night, increased. He was beginning to crack. I dug my heels in, told him that the answer to my question was in the second paragraph towards the end, and insisted that he find the answer. What were the two things that solar flares interrupt on earth? The answer was in two consecutive sentences at the end of the paragraph. He read the first one and gave me the answer. I congratulated him. Then he began floundering for the second answer. After much goading he found that one too. I asked him if he liked reading and he said no, in fact that’s why he hates Monday tutoring. I took this opportunity to tell him a story from my childhood. I told him of my ordeal with math, about my tantrums and crying, how much I hated it, how I found it impossible to learn. No matter how many times or in how many different ways someone tried explaining it to me it never made sense. It was like there was (and still is) a disconnection in my brain that prevented me from comprehending it. But we made a deal. I got through math and he promised me he’d get through reading. I told him that he reads well, but reading is a two part process and he needs to be thinking at the same time. I hope my story humanized me and made me more relatable and less a component of the dreaded Monday night tutoring.   

Craig_CP_#5

Today my child tutee cancelled our session because she wasn't feeling well. Instead I met with one of my normal tutees(Ben) for a quick conversation.

We met randomly at a bus stop just south of the stadium. He was waiting for a late bus and I had just gotten off work. He is enlisting in the US Army and is encouraging me to do the same. My dad was in the military and has been pressuring me to join for a long time. Ben is convinced that the military is the answer for all young men who are the least semi intelligent and able to conduct themselves.

It's hard to discuss with him the cons of the military because for him it is a very lucrative and beneficial in almost anyway. Since he is a single immigrant he has a relatively limited amount of employment opportunities. Ben is a big fan of networking and shared several success stories about students who had found job opportunities not based on their qualifications but they relied on people they knew.

Nicky_TP_#9

11/17/14 TP 9

    Today Saja and I worked on grammar. We first got her speaking presentation results back and I helped her with a few sentence corrections she needed help on. It seems that the whole class was deducted points because they did speak for the entire allotted time. What Saja had trouble understanding was why you say "in August" rather than "on August". I explained that Leslie was talking about on August first. What she had said in her presentation was that her friend’s birthday fell within the month of August. There was no specified date. Afterwards we worked on an error correction worksheet. They will have a quiz very similar to the one they did today tomorrow.

    Then they worked on future tense. Saja really struggled with this. Though she could complete the sentence when directly given the formula, her fluency was not up to par just yet. As a result, when Leslie called on her she did not recite the answer correctly though she knew what she wanted to say. With more practice this tense will become easier. 

Nicky_TP_#8

11/17/14 TP 8

   Today I worked with David and Mathew at the public library. It was a little hard starting off and getting them both to focus and stop looking at comic books until I decided to make math homework a competition. So the boys would stop getting off topic I decided to make a no talking game. Those that spoke go minus points. But whoever finished first got plus three points. The prize was to be able to use my cool pencil for the reading comprehension work in the second half of the session. This technique worked great!

    Reading comprehension was much harder to do together as it was group work. I couldn’t have both boys on different books and still be able to give them the attention they needed so I decided we all work on the same book. Mathew was for the most part attentive but David clearly needs to be worked with individually in reading. David doesn’t respect me too much yet but I could tell that Mathew has the hang of our routines and knows not to push me too far or I won’t be as nice and let him get away with things like sit in the silly chair or pick his own book with my approval. Maybe now that David knows me better he will be easier next week. As a result of today I will work with the boys individually in reading comprehension but math can be done together if I make it fun. 

Nicky_TP_#7

11/14/14 TP 7 Hour 2

    After the ten minute break Saja and I were given a board game. This board game included a verb in it’s indicative form along with a time period and to whom it is to be directed towards. These tools were to be conjugated in to the simple past tense. At first Saja was in the league due to her superior coin flipping talents but she finally landed on a “go back to start” card. As a result I won. This was a very effective game because due to her having to start over again she ran through even more verb tense conjugations that she may have not practiced. Saja has a pretty good grasp on past tense irregular verbs. The only one that she truly struggled with was the term to write in the past tense, wrote. After the board game I tested her on random present tense verbs in her textbook in order for her to turn them into the simple past tense. I think she will do very well on her upcoming quiz or test. 

Nicky_TP_#6

11/14/14 TP 6 Hour 1

    On Friday I decided to attend the last Friday speaking class with Leslie's beginner students. For the first half of the class we worked on a worksheet that provided food items and their prices. The trick though was that your partner had the missing prices that you need and your task is to ask in complete sentences and record the correct answers provided by your partner. The primary objective was to test the differences in the use of cost vs. costs in context.

