Nikolas TP4/5

On Wednesday, I worked with Ryan and Chris and their group for over 2 hours, because the Taiwanese student did not want to come again. This time, we worked with Habib and Nasser (Habib's friend did not come back). This time, Ryan let them hear a NPR recording about the Golden Gate Bridge on his computer. The vocabulary was hard for them, so we had to stop the video often and explain words and ask questions to be sure, that they understood everything. We let them also read the transcript to the recording. It took a long time to make it through recording. Once again, discussion about unfamiliar words seems to lead off topic into unrelated conversations quite easily. Somehow, we eventually started to discuss food especially date-palms and the many types of pork (they wanted to know them, so they could avoid them). The tutor sitting was interesting because it shows how classroom discussion needs to be controlled, so that it does not come to far off topic. Here that was ok, because it was only tutor sitting, but in class, that could be a problem.

Nikolas TP2/3

On Tuesday during the CIES break week, my partner from Monday (the student from Taiwan), did not come, so I had to work with Ryan and Chris' group. I had originally planned to help my partner with some tutoring/reading and discussion things, but he came no more after Monday. Anyway, the sitting lasted almost 2 1/2 hours. We worked with Habib, a student from Ivory-Coast and a friend (also from Ivory-Coast) and Nasser from Saudi-Arabia. Ryan had already prepared a lesson based on a video biography about Marilyn Monroe. The students watched and took notes and wrote unfamiliar words. After the video, we asked them questions and explained the words. Then they watched video again. Many times, the conversation would come off topic because they would ask many questions about one new word. Then we let them read an article that went with the film (not a transcript) and they took notes. Again we explained new terms and asked questions at several points. Near the end, Soso joined the group after Katie had to go and also participated. I thought the film with related script was a good idea to apply to a class.

Nikolas CP5/6

I list my meetings this week with 2 numbers, because these sittings are counted by hours. On Monday I met for 2 hours with a student from Taiwan during the tutor opportunties this week. He did not need tutoring, but wanted to practice his speaking. We talked for first 30 minutes or so and introduced ourselves, etc. The problem was that he did not bring any thing that he could work on, so we decided to work with BJ and her tutor partner for the week, a girl from Turkey. She had TOEFL practice with questions for speaking or writing part of TOEFL test that could be discussed, so we alternated with questions and the two students had opportunity to talk about them. Some questions, like what sites you would recommend to tourists in your country gave me chance to learn more about Taiwan. The questions let the other student practice for TOEFL and my parnter to practice his speaking (he took TOEFL earlier).

Katie-CP4

My CP broke his foot! He feel asleep studying for the TOFEL at his desk anad heard a loud noise so he jumped up from his sleep and broke a bone in his foot. I felt so bad he was telling me about his boredom so I just meet him at his house. He explained how fast the Doctor spoke and that the Ph.D study was very helpful in re-explaining. It was just that he was a second language learner but these were terms that not everyone some hears so I could  see it being challenging. After we hatted about the upcoming GRE, TOFEL, his foot injury and how his application process has been going over an hour had flown by. I was slightly disappointed in the lack of fun he had while breaking a bone.

Katie- TP4

I practiced speaking with my tutee today. I downloaded an application on my iPhone so that she could listen to herself after she spoke for 45 seconds to answer a question. I showed her that forming an outline consisting of 4-8 words  during her 15 seconds of planning would help to form a fluent answer. She struggled with the 'or' sound, prepositions, and articles as well as a couple of a couple of unclear thoughts. After planning she improved very much and her fluency and her skills were productive.After about an hour of speaking practice, my TP told me many tales of her country. She explained that all the teacher are volunteer, that the government is corrupt and that she can't really talk about politics or anything she does in America. She says she is under the radar her, telling her country she works at the YMCA. She told me about the neighboring countries basically paying of generals to come take their natural resources like gold, oil, jade, and rubys. She said that the middle and lower class usually  make their money to eat, during that day. She also said if people are fat they are thought to be able to afford higher quality pork. Very interesting.

Betty J TT 2

4/27 During the CIES break some students still wanted tutoring time. I worked with Elveda from Turkey. She wants to improve her TOEFL scores in writing and speaking. In her native language she emphasizes the first syllable, but I realized in English we often put the emphasis on the second syllable.

