Ayerim - CO2

Today I observed Mr. Ross’ Listening class. The plan for the day was to take a quiz. I thought it was quite long for a quiz, but fairly easy for the level. So the length made up for the level of difficulty. Most of the quiz was dictation, telling the difference in pronunciation and listening to a track of a silly call center advertisement. Most of the students did not understand the joke of the advertisement, so Ross had to explain it at the end of the quiz.

Chris H. CP 6

In lieu of Marcel, my new conversation partner Elder Sandoval met with me last week. Elder is a Colombian student from Cartagena, in Tallahassee for two weeks visiting mutual Panamanian friends. Just for fun, I took him to Super Perros, a local Colombian restaurant on the corner of Ocala and Tennessee, to see how it measured up in his eyes in authenticity. We had bandeja paisa and salchipapa, which were both delicious, with sides of frijos negros and mini gorditas. He expressed that the food was simplistic compared to the food in Columbia, and that the steak seemed slightly flavorless. We talked a little about Colombia and what he liked to do there. He told me that he just graduated high school and would be attending the Universidad Tecnologica de Panama, pursuing a degree in electrical engineering. He told me that ultimately he would like to work in the States. His English was good, and although I supplemented it with some of my own prior Spanish knowledge, I could tell that he had a fair understanding of English grammar and tenses. His accent was his main obstacle, and he confused English words, such as star with start, and others. I felt that he quickly became unreceptive when I tried to correct his word usage and accents, which was slightly less encouraging than Marcel in many ways, but I did enjoy his depictions of Colombia, which is a country I’ve never been to but have always wanted to see.

Chris H. CP 4/5

This unfortunately was the last conversation partner meeting I had with Marcel, as I was unable to get a hold of him in the weeks following. However, on the other hand, it was a double date evening and a lot of fun! Marcel called me as he promised midweek, and we agreed upon a time and place to meet with our female companions for a dinner out on the town. Unfortunately, my girlfriend, Chelsea, and I were slightly late, ten minutes or so, and met Marcel and Stacey, already seated, at Sakura Sushi and Grill. During dinner, we talked about school. Marcel told us how he decided he wanted to go into business with his father after getting a degree in international business and German studies. His father owned a car parts manufacturing plant outside of Arnhem, and he mentioned that his brother already was an understudy for a management position there. I noticed discreetly that Marcel’s vocabulary was certainly improved from the first time I met him, and he relied less on word substitutions from others and more on finding alternative ways of expressing the same idea. Stacey seemed unaware that Marcel wanted to return to Berlin prior to this moment, and the two exchanged nervous glances during the conversation that Chelsea and I purposely spoke through. Stacey wanted to become a nurse, and to ultimately graduate from the FSU school of nursing. Marcel joked that it was the best job besides an animal caretaker for someone with her compassion. Chelsea asked Marcel about his sister’s wedding plans, to which he described an elaborate weekend planned in a cottage in Belgium. He said that most of his family was from Holland but that his sister’s fiancé was from Brussels and wanted to have it there. The ladies got into a conversation about honeymoons, and Marcel and I turned our conversation towards English competency and the direction that he wanted to go with the language. He told me that ultimately, if when he returned to Europe over the summer, and felt his English still needed some work (which in my opinion, his grammar certainly could use some more practice) he would return to Florida and enroll in a university here. I encouraged this, but told him that there are also many different states within the United States and other countries that are ideal to form a base for practice and working towards a TOEFL, and that if he needed any assistance, I would be happy to help. At the end of the dinner, I gave him my personal e-mail address and told him to call me when he next wanted to meet. Chelsea and Stacey said goodbye and, following, have kept in touch. Overall, it was a fun night out, and a great chance for Marcel to speak vibrantly and in a relaxed setting about his past, present, and future ideas and goals.