    I was mainly helping Saja in the reading out loud of combinations of dollars with cents. For instance, one dollar and forty-five cents for $1.45.She did not struggle with cost vs. costs very much, so we focused on other issues. By the end of this session her grasp on American money had improved immensely. She seems to be farther ahead than others in her class with vocabulary but as for grammar, which is what we work on most. 

Bobby_TP_#9

Today I had an abbreviated tutoring session with Joey. Having inquired about the best way to tutor someone at her level and clarifying the issues I’d had with the infinitive/gerund subject, we reexamined the sections we’d gone over on Wednesday. After explaining the material again and providing numerous examples she finally understood it. It was a very gratifying feeling to watch the light bulb suddenly illuminate over her head. We didn't have as much time as we usually do because I got out of work a little late and she had an appointment to go to, so we did as much as we could with the time we had. After covering the stuff from last week we went on to a few sections that addressed the present continuous tense. This was fairly easy for her, so I mainly provided examples of the use and helped her with words she didn't know. I learned that providing numerous examples is critical helping someone at her level, or any level for that matter, understand the material. One thing I need to focus on in tutoring sessions and in preparing lessons is the modeling aspect of teaching. It truly cannot be underestimated. 

Bobby_TP_#8

This past Wednesday I had my first tutoring session with Shuo. She is a good deal more advanced than any of the other students from CIES that I’ve interacted with through the program so far. I could always understand what she meant and she didn't seem to have as much trouble understanding me as the other students. She has a 10 page research paper due by the end of the month that she hadn't started writing yet, so I helped her organize that. She had already gather quite a number of articles to use for her paper, the topic of which is language learning strategies and styles from different backgrounds. The first thing I did was show her how to organize her articles into categories so that she could better understand what themes to incorporate into her paper and where and how to use the articles. We looked through a few of them, reading the abstracts and skimming the discussion/conclusion sections to try to narrow down a category for the article. For example, a couple of the categories we defined were learner motivation and teaching strategies. The articles that she had were so inarguably and markedly academic that it was hard for even me to skim them and glean much meaning from what I’d read. They definitely required a careful and analytic reading to understand. After that I showed her some example outlines for research papers and found a good template for her to use when outlining her own paper. I’m going to email her about our next meeting to see if she has anything else she’d like to work on with me or if there’s anything that I can prepare for her since I can’t do much else with the research paper besides show her how to organize it and proof read it for her. 

Bobby_TP_#7

This past Wednesday I help Joey with some of the exercises in her English book. We were covering whether to use the “to” infinitive or the gerund. We covered the differences in use in class, but when confronted with the material in her book I found myself floundering for answers. It was suddenly made alarming clear that inherent use of a language absolutely does not equate to an ability to explain it. I looked to my phone for advice, but all I received were muddled results that would have taken a good while for me to interpret and simplify into a message that was clear and level appropriate enough for Joey to understand. For lack of better options I began to get technical. This did little to alleviate the confusion, and after winding around objects, gerunds and infinitives for a while I think we were both more discombobulated than anything else. We abandoned the infinitive-gerund debacle with my word that I would do some research and get back to her during our meeting on Friday with some concrete answers. The rest of the time was spent covering passive voice, which was a lot easier both for me to explain and for her to understand. Following the simple formula she got the answers relatively quickly. The only issue was verb tense, which she often self-corrected or readily amended when I alluded to her mistake. 

Bobby_TP_#6

This past Monday P.J. and I worked on a test from a couple of weeks ago and some reading comprehension from a book about jellyfish. P.J. was sick that day, which worried me because last time we met he was in no mood to be studying and I felt that today would be no better. When I asked him how his trip to the zoo was last week his response of, “That’s in the past, we don’t need to talk about it,” did not portend well. I thwarted his protests over the irrelevancy of the test we were going to cover and we delved in. P.J. read well, despite being sick, and answered the reading questions adequately. I still have a sense that he does not really understand while he’s reading because, despite the higher odds of answering the questions correctly due to the already incorrect answer, he would still frequently get the questions wrong. I use the Socratic Method when trying to guide him to the correct answers, but it seems all my “why would x do y if xyz” style questions seem to confound him. I don’t want to give him the answers right out, but he doesn’t seem to have the slightest clue as to what I’m indicating when I ask him about the reading. Slogging through the essay was excruciating. Despite writing clear and simply stated evidence from the text on the board and the name of one of the articles actually being “Voting”, I could not get P.J. to realize that one of the author’s messages was that voting was a way for people’s voices to be heard. The jellyfish story went much better. The amount of text per page was about a paragraph, so he retained the information readily. I can’t blame P.J. for his relationship with reading; I had the same relationship with math when I was his age. No matter how or for how long someone tried to explain a concept to me it never made any sense whatsoever. I just need to find a way to get through to him.