She writes essays and has me read them and help her rewrite them in to TOEFL-acceptable essays. She tends to write in a conversation style, but is learning quickly how to write essay form. It is also helping her to read essays and speak on a topic. She brings the TOEFL resources which makes teaching easier. She sounds determined to bring up her scores when she retakes the test on Saturday.

Betty J. CP 4

4/27 Still catching up on Blog notes. The last two sessions with my CP she asked me to help her with words in her workbook. The words were all “emotions” (she emphasizes the “o” in the word). We spent part of two sessions on “emotions.” Some are very difficult for her to understand, such as “depressed,” and “melancholy” which she defines as “a little sad.” We also talked about the words that have different meanings, like a “depression” in the ground vs. being depressed. She prefers to meet under the large trees in the breeze. Maybe she does not know about being depressed. I think we she will have a quiz next time.

Katie- TP3

Soe-Soe read aloud from my text book today. I picked sections of the reading chapter for her to focus on since she wanted to work on reading. She told me she had been studying in the same ways and wondered if I might have a different technique. I did not off the bat ,but then I realized that the text was a great resource. I learned that she was very interested in reading this type of material because she taught at the YMCA and to children in her country. So she related to the material well as a teacher and as a student. She wanted to read aloud for reading practice, but also to get her speaking practice in as well. The next time we meet I will be asking her questions and give her some feedback on her beautiful mistakes.

Katie- TP2

I meet with Soe-Soe and I went through some practice passages in a TOEFL practice book .She wanted to work on reading so I skimmed my text book and tried some of the techniques it suggested to use to help improve the reading skills of a language learning. Soe-Soe practiced skimming, comprehension questions, and ambiguity tolerance. I suggested different ways to read questions, to note-take and I reminded her about the importance of context clues. We reviewed phrases like however, otherwise, different from, before this, on the other hand. She is a very fast and smart girl, but I do see the comprehension difficulties and she does too.

Ayerim - CP4

Amer and I haven't met in two weeks, now. It was a our normal tea time meeting and truthfully the last place I wanted to be. My eyes were closing shut. I was trying to look for Amer and finally found him. I told him I needed caffeine and asked him if he wanted to go to Circle K with me. We did. I got my coffe and he got some lemonade. We decided to just sit at the sitting area by the Circle K which was empty. Let me tell you, thank god for that caffeine, because Amer did not stop talking for a full 45 minutes. It was on topic after the other and it made me so happy to hear him talk so much and try to say new words. It was definitely a huge improvement from the first time we met. we talked about eating different meat, police, food, friends, orlando, and he learned the word pregnant. I think that since there was really no one to hear him speak, he felt more comfortable talking. And he invited me to his house for a traditional Arabic meal and coffee. It was a great day in the world of conversation partners.

Ayerim - CP3

Today, my conversation partner tried to bail on me, and then I guess he felt guilty and showed up 10 minutes before Tea Time ended. I didn't really bother me and I am glad it happened, because it gave me the opportunity to play Scattegories with the other students. I really had a lot of fun playing this game and the other students were really getting into the game; all the competitive spirits were out! The game got a little heated when the letter K was on the board and the category was books. Naturally, the Koran would be the first K-book to come to mind. I guess one of the students who was Muslim either got really upset or extremely competitive because he argued a really long time that the Koran not spelled with a K. He said was spelled with a C or Q. After much debate, we just gave up on trying to win the point. It was just one point! My partner and I still won the game!

Chris H. - CO 1

I met with Ron Garren for the first of my class observations. The class was a composition English class directed towards a more elementary level of proficiency with the language. He was an enthusiastic, motivating teacher, and the classroom dynamic was informal, in which students were encouraged to speak amongst each other (in English) throughout the entire class. He began the lesson with a discussion on varies verb tenses, using the projector and going through fill in the blank questions one by one, with voluntary answers from the students. Then, the class was split into small groups and passed a worksheet with more on the subject. Ron gave me one and, as I later mentioned to him, I liked the way the comprehension questions did not provide options for ver tenses, structurally challenging the students to say the sentence and find the correct tense. This method encouraged both a more methodical reading and focus from the students, but also facilitated debate between students, and further discussion on tenses and verbs. I participated in my group and offered suggestions when inquired, however adhered to the method of the assignment and did not simply supply the answers. The students then offered their answers to each of the questions, using the projector; this allowed for teacher-student feedback, however not in the immediate after of the assignment. I liked this approach to composition, as it helped students be creative, analytical, and confident throughout the assignment.

