Catalina - CP #8

Tuesday Ania and I met again at her place. It was really interesting to see how her room looks. It’s really austere, only has a desk, bed and closet and the only things she has on her walls are sheets of notes for the TOEFL exam, with lists of expressions and their synonyms, outlines on how to structure a text, etc. As I had promised, I brought a list of topics to speak about, and surely, we went over them. Again, she simply jumped into answering with a preconceived structure without really understanding the themes or how she was going to answer. First I tried to make her speak a little bit slower – this would help in making it clearer. Second, I tried to help her understand that many of the statements she makes (about, places, locations, etc) are things unknown to the listener, so she should explain a little bit more. And then her main issue, which is actually building grammatically correct sentences! She seems to think that her only goal for learning English, at least at this point, is to pass this exam. She only needs four more points on the speaking exam to enter into the college she wants to access. However, we had a small chat about the fact that the TOEFL exam will be able to grade how you due regarding your use of the language: you need to understand questions, have a large vocabulary and be able to produce correctly in English to pass it. It’s not just piecing a pre-existing puzzle together, you have to draw the image for the puzzle first! I told her not to miss class to study only for the TOEFL, she will be missing out on vocabulary, listening and speaking that will add to the knowledge she can apply to the exam. It will also add to her general English skill, since learning a language is a very difficult process. I don’t think she’ll listen to me, but at least I tried!

Catalina - CP #7

I met with Ania for the first time this Monday. She is absolutely obsessed with the IB-TOEFL exam. It’s a shame, because I think it’s taking her away from actually enjoying learning a different language and discovering all the new ways to communicate she can encounter. We met at CIES but went down to Circle K for a soda. She immediately drew out some texts that she wanted me to check out about writings for the TOEFL exam, trying to move the conversation meeting towards a tutoring. I didn’t really go over them extensively, but tried to give her an outline of what the contents of her texts should be. She just uses the expressions and structures she’s been studying about for the TOEFL but doesn’t really pay attention to what she’s supposed to be answering and what she has to talk about! I don’t know if I helped, but we spoke a little bit more about how nervous she was about the exam and decided to meet the following day to do some more speaking. I promised to take a list of possible themes so she could try to do some speaking about them, more or less in a TOEFL way.

ClassObservation 3_Dallas

I had the pleasure in observing Ramin's reading class! class began with an attempt to collect a reading assignment. Today's class was held in a different room. Not many students had the assignment which made me think culturally, students are students. They then proceeded to review their TOFEL reading scores. I noticed that Ramin made sure to keep some form of balance within the classroom, allowing them to provide backwash before he then provide the washback. LOL The class was a group 3 reading class.

We then proceeded to read an article on Thanksgiving. Prior to the reading the class was asked to provide their own background perceptions of the holiday. There seemed to be a general understanding of what the current customs/traditions were. Many mentioned things like family time, and special events like "black friday"! Students were instructed to underline the vocabulary that the y did not know and continuue to follow along with our reading.

It was useful to hear what a level three class sounds like. Most read fairly fluent and continuous with minor pronunciation errors here and there. The reading was split up by the instructor and the students were asked to volunteer. I noticed that Ramin stopped the reading shortly after the first two or three paragraphs and asked questions to ensure that the students were comprehending and following along. After getting so wrapped up into the passage I almost forgot about the importance of this. He asked questions to not only check for comprehension but the helped them visualize the events and environment of the text. He also tested their understanding of the vocabulary. It crazy how important this is; I sometimes catch myself reading in "robot mode" and stop and think what did I just read? I can only imagine those effects attempt to reading in another language.

For the sake of time Ramin close out the reading . Then closed the class providing the additional resources so the students could further connect with the reading .

Kristen Braun TP# 8&9 Kim

Since I was all ditched hardcore by one of my TPs a while back I asked Karen from the library to pair me up with another student, Kim. Kim is a woman from South Korea who is here with her husband and two children. Like my other tutee BJ, her husband is a visiting scholar. While here she is taking classes at ACE 4 days a week and volunteers at her kids' school and wishes to meet with me twice a week! I have been so inspired by these relationships from tutoring and conversation partners. These new friends are so industrious in their approach to learning and immersion.
Kim and I met up last Monday and she was very eager to get right into it, telling me she really needed help with speaking and conversations implying that two hour sessions would be fine with her (though that is not fine with me). I talked her into keeping it a an hour and a half twice a week and seeing how that goes.
We did listening exercises with clozed transcripts. I gave her (par her request) homework of listening to one news article and telling me about it the next time we meet.

Which was yesterday. We spent the time talking- Thanksgiving and the Korean equivalent chusuk which is a time to praise the ancestors for the harvest. We talked about my family "Oh! You don't live with your parents? Your brother lives in a different house?" We talked about how in the United States it is a sign of independence and maturity to move out of your folks house as opposed to the expectation in Korea to remain living with one's parents til marriage, men and women alike.

We did more listening exercises, I decided to go up to an advanced dialogue despite her protests and afterward though she claimed to only understand 40% she answered all the questions right. (Much like the students in the last class observation I had with Debbie.) Kim listened to an article about what is going on between South and North Korea. For next our meeting she will first write her summary and then talk about it to keep the explanation succinct.

CP # 2 - Matthew

Good Evening,

As I sit in this Panera Bread student infested corner, I write to you about my experience of conversation with a CIES student. I had the pleasure to meet with one of my conversation partners on Sunday to talk about how the holiday went. He is from South Korea, therefore, he did not celebrate Thanksgiving personally. Although, he did mention to me that on Thursday he hung out with his friends and ate a lot of good food... sounds like a good Thanksgiving to me!

He did mention that in Seoul, the Koreans celebrate a comparable holiday. Instead of a celebration of emerging colonists and Native Americans, it is a celebration of the new harvest year. We discussed about how many countries have eerily similar holidays. The topic of interest turned from holiday discussion to what is being consumed on the holidays. I have recently learned that South Korea likes to drink. Apparently it is custom to drink heavily on most days that end in Y; with no exception of holidays.

One thing that I found quite interesting, my conversation partner told me that Korean cabs often have Karaoke machines in the back of the cabs for the main purpose of "keeping the peace". I also learned that Koreans like to fight. Especially when inebriated and usually for no reason other than to swing at another person. Therefore, if everyone in the cab (which is usually the size of a short bus, therefore, there are roughly 10-20 people when occupied) is singing, there are less fights! How do you swing at someone who is belting out the chorus of Beyonce's "All the Single Ladies"? Ingenious Idea.