Craig_CP_#4

Today I went out to lunch with two of my tutees. We went to a Chinese restaurant where they have two distinct menus, one for Americans and a completely different on for Chinese nationals. I treated it as a conversational opportunity to correct small mistakes they made, instead of an opportunity to teach them something new. Among the topics we discussed were: the impact One Child Policy in China, the different roles women(especially mothers) play in Ivorian and Chinese culture, some of the pros and cons of the Cultural Revolution in China, the demographic division/unity in the Ivory Coast, the cultural expectations today's Chinese youth, and the difference in mindset between Chinese youth and the older generations.

For me it was a great opportunity to connect with my tutees on a non-academic level. By the end of lunch we were all joking around and I felt their affective learning levels had been lowered to almost nothing. During our conversation we would occasionally stop to learn a word they couldn't quite come up with on their own. We also discussed several grammar points without the stigma attached to classroom learning.

Nicky_CP_#6

11/12/14

    Yesterday I met with Heelee. We had such a great time visiting in front of Strozier. She had recently used me in a presentation and did especially well on her report. As a result she wanted to buy me coffee. I thanked her kindly and asked if she wanted me to order or would she like to practice and order herself. She said she wanted to try. It turns out they were having a buy one get one free deal. We then sat outside and spoke for almost two hours. We talked about politics, especially military policies, dogs, and our daily lives, and even speeding tickets. I have never learned so much about culture in one sitting in my entire life. Also I was amazed at how not awkward it was. Normally I would be so afraid to offend but Heelee was as interested to tell me about her culture as I was to hear it. We also joked about how scary and intimidating The American police are. I said they are not so much scary but intimidating is the perfect word. We joked about how every time we see one, even if we haven’t done anything wrong, immediately sit up a little straighter and are much more aware of our surroundings that we usually are. Our times together are so much fun. I can’t wait to see her again next Wednesday and see what we talk about then.  

Nicky_CO_#3

11/10/14 CO 3

    On Monday I observed Joshua Valentine’s class for group three speaking. He used an inductive approach by showing a video first and then proceeding with the lesson. The video consisted of lots information that we ourselves have covered in class such as interactionism, behaviorism, and language acquisition devices. Students were allowed to take notes during the video in order to prepare for the quiz at the end of class. They were allowed to use said notes during the quiz, so the better the notes the better outcome in your quiz may be. Every once in a while he would stop the video to ask the class a question that they should pay special attention towards. He would first pose the question towards the whole class. This allowed the more confident students to speak up first. As a follow up question, he would call on by name to the shyer ones in the class. After the video he asked the students to review the differences between acquisition and learning. There were an odd number of people in the class so I was paired with a student as well. Then we all came together and discussed the different types of teaching methods and theories. He asked the class if they could pick any teaching method, what would they pick. Most students agreed that a combined method or certain strategies were more appropriate for different levels. For instance, interactionism is probably not the best idea for beginners because they do not know how to respond to even the simplest of questions yet.

    Finally at the end of class the quiz was handed out and Joshua sat at the front of the class in order to monitor the students’ progress. During the discussions he would sit with the students. As he likes to sit with the students rather than above them in order to have a round table feel. Even in high school I always enjoyed this method better; it makes the gap between unapproachable instructor and student less wide. 

Nicky_TP_#5

11/12/14 TP 5

    Yesterday in class Saja and I worked on her mistakes from her midterm exam. I helped her with grammar mostly such as present progressive and prepositions. We also worked on new vocabulary. They recently started the chapter on dairy products. I think Saja is becoming more comfortable with me as she smiles more often and asks more questions when she does not understand rather than just nod and smile. We also did a quick activity on what we ate for lunch yesterday vs. what we usually eat for breakfast on a regular day. I told her I usually eat cereal for breakfast. She asked me cereal was and it was really hard to describe it without saying it’s like rice with milk. I started naming off a few American products hoping that she might recognize some brands but no luck. At the end of class Saja gave her “friend” presentation to Leslie and me. Once the guys left the classroom it was amazing in the change of confidence I saw. I find I have to ask to her to repeat phrases many times simply because she is so soft spoken. 