Katie- CO3

I observed a listening class, I believe it was a lower level just by the situation of the class. The instructor was very eager to use me as a resource and I quickly saw how challenging teaching listening to such a diverse lower level group would be.I was immediately paired with a very low level listener and was told to just help him. He only look about 4 notes down while I took about one and a half pages, just for perspective.It was very hard to have him listen, take notes and digest the main idea. I tried to explain to him even the simplest terms that were discussed in the listening log. I blinked my eyes and the class was over. I then realized the difficulties of practicing listening. At the end of class the teacher explained to me that she helped the students lead up to understanding the listening log even though it was quite fast paced. She first went over vocabulary, the history of immigration and the way the lecture would be given.Basically, she used the scaffolding technique, which was interesting to see in action.All in all, I had a good experience in teaching and as a student understanding a difficult lecture.

Marina TP5

Yesterday I met with Dongsoek for a tutoring session since it is the end of the term for him at CIES. He told me that next week he gets a break, and might go to Kennedy Space Center and Orlando with his friends but will start CIES again the week after. He told me that he wants me to continue doing tutoring with him so for the summer I will help him.

During our session, I asked him what he remembers about prepositions and articles to make sure he retained what we learned last time. He answered all of my questions correctly, so I'm happy to know that what I taught him stayed with him.

I asked him if he had any questions about prepositions and he told me that he prepared a list of questions that he had.

We then went over describing the placement of objects, such as "before and after", "in front of, behind, next to..." etc, because he was unsure of how to describe something that he saw on an advertisement and ask for its meaning. Since he's a pretty visual person, I drew him pictures and explained situations in which different terms were used. He seemed to understand everything better from them.

He then gave me his little notebook of colloquial expressions that he wrote down from watching The Simpsons, and asked what their exact meaning is, which situations can they be utilized in, and whether or not they are commonly used. I never realized how many expressions we have in the English language that make no sense when directly translated to other languages, such as Russian or even Spanish. So when attempting to explain the meaning of them, I tried to substitute the words of the expression into other, more simpler terms and link them to a common situation for better understanding.

Marina CP-5

Last Tuesday I met up with Fatih again at Tea Time after he has not been able to see me for the week before because he was studying for his GRE. I asked him how that went and he said that his verbal section, which Fulbright asked him to get at least a 400 on, was lower than 400. He said that he hopes to get a better score on the TOEFL exam next week to make up for the GRE.

I asked him how he studied for the GRE and he told me that he consistently practiced the verbal part on daily basis because his math section was already high. I told him that it was a good idea to take about at least half an hour each day and practice the areas that are problematic to him because it will not only help him get used to the format but also drill him on what responses certain types of questions expect.

I also told him that for the TOEFL exam to practice what he thinks he has to improve, since last time he was 6 points away from getting his desired score.

I also remembered that in class, we watched videos and discussed culture, so Fatih and I talked about Turkish culture (since I realized I don't know too much about it), politics, its relations to other countries, and overall how people live, what they think and believe, etc.

I was surprised to find out that Turks call themselves both Europeans and Middle Easterners, depending from what region of the country they come from. Those who live in areas that border Europe, apparently associate themselves with Westerners and Europeans. I thought that was interesting because I never thought they could call themselves both. I thought it was either one or the other since Turkey is in the middle of both. In Russia, we mostly consider ourselves European, simply because our culture is more influenced by Europe than Asia.

So I think it's important to inquire about cultural details of a country to gain a better insight on the thought process of people that come from there.

Nikolas CP4

I met with Emin again last Tuesday. We talked some about his plans more. He plans to go back to Turkey next week. When I asked him how long, he says will come back to USA next fall to study physics at Emory University. I was surprised that he would be in Turkey so long, but he told me, he must complete several physics courses at his university in Turkey. He also wants to have some volunteer some with a science lab, so that he has experience, because at Emory, he will be a lab assistant. We talked also a little about interests and soccer. The TV in the CIES snackroom was on, so we also commented on what was on TV sometimes.