Chris H. TP 5

This was my final tutoring group meeting with Ryan and Nikolas. Following a similar format to the tutoring sessions beforehand, we again presented the tutees with an audio segment. This time, the subject was a multi-perspective, historical account on the Civil War, the battle of Fredericksburg, with witness accounts from white property owners, Confederate soldiers, and slaves. I think that the context of the video drew in the tutees quickly, as it involved a key element of American history and, moreover, impressions of battle. Again, we asked the students to write down words and phrases that they did not understand, or could not gather meaning from in the context of the documentary. One particular part, which I noticed was the most challenging for all of them, was a recorded teacher in a museum speaking on the historical significance. The dissonance of the audio sample, which was not digital like the rest, made it just slightly more difficult to pick out the words. This certified in my mind the profound importance of clarity in listening samples to students, and how even the slightest distortion can turn familiar words into foreign words in their mind. Our quizzes were generally successful with the students, and facilitated conversation on the meaning of confederation versus federation, militia, and, funny enough, the word dastardly. Words such as glisten and exhibit were also highlighted as words unfamiliar in the audio sample and I felt that the tutoring session overall was a great success. At the conclusion of it, the students turned to youtube and showed us some of their music from their native countries, including West African rappers such as Bebir and DJ Arafat, and Myanmar street musicians in local festivals.

Chris H. CP3

I met Marcel in the TCC library when he was done with class and once again began talking about the events of Spring Break. He told me that his plans had fallen through and that he had remained in Tallahassee, which was not a terrible thing as he was now dating a girl in his school. I asked him how she was affecting his language ability, and he laughed and said that he has never had a better reason to talk. He told me that he was doing well in his classes, but was homesick nonetheless, and was looking forward to returning to Europe the following month to see his family and attend his sister’s wedding. We conversed further on his lady friend and how he had met her (in a class) and what he liked most about her (her southern accent and blond hair!). Marcel has a natural sense of humor and likeability around him, and I find that the more I’ve met with him, the more his willingness to speak his mind, despite vocabulary obstacles, has increased. I told him a little about my girlfriend, and asked him whether he would like to have a double date, to which he agreed. He insisted he was obligated to leave a little early because his roommate didn’t have the apartment key, but that he would call me later in the week to schedule the date.

Chris H. CP 2

I met again with Marcel by the pool near my apartment complex. The weather was not great that day and we had to get under the pavilion when it began to rain a few minutes after he arrived. We talked some about Spring break and his plans for the upcoming week. He said that he was going to go the Panama City with several other Dutch students who were seeking pilot’s licenses in the area. We began talking about flying, the drawl of airline flight, and we both agreed that on both sides of the Atlantic it was horrible. I told him how I too pursued a pilot’s license at one time, and that flying had always excited me, especially with the prospects of landing and traveling. After that, we began speaking about conservation skills in English. He struggles most with tenses and finding the correct vocabulary word to facilitate flowing thoughts. Often he will say a sentence and motion for me to fish for a concluding word or phrase. This is helpful, to a degree, for him, but I feel also that it limits him from real comprehension in the language because he is all too often provided the missing piece. He told me how his sister learned English in under a year while studying abroad in London, and then described to me several of the cockney phrases she taught him on her return to Arnhem. He surprised me on his ability to mimic accents, both British and American, and I told him that it is a real strong point in linguistic ability to be able to resonate the tonality of speech. I encouraged him to join my tutoring group the following week, in which I planned to practice speech and listening skills. He agreed and I hope that he will follow through as most of his difficulty with English arises in word comprehension and usage errors, not in listening and understanding.

Chris H. TP 4

At the next group meeting with Ryan and Nicolas, we provided a video on the Golden Gate Bridge to further challenge the tutees listening skills. The video had a lot of challenging engineering vocabulary, and at first I could tell that they were slightly overwhelmed by its content and subject matter. Because of this, we stopped the video early on and switched directions to an article below the video that summarized its contents. We read through it slowly as a group, silently, and requested the tutees to write down words that were foreign or too ambiguous to derive meaning from contextual evidence. After the first slow reading, Ryan began the video a second time, and like our first tutoring session, we wrote down pertinent questions for comprehension and vocabulary that we noticed. At thirty second intervals, we paused the film and posed these questions to the tutees, most being simply stated questions, like “Why is the Golden Gate Bridge the color red?” or “What likely is the meaning of the word suspension to the context of bridge construction?” SoSo, one the tutees present, asked the question of the difference between “premier” and “primer”, which was an interesting conversation point and highlighted the profound divergences of meaning that English words can have over just a letter or two. I believe that this lesson was more successful as we had a larger group then the time before, and the subject matter, while slightly more complex in vocabulary and topic, was more engaging to the tutees, most of whom have never seen a suspension bridge quite like the one in San Francisco.