Our session ended there and we planned to meet later on this week. Until next time,

Matthew

TP #10 - Matthew

Good Evening again,

Today I had my last lesson with two of my Tutoring students. We started off with a review of the weekend and some football chat. I tried to explain that Florida State football had a really good weekend but I was met with a bit of apathy. I was told that it is rather difficult to follow a sport where one does not understand the rules. I agreed and promised that we would get together a following weekend for a football game on Sunday so I can teach them the rules of the game.

Off to tutoring... as stated in the last post, I allowed the students to choose their lesson over the weekend and they e-mailed me what they wanted to discuss. They wanted to learn more about American food while coordinating it with learning more English accents. I told them they had no idea what they got their hands into! Immediately I thought of Paula Dean and her extreme Southern accent and ridiculous "whatever we are cooking, I am going to add a tub of butter to it" mentality of preparing meals.

For some pre-lesson and background references, I grabbed two Paula Dean magazines that they could take with them. Also, we flipped through the magazine and I discussed with them that all of these recipes were considered "southern foods". After familiarizing them with the subject, we dived into the Paula Dean cooking show. Luckily I was able to find a few on youtube (our savior recently) and we listened to hear hoot-and-holler for about 10 minutes. She has so much gumption and character, it was hard to not laugh the entire time. I had a worksheet with missing words (I made sure one of the blanks was "y'all") and my students attempted to fill it out. They did about as well as I thought they would do, for this was definitely a difficult lesson worksheet.

In the end, I have gained a lot of confidence, learned about my teaching styles and have gave two students a priceless amount of education in the past few weeks. I am looking forward to keeping my feet wet in the near future. Cheers,

Matthew

TP #9 - Matthew

Good Evening. Over the break I was able to get with one of my students on the Friday after Thanksgiving. We discussed what each other did for Thanksgiving for a few minutes and then got to business. We were still concerned with picking up accents, since most of classes were coming to an end at the CIES and there was a lack of homework to be assisted with. The student was extremely confident in his work and preparation for the finals. This was nice to see because a few weeks ago he was quite stressed out about not being of level.
I thought it would be a good idea to watch a segment of a movie that is difficult to understand. So, we watched a scene from Braveheart, via Youtube. This way the student could recognize the different dialect of English being spoken. I feel that showing all of the diffferent ways a native English speaker can sound has really allowed my studetns to grasp the English language more confidently. Instead of struggling when a word is not understood, I feel that they are slowly looking past individual words and utilizing the context of the sentences. I wish I had this understanding of learning when I was attempting to learn French because I often struggled with not knowing a single word and did not have this tool of "top-down" reading/listening.
Surprisingly, the student was quite effective in comprehending the English and marked most of the questions I gave him on a worksheet correct. He stated that for some reason, the British/Irish accent was easy to understand because "They do not make words longer". I think he was referring to the shortening of English words by this accent.
It was a fun and successful meeting and I told him that our last meeting on Monday would be of his choosing. Until next time,

Matthew

Kristen Braun TP#6&7 BJ 11/17&1/20

BJ and I have kept on a steady pattern of meeting in the library- talking about our week- reading aloud from a text- discussing difficult phrases or words and then listening to something on- line.

On the 17th I think, I talked to him about stressed and unstressed syllables. Listening to him talk and read I noticed that he wouldn't say or stress the ending syllables of his words as in Tallahass instead of Tallahassee or Tenness. instead of Tennessee etc. I began to think that maybe he does not hear these last sounds b/c they are not as emphasized. It got us into talking about the confusion he's had with others due to this.

So now I get to bring in poetry as an activity on stressed and unstressed syllables! yea!

(These lessons were my 4th and 5th with BJ but including my two meetings with Radka it adds to 6&7. Just to be clear.)

Catalina - CP #6

Finally Rached and I met again! Twice in two months is not bad, I’d say. It was lunch time at CIES and we headed towards the lounge area. We started out talking about general stuff (what he was going to do in the holidays, things that he can do in Tallahassee and FSU since he’s going to be in CIES for a year, etc). Last time I’d seen him he was leaving Snookers, and he told me how he loves pool… He told me he was thinking of not doing much during the holidays since he has a lot to do in Tallahassee. And what that a lot is all about is the fact that he doesn’t have any teeth at all! He’s just getting them implanted here and he told me what it was like growing up like that, and how he feels like his friends and other students make fun of him and he really thinks his life will change once he gets all his teeth in. He also is planning on getting his glasses taken off by a sight operation. You know, I really though this is what happened to girls, how they always want to become the swan that develops from that ugly duckling, and it was so interesting to see how it’s something universal to want to become more attractive. I didn’t even notice he was missing his teeth until he showed me! Rached is actually a slow speaker buy he organizes his thoughts very well and produces good grammatical structures, unlike a lot of other students that are good at getting their message across faster but lack the grammatical accuracy. What I am not sure of is his comprehension; I think he doesn’t really understand half of what I say! A friend of his joined the conversation towards the end of the hour, and our talking shifted towards fishing for a while, until three more Arab male students walked in and somehow we started speaking about women working or not. I tried my best to be very reasonable and non-confrontational and think I did pretty well in communication without judging, but one of the students really wanted to make an issue out of it! There was only ten minutes left of their lunch time, though, so it all ended in peace. Ufff… that was a close call!

Myrick, J. CO #1

For my recent Class Observation, I was able to sit in on Ross Kozsloski's Intermediate Grammar lesson. This was an interesting class to say the least. Ross informed me that his class usually has about 14 people but, for some reason it was only about six total for the day. To practice their speaking skills, Ross paired the students up in groups of two and they had to interview each other. I liked this activity alot because Ross encouraged each pair to speak personally, not just from the service. Some students answered questions about their beliefs, reasons for coming to America, it was more to it than just "whats your major", favorite color type questions. Students seemed to respond well to Ross. he went around numerous times to check on the students' progress and answered any questions they would have. I liked how Ross commanded the class. He barely had to raise his voice, but I think that comes with time, and getting a feel for the class. I learned that you don't have to be overly aggressive or passive to get students to pay attention which Ross did an excellent job of displaying.