Nicky_TP_#4

    Yesterday I arrived at the public library early. After taking a quick cat nap on my backpack I awoke to see David and Mathew just arriving. Their mom was surprised to see that I was half an hour early and asked if it was ok if we start early as well. I said that was not a problem and Mathew and I proceeded with our studies. His math homework took much longer than usual what with the amount being twice as much as normal. It took a while to sit Mathew still at first but he was simply too enthused on my knowledge of Avatar the last air bender and Harry Potter. I told him if we finish five more problems we can talk about it. Finally after finishing the math homework we looked around for a book. We settled on Percy Jackson and the Olympians. After learning from last week this time we took turns reading paragraphs. I had encouraged his scratch work from his math homework to fit between the lines and it looks like he has started applying the same rules to his reading comprehension homework. Progress! Mathew was much better this week and only challenged me once when he wanted to walk away and find another book. Next week Mathew’s mother is without tutor for David. She wants me to tutor David along with Mathew or half an hour each. We’ll see how this goes but I believe that Mathew and I have come a long way in just a week. Maybe I can apply some of these strategies to David too. 

Nicky_TP_#3

11/10/14 TP 3

    Yesterday I showed up to tutor Saja in Leslie’s class at 1:00. After checking the empty classroom I found written on the board, Computer Lab. I then met Leslie and asked if she needed any assistance with Saja today. She then told me that they were working on the computers in order to complete a speaking quiz. I had never seen a speaking quiz done this way. I was not to give Saja answers so I sat at the other end of the room. After a few minutes I figured, since I was in the computer lab I might as well knock out a few computer assignments. After the speaking quiz we returned to the classroom and started a new unit on food. Saja and I worked on what our favorite fruits and vegetables were and our least favorite. I also encouraged her to use the third person singular since Leslie was going around the class asking people individually what their favorite partner’s likes and dislikes for vegetables. Overall I think Saja is slowly improving. She is becoming less afraid and falter in her speaking abilities when being put on the spot. The more interaction we share, the easier it is for Saja to not loose her train of thought. 

Bobby_CP_#6

This past Friday I went to the Downtown Get-Down and First Friday with my conversation partners. After picking up Mohammad and Badah from their apartment we went to the Greyhound Bus station in downtown to pick up Mohammad’s cousin who was visiting from Jacksonville. I intended to take them to First Friday originally and had no idea that Downtown Get-Down was even happening, so when I saw the block party I assumed we were at the right place. We walked around a bit but it was early in the evening and it was still pretty dead, so I checked to see where the First Friday actually was. Once I found the location we made the 20 or so minute trek over to the warehouse studios where people were displaying their galleries and creative pieces. We walked around for a little while, but they were clearly bored so we took a cab back to Downtown Get-Down. That was a bit more entertaining since there were more people there, but again all we did was walk around and people watch. Badah had some other friends who were telling him that one of the servers from Café Shisha was displaying her art somewhere, so we took my car to the location he was given. Turns out it was First Friday. More people had arrived by now so we walked around some more and looked at some of the art. Mohammad saw the colors or pattern on this scarf thing that represented Saudi Arabia on a tarot card readers table, so we talked to the guys about it for a little bit. Mohammad was beginning to have trouble with English. I think his brain may have just had enough. Badah seemed especially unenthused with the event and Mohammad’s ability to speak English was quickly diminishing, so I dropped them off at Café Shisha and went home.

Craig_TP_#9(C)

Today I tutored Yunseo at the public library. Yunseo had several books already picked out when I arrived. We chose to read the book Cinderella: The Great Mouse Mistake. Before we started reading I decided that Yunseo should be active while I read. The public library offers crayons and coloring sheets to anybody who wants them. I would read a page while Yunseo was coloring, and while Yunseo was reading I would draw pictures illustrating the vocabulary she was learning. I would also make noises and do actions to illustrate the words.

For me, I find it much harder to teach children than adults. I think the intrinsic motivation of wanting to learn that adults have is infinitely helpful when teaching a concept that is not easily understood. Yunseo is a great student and is really bright, but I think there is a threshold to how much a child should be expected to learn in their childhood.

Craig_TP_#6(C)

Tonight I tutored Yunseo in the public library downtown. We read five or six books in the hour I was with her. I think the books we are reading(already on the table when I arrived) are beneath Yunseo's reading level. She shows little interest in reading books with simple plots. I think for our next tutoring session I will try to find some more challenging material. The books we read were mostly read along books and she can usually guess what's going to happen next.