Katie-CO 2

I observed another speaking class but this time it was with Vicki. She is a fun enthusiastic teacher  that gets her students attention very directly, which was impressive and seems hard to do especially in a speaking class. We did an activity that was hands-on and forced involvement. The objective was to have the students practice giving and receiving advice. They were given a problem to read and then the rest of the group was too give them advice starting with a phrase that they students pulled from a cup. For example, "My suggestion is" , "If I were you I would" and things like this. I was able to participate in a group so I gave them advice and received it .I tried to help them use these skills more conversationally and suggested less formal/less proper ways of starting a sentence of advice. I felt that I was helpful and I really enjoyed this experience. At the end of class we went and recorded ourselves giving advice. I was very impressed by the ease of the technology and realized that giving my students feedback would be quite easy.

Katie- TP 1

I met with my tutoring partner about a week ago. He is a very nice, very enthusiastic adult man. He has 8 children and a wife. His wife is studying at CIES and Kaplan. She wants to get into a university and obtain a bachelors degree. My TP unfortunately has no proof that he went to high school because the record keeping system in Saudi Arabia was not up to date back when he attended. So He let me know he needs help studying for his GED and then the CPT for college. I was really excited to hear that because I have lots of personal experiences with the CPT and feel that the GRE just sounds familiar and I felt I could be a great help. I also will help tutor his wife in her final days before she takes her GRE examinations. Our method for Dad is going to be to start with his lessons from CIES and began going through what he has learning in an organized fashion. I think refreshing these lessons and stopping where we find difficulties is especially useful because the skills that it prepares you for a all important communicative as well as for tests and exams.

Jacqi CO3

So for my final class observation I observed the wonderful Ramin. I know that they were just watching a movie but I still learned a lot. I really liked the idea that they read a story and then got to see it acted out. I think that could help clarify any issues they were having understanding the story, but I'm sure you probably discussed most of the questions in other classes. Second I thought it was cleaver that you did the i+1 theory. Since it was a listening class I would presume that you wouldn't use subtitles because you want them to listen and not read but since this was a film done in British English that would have probably been an i+15 to understand. Also you stopped in the movie to engage the class by asking them to predict who the characters were and what was going to happen. Overall Ramin you are a great teacher and the praise from your students that day just proves that we are getting taught by one of the best!

Jacqi CP4

I picked another conversation partner because I was afraid that I would not have enough time to meet the requirements for this course. My conversation partner is Marina and she is a Fulbright TA from Lebanon. Working with her was very different from my other conversation partners because she has a very extensive knowledge of the English language. So when we were together it was mainly for cultural exchanges. I worked a lot with her explaining silly quotes and sayings and doing many American hobbies like bars. She is from Lebanon and after my presentation you will see that there are a lot of bars in Lebanon but none like Bullwinkle's. We went there to see the live music the other day and she really enjoyed it. She let her hair down and danced the night away...I even convinced her to get on a picnic table with me and dance. However I did notice somethings like she doesn't really drink and she didn't want to wear shorts or a skirt and it's a million degrees outside. Just so you know she is a Christian not an Arab so it's not against her religion to do this I just think it might be against her culture to do so. And not against like in a negative way just against like not normal.

Jacqi TP 4

So the other day, I like how that is how I start all these blogs. But sorry on Tuesday I tutored the oldest of the three girls Rayana. She is really struggling because she is such a strong and stubourn little woman. She is having a hard time with English because she really doesn't want to let go of the Arabic. I tried talking to her and telling her that by learning English she wouldn't have to give up Arabic but she was unresponsive. It could be that it's harder for her since she knows the most Arabic out of all the girls but I just don't know how to get through to her. She isn't really reading either she is just guessing words based on patterns. However in math she is doing really well. If it's basic concepts like 2+2 she will think in English but if its something more complicated like 26+18 then she thinks in Arabic. Which I am unsure if that is even a bad thing. Any advice class?

Jacqi- CO2

So the other day I observed my second teaching class and it was a lot different from the first one I saw. This one really lacked the energy that the other teacher had and it made me wonder how difficult it must be to teach. I saw that teacher was a bit tired and just not all there and hey we can all relate to that. But what was so shocking is that the entire mood of the class reflected his mood. We were in a listening class were we listened to a passage about the Himbas of south west Africa and had to answer questions. You could tell that the rest of the class was just as tired and uninterested as the teacher. Of course I should probably mention that it was the last class of the day and the second to last class of their semester and I know I sure can relate with the feeling of not wanting to be there anymore. I guess this class observation really opened my eyes to how much the students feed off the energy of the teachers. Just always be aware that when you are a little in the off mood so are the students. It just made me realize how hard it is going to be to always be the engager and that sometimes its okay to have an off day.

