Date/Time: September 27th/3:00PM
Location: CIES lounge
Topics Discussed: Feng & I continued with the Food Cooking". We compared such different dietary preferences like eating meat and being a vegetarian. We learned new vocabulary, practised dialogues and solved the crossword puzzle all related to the topic of cooking food.
Lessons I learned about tutoring/my tutee: I learned that the students look forward to the subjects they can directly relate to (such a "food"). By examining this topic, my tutee is gaining very practical knowledge which adds to his confidence as an English language speaker.
Sunday, September 30, 2018
EveTS#11
Date/Time: September 27/8AM
Location: Skype
Topics discussed: Dojun and I started working on grammar with the help of the book series "English for Everyone". We are covering Present Tense, Numbers, and Easily Confused Phrases. We also cover the subject of meeting your colleagues from the "Business English" book.
Lesson(s) I learned about tutoring/my tutee: Dojun told me, that Korea celebrated their version of Thanksgiving Day (which lasted all week long) He explained to details of the traditional Korean holiday meal and what celebrations take place during this week. I enjoyed learning about this rich tradition of honouring your ancestors.
Location: Skype
Topics discussed: Dojun and I started working on grammar with the help of the book series "English for Everyone". We are covering Present Tense, Numbers, and Easily Confused Phrases. We also cover the subject of meeting your colleagues from the "Business English" book.
Lesson(s) I learned about tutoring/my tutee: Dojun told me, that Korea celebrated their version of Thanksgiving Day (which lasted all week long) He explained to details of the traditional Korean holiday meal and what celebrations take place during this week. I enjoyed learning about this rich tradition of honouring your ancestors.
EveTS#10
Date/Time: September 26/3:00PM
Location: CIES lounge
Topic Discussed: We continued with the "Greetings" and have finished the Chapter about "Shopping for Food" from "English Every Day" book and started the next lesson "Cooking Food".
Lessons I learned about my tutee: Feng seems to be quite happy to learn about food as he likes to cook. Our lessons are helping him to navigate the US grocery store and make educated food choices. He prefers healthy food versus fast food. He was surprised to find out the difference between the metric and non-metric system (China & US respectfully). He learns new vocabulary eagerly and is curious about the idioms.
Location: CIES lounge
Topic Discussed: We continued with the "Greetings" and have finished the Chapter about "Shopping for Food" from "English Every Day" book and started the next lesson "Cooking Food".
Lessons I learned about my tutee: Feng seems to be quite happy to learn about food as he likes to cook. Our lessons are helping him to navigate the US grocery store and make educated food choices. He prefers healthy food versus fast food. He was surprised to find out the difference between the metric and non-metric system (China & US respectfully). He learns new vocabulary eagerly and is curious about the idioms.
Eve TS#9
Date/Time: September 25th, 3:00PM
Location: CIES
Topic discussed: Real Life
Lesson(s) I learned about my tutee/tutoring: Today was a rather unusual tutoring session. Instead of a traditional in-class time, Feng & I had a so-called field trip. I was having a difficult day - one of those when EVERYTHING goes wrong: parking in the wrong place and feeding my last quartes into a wrong parking meter to losing my purse (that, luckily, was travelling on top of my car!) to being late for class...you name it! Feng volunteered to accompany me along each step of the hectic journey. Today helped me see that Feng is a very friendly and generous person while its hard to see in a formal setting of a classroom. This may be explained by the cultural norm - Chinese people tend to act in a very reserved way.
Location: CIES
Topic discussed: Real Life
Lesson(s) I learned about my tutee/tutoring: Today was a rather unusual tutoring session. Instead of a traditional in-class time, Feng & I had a so-called field trip. I was having a difficult day - one of those when EVERYTHING goes wrong: parking in the wrong place and feeding my last quartes into a wrong parking meter to losing my purse (that, luckily, was travelling on top of my car!) to being late for class...you name it! Feng volunteered to accompany me along each step of the hectic journey. Today helped me see that Feng is a very friendly and generous person while its hard to see in a formal setting of a classroom. This may be explained by the cultural norm - Chinese people tend to act in a very reserved way.
Yun Jung TS #13
Date/Time:
September 28, 2018, 1:15 p.m.
Location:
CIES Student Lounge
Topic/Skill: Speaking
She is very knowledgeable and having the balanced views on a variety of issues of society.
In this session, we talked about labor union, minimum wage, and government's role etc.,
She introduced spotlighted news about one retail company and the employee's wage last year.
We found that there are many in common for the aspects in social problems in advanced and mature economies.
I think she holds many interesting topics and the opinions about it, which can be good study materials to attract students' interests in her future class.
Yun Jung CP #3
Date/Time:
September 28, 2018, 10:00 a.m.