Myrick, J. CP #6

Onur and I met before I left for the holidays and this time was a learning experience. I introduced him to some of my friends who talked to him about an organization I'm apart of, and Onur said that he wanted to join. But, unfortunately, I told him he would have to wait until next fall before that could happen. We went on to play one of his favorite sports: basketball. As we played basketball, we talked about alot of the differences between our two cultures, especially race. He asked me about the whole problem between black/white, and I told him about slavery and alot of the problems that has transpired since then. He told me that in Turkey, they love black people and have no hatred towards them. We also talked about politics, history, and just life in general and the differences that both our cultures have as a whole.

Chris - TP#5

Last Tuesday, I met with Pete again at CIES. He seemed very busy, but he was cheerful as usual. We started talking about the movie The Graduate because he chose it for a project in his grammar class. He says he chose it because it is a symbol of America. Him and I both had never seen the movie, but he had an article on it and I knew what it was about. I went into talking about the context of the movie, like wars in the 1950s and 1960s and other major events. Daniel came in and offered some of his more advanced knowledge on the topics, for which I was very grateful.

I explained to Pete the meanings of some of the words and phrases he had circled. He's a fast learner and was mostly interested in talking about the wars and American history of that era. I told him it would definitely help to watch the movie...I might even watch it myself.

Pete will go back to Taiwan for a little while during the holiday break, but he will be coming back to Tallahassee again after that. I'm sure I'll keep in touch with him next semester.

More to come!

Lindsey CP #4 and #5

I met 2-3 times with Hakan, who is Turkish, at CIES. We talked a lot about the TOEFL, which he is preparing to take for the 2nd or 3rd time. I definitely got the impression that many students are under great pressure to pass the TOEFL. Hakan spends most of his hours outside of class studying for one section or other of the TOEFL, including weekends. I have heard this from other students as well. The test itself seems very difficult. Hakan showed me the listening section, for example, and all that is required of the test taker. The more familiar I am with the test the more respect and sympathy I have for the students trying to pass it.

Hakan and I also talked a bit about Turkey, since I am interested in the country. He is Kurdish and didn't learn to speak Turkish until he was 12 years old. He also showed me photos (on his laptop) of some of his favorite places in Turkey, like Uzungöl. Uzungöl means "long lake" and is a beautiful resort destination. I hadn't known the word for lake in Turkish, so I gained some knowledge as well!

We also spent time talking about the independent writing section of the TOEFL, since he was working hard to prepare for that. We talked some about content and structure. You could tell he'd listened to American teachers and tutors about what kind of writing is expected in the TOEFL, but also that he came from a very different writing tradition and that it is a conscious effort to remember to write in the Western style. I really wish him well with his upcoming test!

TP #8 - Matthew

I met with my tutee's via Skype for roughly 30 minutes via 3 way conversation, although, we turned the video off. This meeting was strictly just listening and speaking, without having any visual aids. What I would do would be to read a passage from the paper and have them write down what I am saying and then summarize what they heard. I found that newspapers use more colloquial language than I actually realized and a few paragraphs gave my students difficulty.
After this lesson, we talked about the column I chose (which happened to be a soccer write-up about the FSU Womens Soccer team)and I had them write a timed paragraph about soccer/football in their country. They had 8 minutes to produce as many sentences as possible but with cohesion. They both have discussed with me that they lack timed writing skills, so what better way to collaborate a listening lesson with a writing lesson than this! I felt that this was one of my better lessons because it has grabbed a few different aspects of learning as well as kept the students interested in the subject. You could feel the brains thinking and actively engaging the activity.
We plan on another Skype lesson because they seem to be the most convenient. Until next time,

Matthew

CP # 1 - Matthew

I met with my 4th assigned Conversation partner for the first time. The past three have been hard to get in contact with or generally not interested, which is fine, we all have different obligations in life. His name is Jeffrey and he is from Seoul, S Korea. We talked about the differences between Seoul and Tallahassee. Also, he shared with me his love of singing. Apparently he has quite the voice and he is not shy to share.

Jeffrey is not studying to go to school at FSU, but rather he is waiting for his job to open up in Washington DC in the beginning of January. In the mean time, he thought it would be beneficial to learn more English and take a few courses here at the CIES. He seems rather excited to move to a larger city and I completely understand. Coming from Seoul, living in Tallahassee would be almost the extreme opposite style of living. He made a few references about how one has to drive everywhere and that the public transportation is rather poor.

After a few words with Jeffrey, Nasser came to talk with us as well and we discussed the differences between their countries and how everyone in the United States have been very welcoming and polite. I made it a point that Tallahassee is generally a nice city and that perhaps it would not be as warming in larger cities. All in all, it was a good first meeting and we have plans to meet up over the weekend.

Matthew

TP #7 - Matthew

Last week I sat down with Nasser to look over a few of his compositions that he wrote in class earlier in the week. We discussed his thought process and structure of sentences as well as how he organizes his paragraphs. We worked on focusing his ideas and generating complete thoughts in his sentences. It seems that when challenged with a time constraint, the pressure to write more fluidly causes chaos. Nasser has a rather extensive vocabulary for his level and he likes to write complex sentences. I suggested that he would perhaps start to write less complex sentences to make his ideas more clear.
We practiced by giving him a set time to write a paragraph and it seemed that he was able to generate his ideas and sentences clearly, but the want to make sentences more complex was present. I shared with him the Keep It Short and Simple approach and I think he understood. Overall, it was a good session and I am glad that he has progressed so much these past few weeks.
Until next time,

Matthew

C. Smith - CP No. 6

For this lesson, I met with an online contact of mine named Y--- and we had a conversation over Skype.  the changing attitudes of the youth in Japan. We then discussed the reasons for studying other languages as well as Eastern philosophy and what it can teach people in the 21st century.She is a volunteer who helps people down on their luck who do not have anyone to talk to. She gradually became more interested in traditional Japanese thought as she grew older. 

I discussed the contrasting ideologies of Iskandar, who was versed in Aristotle and the holy man he came across whose name escapes me for now. Thanks to the magic of the blog, that will be rectified later on today. After we mentioned this, we talked about the Eightfold Path and how we implement it into our own lives. 

C. Smith - CP No. 5

Although I have taught Mohammad and his wife as a TP, this meeting was far more informal. I visited Mohammad at his house. His friend Abdullah was there along with an Indian man named Naneed (I may not have remembered that correctly). I first talked with Mohammad about ideas for the comic strip he had to draw to depict the working conditions of young doctors, and then we broke for lunch. 