Tyler CP-4

Once again my conversation partner meeting began with a compelling game of Scattergories at the CIES tea time. A CIES student whom I had never seen before was playing the game and was extremely... competitive. He made sure to challenge and check every answer. It was humorous seeing him argue with all the other players. Some of the topics that came up had to do with American culture, which gave me a good opportunity to explain a few new vocabulary words to Ahmed and help him with his pronunciation. I noticed that no matter how competitive the games get, we never announce a winner.

After we were through with Scattergories, we played a game called Taboo. In Taboo you are given a word to describe to your partners, and a list of words that you cannot use in that description. This lead to some laughs and some vocabulary building, as it is often difficult to describe the given word without the words that follow on the list. After only a few short rounds, it was time for class, and tea time was over.

Tyler-CP3

I arrived at the CIES for tea time, only to find my partner engaged in a game of scattergories. I partnered up with him and we faced off several other groups that were playing. The game got pretty intense, and it always seemed that the worst letter was picked with each category card. My partners vocabulary was surprisingly good, even though he spelled most things wrong. I corrected his spelling and pronunciation on several words, while making note of his strengths and weaknesses. After the game was over we had a few minutes to talk before class began, and we discussed what he was doing in his classes. It seems he is still ahead (like most middle eastern students) in speaking, but has difficulty with reading and pronunciation. We discussed this and I offered to help him, and possibly review for the TOEFL.

Tyler-TP3

I arrived at CIES in time to meet my tutoring group for the third time, only to find that they all had "things to do". They all apologized for not emailing me and promised to meet next week. I was stuck there for an hour and figured on walking around for a bit, when I noticed another CIES student walking around with the same DSLR camera as mine. I complimented his camera and asked him what lens he had equipped.

This began an interesting conversation about photography, that led to a cultural exchange. The student began to talk about China and we walked over to the map on the wall, where he pointed out different things to me. He discussed some of the different groups and languages in China, all the while showing me where they took place. I even got to help him out a bit with his pronunciation and grammar. A cancelled meeting led to an interesting conversation.

Tyler-CO2

My second classroom observation was listening, with Ross Kozloski. I found myself able to help as soon as I arrived. The output from the computer to the projector was doubled, and through a bit of fidgeting with the settings, I managed to fix it and make myself useful. Ross began the class by asking the students what they had listened to after their last class. One student listened to some Celine Dion songs, and I had to fight the urge to suggest some better western music. Another student watched a cartoon with her child.

After each student described what they had listened to Ross put on a video for the students to watch. The students were given worksheets with questions, so that they knew what to listen for in the following interviews. The tape began and much to my surprise I was watching a tape of Ramin being interviewed. Ross played the interviews twice so that the class could get the information. After all the questions had been answered, they were discussed as a class. The students corrected each other with Ross's encouragement. When class was over Ross spoke with me for a few minutes about teaching and I asked him a few questions. It was, overall an good learning experience.

Nikolas - TP1

I met finally today with my tutor partner Edgar Hernandez. After many difficulties, I had my first tutor sitting. Other students were no longer interested, so he was the only one who showed up. Edgar prepares to write his GRE and TOEFL and works at a job, so he is very busy. For this reason, I met him during the CIES lunchbreak, the only time he can meet. After his exams he hopes to apply to FSU to study, so he needs to take his GRE and TOEFL. He did not have his books today, so I will help him with that next time. Mostly I helped Edgar with his grammar problems. Although his English is good, he makes the same mistakes and wants to correct them, but first must understand why they are wrong. He wanted first an explanation about verbs forms like "put up" and "drop off". He did not know when the second part should be used, because he told me, that no one understood him when he said "I want to drop my friend" because he not know how to use "off". I explained how it is used and why that gives very different meaning! Then he wanted to review a test he took in class. First present and past perfect differences, then I helped to explain gerund/ infinitives, because he confuses the two often - he puts infinitves where gerunds should be. We reviewed clauses a little and then spent most time with modal verbs. These were difficult for him, because he was not sure what exact differences between could, would and should were. We thought out example sentences and wrote them done and related meanings to situations and synonyms. This seemed to help him much.