Yunseo seems to be really interested in counting things. We read a kind of interactive reader(Blue's Clues) and she really seemed to enjoy finding objects and counting things in pictures. I think tutoring children is more difficult because the learning depends strongly on the child's disposition at any given moment. This week Yunseo was really fidgety and antsy, it was very difficult to get her to read a page or pay attention to the book I was reading to her.

Nicky_CP_#5

11/7/14 CP 5
    Last Friday around 6:00 my friend Jackie and I went to have dinner at Ahmed's. When we walked into his apartment it was not what I was expecting. There on the couch laid a stranger passed out from drinking all day. Ahmed was very put off by this man later to be named Adam. While Ahmed was struggling to get Adam off the couch, Jackie and I were stifling our laughter. Finally I intervened and coaxed Adam to join in on our conversation. After visiting with Adam and getting him into a sitting up position Adam finally left to go "party" somewhere else. It was cute at one point when we were talking to Adam that Ahmed set out the apple pie that I had brought and attempted to serve it as a pre-dinner snack. I then explained that this was a dessert not a snack.
    When we proceeded to learn to cook the dinner it seemed like a very frustrating process. Attempting not to comment, I kept thinking there are so many easier ways to prepare this dish. It ended up being Indian rice with various spices from Saudi Arabia with lemon pepper chicken. The end result was delicious. Later that night we listened to Arabic and American music. When Ahmed's friends came over they served us dates (I had never had them before) and Arabic coffee. The dates were not my favorite but I fell in love again with yet another countries version of coffee.
    As the night went on we spoke of cultural differences, politics, and even a presentation on how to properly hug and shake hands in the United States. The guys could not stop laughing when Jackie and I attempted to hug the "manly" way. Over all the night was really enjoyable. And I have been invited over by all of Ahmed's friends again for Arabic coffee which I plan to take full advantage over.

Nicky_CP_#4

11/7/14 CP 4
Last Friday I met up with Heelee for about an hour by the Music building. I've always loved the music amphitheater so I decided to show her a favorite location of mine on campus. We normally meet on Wednesdays but we had a miscommunication that this was to be a regular thing. Heelee insisted that we then meet on Friday so she could interview me for her class presentation. She asked me my good and bad habits (which I'm afraid are far too many) along with my hobbies and where I live. I'm really enjoying our time together. We seem to learn so much about each others' cultures during these sessions. After the interview we spoke about the different tones and history of language from our countries. When the hour was up, I walked her back to the CIES building where her husband was waiting to pick her up.

Craig_TP_#4(S)

Yesterday I met with my tutees (Ben and Xiaoyan) and we discussed a few things. I aimed for this session to be more advanced with the purpose of helping them with their knowledge and use of pragmatics.

We warmed up with a refresher on synonyms and antonyms. One student would say hot and the other student, cold. We then discussed the the antonym of wide(skinny vs. narrow). I printed out a sheet I found from the internet that had about 75-100 high frequency words on it(angry, new, move) and their synonyms. I modeled the activity by reading the synonyms and guessing the high frequency word. I encouraged them to try to break apart the synonyms and draw connections between the synonyms and words that might be associated to it. We discussed extensively the common phrasing of 'crude' paired with 'oil' and some of the pragmatics attached to the word crude.

I think this was a successful activity for 'filling in the cracks' or increasing their depth of knowledge.

Nicky_TP_#2

11/5/14 TP

Today with Saja we worked on past tense verbs. I had forgotten how many irregular verbs there were and felt sorry that I could not help her with a pattern more so than saying it’s simply irregular. We started off with an activity provided by Leslie that included two sets of flash cards. The first set held types of time such as: yesterday, last week, and last year. The other set of cards held a verb in the present tense. We were supposed to combine these two phrases and make a complete sentence in the past.

Yesterday I worked until 3:00 pm.

After this activity Leslie went into the pronunciation of certain past tense verbs when it comes to ending in an –ed. Sometimes it sounds like –d, -ed, and –t. When the verb ends in a -t or -d it makes the complete -ed sound at the end. What I did not know is that a way to test what sound they are paired with is by placing ones hand to ones throat to tell if the ending of the word makes a voice vs. a voiceless sound. For instance, “called” has a voice sound so it sound like it ends in a –d. “Looked” on the other hand does not have a voice sound therefore it is voiceless and sounds like it ends in a –t. This is a very interesting way to go about the proper pronunciation and have never heard it put this way.