He had prepared kabsa with a side of salad, and we also had the shicaccia I bought at Publix. After having lunch, we had arabic coffee (which is amazing, by the way) and then Mohammad showed me photos of a rite he and Abdullah participated in for Eid al-Adha. Mohammad had clearly performed this rite many times and handled the preparation and division skillfully. It was very interesting to see the photos. 

Victoria - Class Observation 3

I observed Ramin's advanced speaking class. It was different from the other classes I've seen because the goal was speaking. They were working on their presentations and so they had a class discussion on pilgrimages. Students told about their own experiences and of places they knew about. We decided our "American" pilgrimages were more like people traveling to national parks all over the country. It was a really neat conversation, especially when students told about their own experiences. The one that stuck with me the most was Haifa's story about her 4 trips to Mecca. She says it is only required to go once but that people like it so much they return year after year. The way she felt when she was there sounded very relaxing and spiritual. I really liked how there are no differences between people during this time. No matter how rich or poor you are, everyone wears the same thing without anything flashy, like jewelry. Also, everyone sleeps in the same places, eats together and God hears their prayers the same. They know that they are heard the same way. I thought that was wonderful.

I sat with two students, one was Turkish named Bader ( I hope I spelled that correctly) and the other I think was Chinese, but I don't remember her name. They were handed back their error logs and went over them to find their mistakes. I was glad to see this method in action and I really liked it. The students I sat with went over their sentences and asked me when they did not know what they did wrong. I also helped them with their pronunciation, which the Chinese girl had more of a problem with. There was one sentence in particular that Bader wrote that I just could not correct. Ramin sat down with him and asked him what he was trying to say in this sentence. They concluded that his problem was not using enough background information to explain what he was trying to say. He needs to think in parts of a main idea. He needs to try not to bite off more than he can chew and start with smaller more manageable sentences and ideas. It was a wonderful class and most people were eager to speak.

Victoria TP 3!!!

I am very excited to have more than one measly TP session. I met Bushra for the first time on Friday at the Global coffee hour extravaganza! She got there a little late, which was fine because I hung out with Catalina and was able to eat something and enjoy the music. Ramin, Cati and a band of renegade bongo players really livened up the place and it seemed that everyone was having a great time.

Bushra did not know that there was going to be such a hub-bub like that and apologized since it was a little hard to hear. We focused that time on learning about each other and finding out what she needs help with. She says she has only been learning English for 4 months. I think she is pretty amazing. She says she needs help being able to spell words that she has never seen written down and that she wants to work on her vocabulary and grammar.

Maybe coming from Miami where you can get by only with Spanish I have lower expectations of people. Most of these people would be able to live happy lives in Miami with the amount of English they know. It is so impressive how fast these people learn. It gives me hope for when I go to Colombia. I figure I already have a head start on that anyway.

We had planned on meeting today but she called me and told me that she was sick. So my quest to collect my TP sessions has been foiled again. But have no fear I still have high hopes of finishing on time(ish).

On a slightly unrelated note... Cati and I had a cultural adventure on Friday night that sampled a little of everything Tallahassee has to offer. We even commandeered this old man's popcorn. He was too busy groovin' and cruisin' too miss it. We met the most amazing woman with an incredible life story and then some drunk hippies too. Like I said, cultural adventure. Isn't that why we are all here?

Victoria TP 2!!

So FINALLY Latifah and I had our second tutoring session. She needed help with finding resources to research what kind of art is popular right now. She needed help navigating the library website and thank goodness she can translate the webpages because she does not know enough English to read a thesis paper. I gave her a few other resources as well.

I don't know if she understands exactly how to continue her learning. She complains about her teachers instead of looking at a way that she could improve. I think that it is neat that I can see improvement in her conversation skills. She still needs loads of practice because she is still very limited in what she can communicate but I see her trying really hard.

Victoria CP 7

I met up with Edda we spoke about her plans for Thanksgiving and Christmas. She is going home to Puerto Rico for the winter holidays and I am so jealous! I have never been and it sounds so wonderful. She was telling me about her pets that she has in Puerto Rico and I just can't imagine leaving my pet for two years. (My cat is snoring really loud next to me at the moment) She was telling me what kinds of dogs and cats she has and how they all love each other. The 2 dogs and 1 cat all sleep in a huge pile. Her pets seem to be really intelligent.

Her daughter's birthday was the Friday after we met and she turned 2!! How exciting! This little girl is so cute. She loves Florida State and every time she sees any FSU shirt or watches the game with her dad she does the war chant and the chop constantly. Now that is a fan! Our smallest but biggest fan.

Victoria CP 6

So as usual I am behind on my blogging.

I took Latifah to the art museum on campus and it was wonderful. She was fascinated by all the different art methods and styles. She told me what would be acceptable in Saudi Arabia and what would not be allowed. I had to explain the word abstract to her. Luckily she is already an art teacher and is familiar with the methods and so it wasn't that difficult. I had a wonderful time and it was really neat seeing the art through her eyes. I think she is a better artist than what we saw in the gallery.

Catalina - CP #5

This is what it’s all about. On Thursday Hanan invited me to her home for lunch on Saturday and I felt so honored. I accepted to go and was picked up at around noon. We arrived at her house a bit later, and the lunch had been divided in two homes. Since she is neighbors with Bushra the men were to be at her house while all the women were at Hanan’s. Victoria, by the way, they live right beside you!! I immediately loved the sense of magic this created… it was a little secret world in there, where the women are free to do as they please, not scrutinized and in moving around a non-judgmental way. Both girls had their hair down and make-up on. We were joined during lunch with a Japanese classmate of theirs, their Indian neighbor and her daughter and, a little bit later, another Saudi friend. The lunch started with sweet coffee and an amazing cake Bushra brought. Then the lovely meal Hanan had made was spread out and we each served ourselves a bit of everything, including some Japanese dishes! Rice, bread, salads, chicken, stew… this was a feast! And we all sat on the floor to share it together. The conversation was amazing: lost in translation situations, non-verbal communication, traditions in out different countries, food and drinks, relationships, plans… Women being girls again, worries and dreams all coming together. This was it! Second language in all of its splendor! Thanks to English we came together, we were sharing with people and cultures we’d been brought up to mistrust and misunderstand. We were un-learning what we thought was right, what we thought was well done and wrong, rewriting our knowledge about what life is seeing it through other people’s eyes. After lunch came desert, more coffee, tea, Hanan’s beautiful child coming to hang out with us, dancing of all sorts of traditions, music and laughing. When I had to leave I felt like I was breaking away from a part of the world I had just discovered and I really want to keep belonging to. I think I am so fortunate to have encountered this. I never thought this was what I was getting when signing up for the CIES experience. I never thought I could run into something of the like. How to explain this to all the students we encounter struggling to learn? Hanan, Jia, Bushra, HunWoo, Emma, Tony, Alberto, Tatiana, Katia, Ernesto, everyone I have shared moments with and all of you, my classmates. I am so grateful to have met you! Jeeesh, I’m having a Sunday night moment. Sorry!