Marina TP4

Last Friday all classes at CIES were cancelled so I met with Dongsoek in the morning to go over listening and speaking, since he still has problems with understanding other people speak and pronunciation.

He brought his laptop so we listened to a short clip on NPR radio about the rising gas prices and the economy. The report explained two contending view points on the high prices of gas, with one saying that it is detrimental to the economy and the people while the other stated that it was even higher in 2008 and faced inflation, thus now it is not such a big deal.

While we were listening, I told Dongsoek to take notes on what he heard about it, while I did the same so we can compare them at the end. After it was over, I asked him what he got out of the report and he gave me the general overview although he could not specifically give me the two main arguments.

After listening to it again, he understood and gave me the arguments and evidence for what we listened.

I think it helps to give specific questions to students doing listening activities because that way they have an idea in mind to listen to. With practice, however, Dongsoek will know exactly what to listen for in those kinds of activities.

Marina TP3

Last Wednesday I met with Dongsoek for a tutoring lesson. Jia could not make it, she said she had an emergency so during that time Dongsoek and I went over articles and prepositions.

I taught him how to use both definite and indefinite articles, and during this lesson reinforced his use of them by asking him questions and asking for examples of when he would use "a" and "the". He seemed to remember it so we moved on to prepositions because he said he got a few of them wrong on his last quiz and did not understand why they were wrong.

At first, I wasn't sure how to explain to him when to use "at" or "in" but I looked it up on the computer and we both figured out how to make him understand it.

Towards the end of the lesson, he began to understand the difference. We then went over his quiz and had him explain to me why that specific preposition had to be used.

Along with that, I encountered a cultural problem. One of the examples on his quiz used the word "Easter". Dongsoek thought it was a place, but I had to explain it to him that it was a religious holiday and give him a brief background on it. So I thought it was interesting how an unknown capitalized word signifying a holiday can be culturally misinterpreted for a physical place.

Jacqi CP 3

This weekend I took Alaa and Ban to the circus. We had talked about the circus before and they knew what it was because they had seen one in Egypt. We went on Saturday at 2pm and it was really an exciting experience. The circus theme was Around the World so they were dressed and playing music from other cultures around the world. It was fun because since it was the circus you didn't need to really understand English to understand whats going on so they weren't lost. The circus was so engaging though that we talked about it every spare second during the show. They were really captivated at the idea that it was all FSU students who did this activity for fun and it wasn't their major or anything, Unfortunately they missed the very best part which was the finale because Barcelona had a match on the tube and Alaa didn't want to miss it. I really enjoy hanging out with them.

Jacqi CO1

Last week I observed an advanced reading class. The instructor started the class off by quizzing them on last weeks vocabulary words. This was a fill in the blank type of quizz but what was interesting is that each question had 3 sentences and you used the same word for all three sentences you just had to make sure to conjugate it correctly. Then she handed out a packet with this weeks new vocab words and they went over them. I really liked her technique because as she went over the vocabulary words brefietly and spent the majority of the time talking about how the words were used in advance reading and how you can drive the meaning of the word through context clues. I thought this was useful because the words they were learning were TOFEL prep words like akin and curtly. No one really uses those words in speech but if you know how to deduct meaning from context you can figure out their definition in a round about way.

Marina CO3

Last Wednesday I observed a reading class with Ryan Flemming. It was a morning class and most of the students were still waking up and getting back into the rhythm of class.

Ryan started out by writing the agenda on the board, including those things that were done the class previously and will be done the class after.

Once the students all came in, he began by making casual conversation with them, asking if what they remember from the class previously.

His lesson was primarily concentrated on vocabulary. He split the class into three groups and gave each group 7 vocabulary words from the passage they all read last class. Each group had to work together to give a definition for the words.

After each group was done, every person in that group was responsible for explaining to the class what the word means. For those students in a group that were not actively participating, Ryan motivated by either making jokes (in a non-harmful/personal way) to either wake them up or make them participate.