Location:
CIES Student Lounge (Main Floor)
Topic/Skill: Speaking
My conversation partner has comprehensive abilities to keep our conversation active and pleasant and gave me many lessons on my weakness in English.
In this session, she explained subtle difference of words such as now and for now.
I thought she has great talents in teaching when she tried to explain some confusing words in a very effective way of visualizing.
See, Look at, watch, and stare are very simple verbs with same meaning , but I felt difficulties using the proper word choice sometimes.
She gave me examples sentences by assuming watching soccer game.
A: Let's watch the soccer game now.
B: Did you see Mike, the world top striker?
A: No, not yet, let's try to look for him.
B: Oh I found him, I'm so excited to look at him in the real soccer ground. let's stare at him how he plays.
Yun Jung TS #12
Date/Time:
September 28, 2018, 11:30 a.m.
Location:
CIES Student Lounge (Main Floor)
Topic/Skill: Speaking
My tutor prepared one topic to talk about for this tutoring session.
I always appreciate his diligent and sincere attitude to make a plan for tutoring.
He has become the role model as an ideal teacher, which got me thinking how I could place my role in teaching. He tries to improve my weakness in details; the pronunciation practices for my chronical phonics errors and the delicate instructions for the modification of words to indicate clearer meaning. Also, he gave me enough time to speak about one issue and showed me timely gestures of nodding and attentive asking, which encouraged me to continue to talk. I feel my speaking is being improved overall in accuracy and fluency.
I'm still struggling in speaking, but I can feel my English skills are getting better thanks to him!
I'm still struggling in speaking, but I can feel my English skills are getting better thanks to him!
Saturday, September 29, 2018
Meghan TS #6
Date/Time: September 29th, 8:00 am
Location: Sykpe
Topic/Skill: Speaking/listening skills
Feedback provided to tutee: During this session we focused on his listening skills and his ability to respond to a speaking task based on his listening skills. To begin with, we played a game I'm calling "Cause and Effect" (though it may have a different name somewhere, I edited a more boring version I found online) in which I began by saying "If I had a million dollars, I would buy a house", to which he replied "If I had a house, I would sell it at a higher price", which I replied to and so on. During this game, we ate six lobsters, bought two houses, moved countries twice, drove a boat to Hawaii, and witnessed the worlds biggest ball of yarn. It was fun and he seemed engaged, only asking once or twice when I used challenging vocabulary. We then watched two comedy videos, which I asked him to summarize. He struggled listening to the videos at full speed, so I slowed them down to 75% and he did better.
Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned:
Today I learned that it's very important to check for comprehension during listening activities, and that if a speaking example (especially one on YouTube) is too fast, it can be slowed down easily. I also learned that it's very important to specify the genre of a video before you show it. I showed him two comedy clips, and although he understood the first one was comedy based on the audience laughter caught on film, he didn't realize the second one was comedic. He told me he had a vague idea that it was supposed to be funny, based on the strange way one of the characters was behaving, but he wasn't sure, and that made comprehension of the scene itself a bit more difficult for him.
Meghan TS #5
Date/Time: September 24th, 3:00 pm
Location: Hecht House Student Lounge
Topic/Skill: Practice for vocabulary dictation quiz
Feedback provided to tutee: During this session we focused on practicing for her vocabulary quiz on Wednesday. At first she just wanted my help with practicing dictation style quizzing with her class's new vocabulary words, but we both quickly realized she was having a hard time with the words themselves rather than the quiz format.
Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned:
I struggled a bit with explaining some of the vocabulary words, as I thought they seemed a bit difficult for her level. The words "segregate" and "desegregate" were on the list, for example, and I had a hard time explaining their meanings without her mixing them up. By the end of the session, we had gone through, defined every word on the list, made example sentences, and briefly practiced the words in the context of the quiz format. She had a lot of trouble with "sit-in" versus "boycott", since they are both forms of protest, but eventually understood the difference thanks to a short practice drill in which I only used those two words. After she mastered those two, I added the subsequent words one by one until she seemed to understand and feel more prepared for her quiz.
Friday, September 28, 2018
Patrick TS #16
Date/Time: September 28, 2018, 11:30
a.m-12:30 p.m.
Location: CIES Conference Room
Topic Discussed: Fluency in Speaking English
My plan today was to help my Tutee
work on automaticity and fluency in speaking. I provided a topic she knew well
and asked her to jot down three or four points related to the topic that would
guide her speaking. She accepted the task and, after making some notes, began to
speak. I was surprised at the movements in her narrative which circumnavigated
the topic and also packed-in a wealth of descriptive information that covered a variety of related
themes.