Daniel Fletcher CP#4

Today I went to the Wakulla Springs with my conversation partner. As an inspiring botanist, he was extremely happy to see this the nature of the park. We went on the boat ride down the river, and as a result of these constant boat rides, the animals down run/fly/or swim away. We were able to get very close to the wild animals including: alligators and manatees. My conversation partner learned new words involving nature, including: evergreen/ deciduous trees, and the names of unfamiliar animals. Unfortunately, my conversation partner forgot his camera; but he plans to return sometime in the future with his room-mates.

Taylor CP #4

On Thursday night, Jose and I went to Aj's for karaoke night and met up with Sam from TEFL class, Hasan, and Jackie from CIES. Usually, karaoke night at Aj's has a few amazing people that belt some classics and a lot of funny people that can't really sing. I thought this would be a funny experience for Jose. However, the "usuals" were over thrown by a group of obnoxious guys on stage. Honestly, I felt a little embarrassed having all the international students see the way these guys act, because they pretty much fit into every American stereotype possible. Jose even said they were ridiculous!

I also got to meet Hasan and Jackie. It is crazy what Hasan is studying here and I really did not understand completely what he was going to do at Penn State (or UPenn, I get the two mixed up) but something with the human eye and a hawks eye with the zoom. I also had some interesting conversations with Jose about Chavez, the US army, and culture differences. He told me Chavez keeps taking land and kept asking me what I thought about the US troops in Iraq. I really did not expect him to be so political but they were interesting conversations to say the least! I also asked him if there was anything shocking about the US compared to Venezuela and he thought the amount of cars here is ridiculous. After awhile his friend from Spain showed up. I don't remember his name because I tried to talk to him but he was so quiet! Well, quiet until Jose got him a drink and tipped the bartender ONE dollar. Then he kept calling Americans capitalists and did not understand that this is how people make their money here. I was trying to keep it light but he was still oddly angry. Eventually a few of my friends showed up and they kept cheating and talking to Jose in Spanglish but everyone seemed to be enjoying the conversations and songs. Sam and Jackie got up and sang and we cheered them on and Hasan even got up to sing! But, Jose and I were too scared and just cheered everyone on! Eventually the crowd died down and we decided to leave.

So I parked my car in what I thought was the "overflow lot" at Aj's. I have parked there before and everything was fine. However, this time, my car was gone! A fresh tow-away zone sign was on the curb covered by a short trees branches! I did not know what to do because I needed to take home two international students. After about 20 minutes, my roommate picked us up and got everyone home. I felt so bad that they had to wait! Anyway, I hope they had a good time, it really was an authentic Tallahassee experience with the karaoke and towing situations.

Taylor: TP #5

So on Thursday I had my final meeting with Cynthia. To measure how much she has improved over the past few weeks I decided to give her "The three little pigs" to read aloud. Originally I wanted to make it a listening lesson too but having her listen to me read it and then have her summarize the story but, she told me she knew the story in Chinese. Therefore, I just had her read it aloud. Her pronunciation has improved, but like many people who are learning a new language, she was too eager to finish one word before reading the next. After telling her to slow down and really focus on the pronunciation, she almost nailed every would she wasn't familiar with or had previous problems with. After reading the story, we went over some of the vocabulary words that she did not know. For most vocabulary words I asked her what she thought it meant, then gave her the real meaning but, a majority of words that she thought she did not know, she really did! Unfortunately, we ran out of time quickly, I think the story was very long for only an hour of tutoring. I hope I helped her with her English over the past couple of weeks, it really was fun!

Chris - CP#2 (Meeting with Jia)

Hi everyone,

Last Thursday I got to meet with Jia Moon at tea time. It didn't take long for me to realize that her language skills are a bit lower than my other CP and my tutee. I think it's good that I have to add the extra effort to get my point across. Jia just arrived here from Korea about a month ago. We talked about the differences between Korea and Florida. I told her about how I am secretly a big fan of Korean music. It always surprises the Korean students when I start naming bands.

Jia told me that she wants to get better at English, but she doesn't feel she's improved much yet. I told her that the first few months are the toughest and that it wall all click soon. She seems to have a very positive outlook on everything and that's half the battle. Sometimes she doesn't understand me, but she wants to so she keeps trying.

Once we got to know each other more, we realized that she is a lot older than me. She said that in Korean, I would call her "Noo Na" because she is an older girl. So that's what I've decided to start calling her.

I look forward to meeting with her again soon.

Dallas CP3

I met with June again. We missed each other the previous week because his son was sick. Today Anthony brought his XBOX. I took the initiative to keep the conversation flowing. I was worried that we would get to caught up into observing the game. Today I told June that we had something in common. I am going to be a father. I am also getting married. I delighted by his excitement. This appeared to launch our conversation into a new level. He'd ask me if I knew the sex of the baby, I how far along my fiancee was in the pregnancy. We then proceeded to discuss the various traditions of child rearing between the two cultures. In Korea it is customary for the grandparents to name the child. Song-June, Won is his correct name. His sons name is Ciu. Ciu means child of merit. He explained that the name meant he would be an extremely admirable, and good child. He expressed that in Korea respect for parents was a essential way of life. I told him that my fiancée and I would move to Korea to teach English. I asked him about the custom for women giving birth in Korea. Many things are the same as they are here in America. He assured me that Seoul was a very American friendly city. I know we will most certainly stay in touch. We shared so much information. When I retract the info I add it in! :) We discussed the education systems in both countries. Korean teachers are disciplinarians. American teachers are more reserved. I asked him how difficult was learning the handwriting. He said, certain things are just acquired through culture. He assured me that I would have no problem learning Korean. I excited about having a bi-lingual child!