Overall, the class atmosphere was very relaxed and friendly. I participated in one of the groups to come up with an English definition of words and observed that each person has their own way of explaining. As the students told their definitions in class, Ryan either accepted them or modified them so others can understand.

I thought Ryan had a good approach at concentrating on vocabulary and at the same time having students work and interact together to in turn practice speaking skills.

Marina - CO 2

Last Monday I observed Felicia's listening class for intermediate-advanced students. As soon as the class started, she wrote down objectives on the board and began to review material from last class after she handed out the graded quizzes. She asked the students if they had any questions or wanted to go over any material.

She then handed out the textbooks and asked the student to turn to the section of their new topic about business crimes. I really like how she warmed up the class by asking pre-listening questions such as "Do you know any cases of corporate crimes?If so, what are they? What happened?" and had students first discuss those in groups and then out loud as a class. The students then read the passage about a case of corporate crime and answered the comprehension questions in groups and then went over them as a class.

There was a lot of student-student and instructor-student interaction throughout the whole time, which I think reinforced everyone's understanding of the topic. Felicia did a good job at keeping the class active (since it was scheduled after lunch) by speaking louder, making more casual conversation with students, and asking questions that she did not know to students about businesses.

Although they ran out of time, the following class Felicia told the students to be prepared to listen to the passage that they read and answer comprehension questions based on it.

Betty J TT 1

April 15, 2011

I do not have a tutoring group, but two women I tutor. They could not find a common time to meet. One woman, Bushra, I met at the first Tea Time and enjoyed talking to her. We discussed Middle Eastern cuisine, recipes and spices. She has been here about eight months from Saudi Arabia and her English is a little halting, but her vocabulary is good. When we met our students to tutor, she still did not have a tutor, so I agreed.

When we discussed meeting for tutoring, she invited me to her apartment. I wondered why she did not seem to have a husband and she had not mentioned it. In the Middle East marriages are often arranged when the couple is very young and she seemed a little older. She really did seem to want me to meet at her home. As a nurse I have made many home visits to people and in neighborhoods with which I am not familiar, but am not afraid of, so I agreed.

We met at the agreed time. She was not in her customary dress, but regular clothes. She served Arabic coffee. (No matter where I visited in Kuwait someone seemed to instantly appear with Arabic coffee or tea.) We discussed the spices used and how everyone seems to have their own mix of spices in their coffee. She uses one her mother uses. She also served dates; some she bought and some her mother made. They were very sweet, but tasty.

Shortly a man entered the apartment and she introduced him as her husband. He began to cook in the kitchen. Then I heard a familiar sound. It was like a siren used in Kuwait for call to prayer; promptly at 5:15pm. I think it was playing on her computer. She excused herself in a minute and left the room. In a few minutes she entered the room with a shawl on her head, said something quickly to her husband and again left the room. She returned in a few minutes. When I was in Kuwait someone would go to prayer after the siren sounded.

We discussed what she was learning and what she wanted help with. She has a degree in Neuroscience and plans to get her Masters and Ph.D. She is also taking the GRE soon. No matter what we study, she wants me to correct her speech promptly.

When we finished the session, I was invited to eat dinner with them. By now there was a wonderful fragrance from the open kitchen into the living room. I was afraid I would insult them if I turned them down, so joined them for dinner. The table was already set for three. We dined on Majboose which was rice and lamb and a very finely diced salad with lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber and mint with olive oil and lemon juice. I was very surprised that her husband had been cooking and complimented him on his culinary expertise. He said he had been cooking since he was ten years old.

I learned so much from them. Now I need to work on a lesson plan.

Betty J CO 3

April 15, 2011

The third class I observed was with instructor, Olga Garmash for Reading on April 12, 2011. She neglected to tell me they were to take a quiz and later apologized. They also had a reading exercise and a test returned. Seems the end of the semester is similar no matter the course with testing and final grades.

It was a small “cozy” feeling class. During the quiz, she seemed to watch each student carefully. I know in some cultures cheating is a very common classroom concern. I will ask her about that.

When she told them there was only 10 minutes to finish, two students argued with her that she did not tell them how long they had to take the quiz. She just apologized and seemed to give them a couple of extra minutes.

Then she had them read a short text and summarize or paraphrase it in their own words. It is helpful to learn the level to which the students progress, considering my tutee who has only been here three weeks and really is a beginner.