Along the way on this interesting and
vivid verbal journey, I noted that some of the work in Thursday’s class
surfaced during her speaking. It shouldn’t be a surprise that Thursday’s class
influences at least some of the lesson time we complete on Friday. We seem to
reflect on TEFL learning often. These reflections provide a stimulus for
speaking and thinking.
My lesson plan was intended to
provide a familiar topic as a means of promoting speaking and listening. Discussing TEFL ideas
seems to provide a natural segue into the “pre-lesson” structure. My Tutee took
the speaking challenge to a level I knew was possible, but was amazed to see.
Her speaking fluency seemed to “take on a life of its own” during the lesson
today. I was especially surprised to observe how she wove into her narrative one
of Thursday’s special class activities. That class activity was a listening
exercise during which we were to fill-in missing words from song lyrics. By
referring to this song exercise, because it transported her back to a
particular and memorable life-moment, she created a lengthy and detailed illustration
of the points she wished to make that related to her topic.
I made a few observations “along the
way” and asked questions. My questions included various vocabulary words that
fit the context but prompted thought about word usage. She wrote down the new words and we examined their use in
context. A question I ponder is this: Who learns more? The teacher or the student?
Tatum TS #8
Date/Time: September 28, 2018
Location: Skype
Topic/Skill: Public holidays, Current events and news stories
Feedback provided to tutee: I corrected the tutor and provided vocabulary words and edits as we were talking. For example, we were talking about unemployment and he was unsure of the difference between "the unemployment rate was going up" and the "unemployment rate was going down" so I explained the differences and what they meant.
Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned:
I learned a lot more about Korean public holidays as well as the current political situation in South Korea. My tutee was really interested in the housing problems in Seoul, where the rent and prices of houses in Seoul are going up each year. We also talked about the terms of presidents, which is 4 in the US with the ability to run for a second term. In Korea, however, the president serves for 5 years and is unable to run for a second term. Now, many progressives in Korea are calling for the laws to change so that the terms of the president look more similar to that of presidents in the US, with shorter term limits and the ability to be reelected. We discussed the pros and cons of these term lengths and limits and the effect they could have on policies and laws passed.
Location: Skype
Topic/Skill: Public holidays, Current events and news stories
Feedback provided to tutee: I corrected the tutor and provided vocabulary words and edits as we were talking. For example, we were talking about unemployment and he was unsure of the difference between "the unemployment rate was going up" and the "unemployment rate was going down" so I explained the differences and what they meant.
Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned:
I learned a lot more about Korean public holidays as well as the current political situation in South Korea. My tutee was really interested in the housing problems in Seoul, where the rent and prices of houses in Seoul are going up each year. We also talked about the terms of presidents, which is 4 in the US with the ability to run for a second term. In Korea, however, the president serves for 5 years and is unable to run for a second term. Now, many progressives in Korea are calling for the laws to change so that the terms of the president look more similar to that of presidents in the US, with shorter term limits and the ability to be reelected. We discussed the pros and cons of these term lengths and limits and the effect they could have on policies and laws passed.
Thursday, September 27, 2018
Yun Jung TS #11
Date/Time:
September 24, 2018, 11:30 a.m.
Location:
CIES Student Lounge (Main Floor)
Topic/Skill: Speaking
My tutor and I talked about politics and taxation in both countries, and she explained about different tax system in each state in US. The tutor spoke with a lot of wit all the time, so I had lot of fun to listen to her various issues. She let me know some news sources about Florida and Ted-Ed for students which were very helpful for English studies out of class.
We also had some time to talk about the level-appropriate material for listening lesson plan as well.
This tutoring session is very good for me to develop natural conversation skill in English with various topics.
Yun Jung TS #10
Date/Time:
September 24, 2018, 10:00 a.m.
Location:
CIES Student Lounge (Main Floor)
Topic/Skill: Speaking
I could train my speaking skill throughout this tutoring session. The tutor picked up one topic about Confucianism and gave me the related article for the speaking training. I tried to extend the boundaries of conversation issues with the starting point of Confucianism. The tutor gave me a lot of time for me to speak one issue to another. He asked me if there was something unclear. It was a great training for speaking that let me find some similar aspects in culture of both countries.
Yun Jung TS #9
Date/Time:
September 21, 2018, 11:30 a.m.
Location:
CIES Student Lounge (Main Floor)
Topic/Skill: Pronunciation(Minimal Pairs) and Speaking
My tutor has always tried to apply the teaching skills that he learned in the previous TEFL class during our tutoring session. He prepared some material that can allow me the intensive exercise of the minimal pairs. It was really helpful for me because I haven't had any experience that the native speaker corrected my chronic errors in pronunciation.
I was very glad when my pronunciation for 'f' sounded like a native speaker, thanks to the repeated practice during this tutoring. I'm learning his sincere attitude toward learning as well as English.
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