Dallas-CP2

The is an old post I first met with my conversation partner June about three weeks ago I guess. I thought I already posted this tea time activity but annhhh whatever! lol! June and I met the first time at tea time. I discovered that he reigns from Seoul, South Korea. He is really interested in golf. He's plans to pursue Sports Management. Forgive me its been so long. He's really into golf and want to start up a business in golfing in korea. He is an extremely jovial character. He told me that he is new father. His son's name is Ciu. He lives here with his wife and son. I expressed my goals for going to south korea. We met another young lady that we invited into our conversation. I can't remember her name but she was from Turkey. I remember that we discussed that in America the shorten version of her name meant breast in her country. May May, I think the was the name. LOL Oops! we joked back and forth about names for a while and then decided to take on a game of Taboo. I was sorry that I didn't think to start playing earlier, I'm a bit of a taboo nut. I remember that June was working on a persuasive paper when I arrived in the lounge. I gave a bit of pronunciation assistance to June. He needed help pronouncing persuasive. With his joking nature we laughed about PER-SWAY-SIVE the entire time.

Classroom Observation 2

Yesterday I observed Ms. Carretta's speaking class. Although it was a Muslim Holiday this class was too affected by the absences. It was a 1:00pm class so everyone seemed lively and attentive. One of the students requested last class that they cover certain pronunciations. The class reviewed pronunciation of words that contain R's and L's apparently this was a bit challenging for asian students. Ms. Carretta stated that we learn language by regurgitating what we hear. as we get older our hearing lessens which makes it difficult for us to learn newer sounds and pronunciations. For the colombian students the same challenge was held for words beginning with J and Y. So the class practiced stating certain words like "jello" and "yellow", "eerily leery". The second portion of class we were assigned a survival task. This task required us to discuss and explain how we would find food, clothing, and shelter on a island with just the tools on our desk. This appeared to be an interesting activity to use in getting students to practice speaking. It was fun coming up with our Macgyver paper clips! Ms. C is a great artist although she claims otherwise she was able to use diagrams to explain the placement of the tongue when pronouncing our R's and L's. Good Times!

Daniel Fletcher TP#1

Thanks to Ramin's help, I was able to get another tutor partner who will actually have time to meet. Last Friday I met with her at CIES, and spent the time learning who my new partner is. I also used the time to see where Merve needed help the most (I have created a speaking lesson as a result of this meeting). Her speech is quite fluid, she just has trouble pronouncing English sounds accurately.
Merve is from Turkey and actually knows three other Turks and classmates at CIES who also decided to come to Tallahassee to learn English (One of these others is my conversation partner, Ohnurhan from Turkey). She plans on taking the TOEFL exam in December.
Because it was our first meeting, I had no lesson planned, but I saw that she needed help with speaking, I helped her with pronunciation with the difficult consonant sounds in English; such as: p, th, sh, b, and z. Then we moved to the different vowel sounds (English vowels are difficult because their are no accent marks). The lesson was finished with a discussion of syllables and my attempt at accurately pronouncing Turkish sounds (I hope Merve feels more confident in her-self after she sees that we all struggle with new sounds).

Daniel Fletcher Class Observation #3

Last week I was able to observe a beginning level reading class taught by Marilyn. After sending Marilyn an e-mail concerning her class, I discovered that my previous conceptions of what I thought the class was, were totally inaccurate. What I perceived as students being frustrated with each other because they thought themselves more advanced, actually was them joking with each other. What I thought as frustration or impatience from the teacher when she said "come on guys, we already talked about this", actually turned out to be a method from the teacher to re-inform the students that what they were learning was not new, so that they would engage and not just sit there waiting for an explanation. The students were talking with themselves in class, which I thought would be annoying. In actually Marilyn allowed them to talk in class because it helps them translate (allthough this is not allowed in the more advanced classes).
I thought that I would not be able to teach a class like this because of the "issues" previously mentioned, but now I believe I could, I understand why the class is conducted in this manner, and why the teacher allows certain things I previously thought rude.

C. Smith - CP No. 4

The other day at tea time I spoke with Kei on the subject of nostalgia. We both talked about favorite games and books from our youth. Because I was around during the 80's, our memories didn't always match up, but I think reflecting upon the time when we were children and not dealing with grown-up stuff was fun for both of us. 

Kei told me that he had trouble finding thinly sliced cuts of meat. He wants to make yakiniku. I suggested that he get in touch with the butcher at his local supermarket and taught him some phrases with which he can hopefully convince the man to chop the meat into the thin strips that Kei needs for his dish.
/p>

As I write this tonight, I realize how much I'm going to miss the work we do for the class. I've still got quite a bit left to do, so I'll make the most of this weekend and the week ahead ...

C. Smith Blog Post: Legal Violations in ALT Private Dispatch Companies in Japan

There are moments in life that we regret and find difficult to discuss. The following definitely fits that description. I gain no pleasure in taking this trip down memory lane, but if it will prevent my fellow classmates from making a similar mistake, then my recounting this will be for the greater good. To remain silent and allow this to happen again, especially to one of my own classmates, is something I should try to prevent if at all possible.

In August of 2009 I was hired by Interac, a private education firm, to teach in Japan as an Assistant Language Teacher. I was looking forward to the work and I was excited to be able to go back to Japan. Though things started to turn bad fairly quickly, I tried to make the best of it. I think my first inkling that something wasn't right was being told after I arrived that I wasn't going to draw my first paycheck for two months. That was just the opening volley.

This essay is to persuade you to avoid working for Interac and other haken companies in Japan.

Some background information is necessary to understand what is happening and why. Public schools in Japan are required by law to have a foreign speaker of English on hand to instruct the students at the school, but the schools are free to choose how to address this problem. Some use the JET program, others opt for direct hire of a foreign instructor, and some others use gyomu itaku (service contracts), which are offered by private language teaching companies such as Interac, . These firms use 派遣社員 /hakenshain (temporary workers or permatemps) as teachers in schools under short-term contracts. These contracts are in fact illegal. According to the Ministry of Education, the principal must be in charge of all teachers at his (or her) school, but under gyomu itaku contracts, the company is in charge of the employee.[1]

These contracts are popular with school boards because of the relative low cost of the instructor and the ability to quickly replace a teacher without the possibility of negotiation. The positions offered by these companies are very unstable; if the board of education complains (for whatever reason), the company can lose the contract for that school and the teacher can be summarily dismissed. It is extremely easy to fire a haken employee; the easiest way is not to renew his temporary contract at the end of his service. This is unfortunately a very real possibility. The Tokyo General Union estimates that there is a 50% chance of an ALT quitting or being fired unfairly because of unfair working conditions [2].

These unfair working conditions include not enrolling teachers in shakai hoken, the national health insurance plan, the social pension plan, paying teachers for the hours they work, or the constant fear of being fired. At one training meeting I attended, I was told that we might have to wait for a phone call in between school semesters to find out if we still had a job and would go in to work the next day. These conditions are unacceptable for any professional teacher. To be told that you suddenly have no job with the rent due date coming soon and no way home is something I hope none of you have to experience.

The work itself was at times acceptable, but there were many aspects of it that were unsavory. I was at school from 8 to 5 every day, but I was only paid for 29.5 hours a week. My former employer often split its workers time between “Maxceed” and “Interac” (which are in reality the same company) simply to avoid paying the unemployment insurance it is required by law to its employees [3]. The fact that I was employed by a private dispatch company, not the school itself, also complicated things quite a bit. One of my schools (in fact the one that cost me my job) asked me to prepare lesson plans for the students, but only did so in a very vague way. I remember being told to prepare "interesting lessons", but I never received any guidance from them even though I submitted my lesson plans well in advance of the actual teaching days. The letter I wrote to them after I was fired read thusly:

---

This kit is for [redacted] and [redacted].

I wanted to give you something. These are my lesson plans and various items I used.
I hope that you will find them useful.

There is something you should be aware of. For the amount of money being paid to your haken teachers, you will only get young people fresh out of college who happen to like Japan. You will not be able to afford a person trained as a high school teacher with a degree in Education. It is simply not possible.

I wanted to be a part of your school. I paid for my plane ticket to and from Japan, for my car, for all the things I used in class, for my gas, indeed, for everything. My first paycheck, after rent was deducted, was a paltry 54,000 yen [editor's note: about 646 dollars, and I got that after waiting two months for my first paycheck]. Still, I had come to work. I was ready to work in a professional environment.

That's not what I got.

When I worked for you, you told me to plan the entire curriculum for your students.
I received no feedback or guidance from either one of you. I submitted my lesson plans to you well in advance . If you disliked something, or wanted to change something, you had only to say so. I was told to make interesting lessons, but no matter what I tried, there was no pleasing you, even if I mimicked the plans of the previous teacher you think so highly of.

I did not appreciate your standing beside me and badmouthing me in Japanese as if I couldn't understand.

But I'm getting sidetracked now, so I need to state my main point clearly:
You're in charge of the program at your school. The ALT is not. The ALT is an _Assistant_ Language Teacher. Perhaps you don't happen to like dealing with foreigners at your school, but that is part of your job. The ALT is not someone you can just foist all of your teaching responsibilities onto, especially when he is an underpaid, overworked, and underappreciated temporary hire.

I hope that you will be a better guide for the foreign teachers that come to your school in the future. Perhaps then you won't have a new one coming in every three to five months. You also won't have to lie to your students about how the ALTs keep quitting due to "health reasons".

That's about all I wanted to say.

-Smith [4]

---

As Louis Carlet noted, schools want to avoid the responsibility of directly hiring foreigners, but want the right to fire them at will [5].

My experience is not an isolated incident. I'd also like to direct your attention to a particular documentary describing the issues faced by haken ALTs[7]. The part I want you to see starts from 0:29 in the film. Eric, a teacher on a temp contract who was fired, speaks about how his life is now unstable and he is unable to save any money, that he was paid only for days worked in December (leaving him with about $1000 in pay for that month, which rent quickly ate into). I recognize the Interac paystub shown in the video, which means he worked for the same company. He also observes that there have been some months he's been so broke he's used his credit card to pay the rent. He tried to weather through the difficulty and continue teaching, but his contracts were always for 6 months at a time, and he could be terminated at any time. He complains bitterly about not receiving shakai hoken and pension payments because the company fudged his hours and tried to use that as justification for not enrolling him in these systems. By making his official working day between 8:30 and 4:30 pm (and requiring him to be on school premises between 8 and 5), the company was able to accomplish this. The video goes on to note that the Osaka Board of Education determined that these conditions were illegal. When he was summarily dismissed (see 0:54 in this video link no explanation was given or offered to him. The General Union comments that unless conditions improve, English education will be impossible in Japan. At 3:00, we are paid a visit to Robert-san's apartment as he deals with his dwindling savings caused by his dismissal by subsisting on bean sprouts and a 100 yen cut of salmon. After being fired by Interac, he has since been unable to find work in Japan. At 3:55 in the video, he again observes that no reason was given to him. Much later on in the video, students are asked to raise their hand if their school has changed Assistant Language Teachers more than five times in one year (and all of them raise their hands). The students are apparently being told the teachers quit because of "health reasons". One young boy comments that he's had his English teacher changed more than eight times in the same year, and the young lady states that she's had her teacher changed more than four times in the same year. This is completely unfair to the children and robs them of having the chance to have a professional, experienced teacher of English.

The report continues to note that while the JET teachers seemed more friendly, the haken ALTs seem far more reluctant to spend time with the children. Based on my own experience, being mistreated by my employer made it harder for me to do my job. Knowing that I was in danger of being fired, or (towards the end of my employment) working while knowing I was going to be dismissed made it harder for me to concentrate on doing my job.

The upshot of what happened to me, once it was brought to the attention of the General Union, is that Interac was found guilty of unfair labor practices by the Osaka Prefectural Board and forbiden the Osaka Board of Education from entering into contracts with Interac [6]. The General Union was very supportive and I am thankful for their help. Unfortunately, I still lost my job by not being rehired at the end of my contract. The three months I spent looking for work and trying to avoid spending money were emotionally exhausting and in the end I had to ask my parents for money to fly back to America. I probably lost close to $6000 as a result of this entire experience (buying plane tickets to and from Japan, the car I needed to do my job, miscellaneous expenses, key money for the apartment, etc.). If I had to describe this experience in one word, 'horrific' seems to sum it up adequately. I was able to salvage something out of the experience because of my interest in Japan and ability to communicate, but a person totally new to Japan would be unable to rely on either of those for comfort. As the Tokyo General Union noted, these scofflaw contracts not only lower respect for ALTs, teachers, and lecturers, but for the administrators that rely on them, and education as a whole.

I would like to conclude this post by strongly urging all of you to not work for Interac or other haken companies. You deserve better. The schoolchildren of Japan deserve better, too.

1 - http://alt.150m.com/
2 - http://tokyogeneralunion.org/issues/ALT/
3 - http://interacunion.org/2010/10/01/open-letter-to-kevin-salthouse/#more-399
4 - personal letter to a certain high school, sent before I had to leave Japan
5 - http://search.japantimes.co.jp/member/member.html?fl20041214zg.htm
6 - http://www.generalunion.org/alt/news/741
7 - リアル特集＋ (Real Special Edition). Aired on Nihon Terebi, July 17 2009.

Kristen Braun Observation #3 Debbie Carretta 11/16

This time I had the opportunity to sit in on an Advanced Listening class. The class was slim due to the Muslim holiday but there were still about six students. Debbie used her time wisely despite the abridged student attendance, we had a few minutes of introductions and class conversation. She then let the class listen to a story on the internet with the text in cloze format. They listened with out the text then had them try to fill in the blanks, then they listened with the text before them. Etc. What was interesting was after the first listen Debbie asked the class if they understood the story and the class barely responded. Then when going on to fill in the blanks they all knew about 90% of the answers.

Debbie would stop on the more difficult/ obscure words or phrases and explain them by asking the class then defining with an example as explanation.

A relaxed class but a good example of class-wide extensive reading/ listening. I wishg I sat in on iot before my Listening Lesson project!

CP#5-Tuba-11/18

This week Tuba and I met in a CIES classroom. She started talking about her TOEFL prep work but then we got into a talk about New Jersey Transit (heh), her plans for the future in the US, our mutual hatred of cold weather and the week's holiday (honoring Abraham and the near sacrifice of Isaac).

She and I have naturally fallen into talks about faith/ religion from day one. I'm a little wary about getting into the "God" talk in fear of seeming as though I am proselytizing but I also think that being a typical American presbo is a decent means of comparison for communication's sake. It seems despite our different religions we have a similar faith.

Her test is the 3rd of December and she is nervous! She improves every week and has become more and more confident with talking and listening.

Sam - CP - 4

Last night, I had my best outing yet with Hasan. Oh, man. I picked him and Jackie (also from CIES) up around 10 and we headed to AJ's sports bar for karaoke. We met up with Taylor from class and her CP, Jose. I felt as out of place, I think, as Hasan and Jackie. I'd never been to AJ's before, and honestly, walking into a place with twenty screens all set to a football game felt like walking onto another planet. I am one of those people who hides inside during game day or drives to the edge of town to be away from the booming play-by-play sounding from the stadium. I am used to going to grimy Tallahassee haunts where I know everyone. I looked around at the sea of baseball caps and knew that none of my friends would be there.

We sat down with with Taylor and Jose. We got some beers, chicken wings, and fries, and waited for the karaoke to begin. Jackie explained to me how different American karaoke is from Taiwanese karaoke, where a group of friends get a private room and pay by the hour to sing songs. The publicness of our karaoke surprised her, and both she and Hasan said they would not be singing in front of all these Americans, no way. The second song was a group of about five "bros" who sang, quite horribly, but hilariously, Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody." I watched as a crowd of my peers writhed about in front of the stage, singing along dramatically, a la "Wayne's World" (which I told Jackie and Hasan about). I couldn't help but feel outside my culture, and part of it, too.

I ended up hitting it off really well with Jackie, who was sitting by me. Hasan was a bit reserved last night, but he spoke some with Taylor and some with Jackie and I. I was sad to hear that Jackie's old conversation partner from last semester had dumped her! She explained it just like that. She and Hasan had both had partners who they felt treated them like assignments, and were not looking for a genuine connection. I hope I never make my CPs feel that way!

Somewhere among the ridiculous antics of the drunken Americans, Jackie found the courage to sing a song, and she asked me to go up with her. We sang Guns n' Roses "Sweet Child of Mine." OK, I am terrible at karaoke. I cannot hear myself at all and go completely tone-deaf. But Jackie!!! Back in Taiwan, she was in an all-girl rock band where she sang and played bass. SO RAD. She grabbed that mic and just wailed on the song. It was awesome! That gave Hasan a boost of confidence, and he sang a ballad after us. Having spoken, or sang, our piece, we left AJ's around 1:30 am.

I just can't tell you how happy I am to have the chance to meet such awesome people from around the world. I'm sad that Hasan isn't staying longer-- he heads off to Penn State in December. However, I think Jackie and I are going to be friends! She likes going to live punk/rock shows and playing music, two of my pastimes, and she is just so funny and lively. I hope she gets into FSU so she can stick around Tallahassee!

Sam - TP - 3

On Veteran's Day I met with Hayriye at Starbucks. As soon as I got there, I felt nervous because the place was packed. Hayriye arrived just a moment after I did, with her gorgeous little baby Beyza and her mother-in-law. When Hayriye arrived, I asked if she had brought her GED study guide. "No, you didn't say," she replied. Oops! I guess I had assumed, wrongly, that she would always bring it regardless. I had this moment of panic where I felt so stupid and unprepared. I am someone who likes to have a plan and sometimes I can get quite flustered when things don't go how I expect them to. I had this urge to run or cancel the meeting... yes I know that sounds crazy. But these are some things I am working on changing! I decided to think positive, and I simply apologized and said we would do our reading lesson from the newspaper. I am always grateful for a chance to overcome my anxiety and think on my toes, it can only help me when I'm in some foreign land, no doubt facing countless changes of plan. Luckily, Hayriye had to go move her car, which bought me about five minutes to skim the article and come up with some questions.

THANK GOODNESS for the TEFL lesson plan assignments, because I had just completed one on learning the parts of a newspaper. I explained how newspapers are set up and together (silently) we read through an article about Veteran's Day. After each paragraph I asked Hayriye to summarize or asked some comprehension questions. We had to go over a few terms and I had to give a brief military history. It's fascinating to read a basic newspaper article with a non-native speaker and realize how much we take for granted the use of figurative language. For instance, the article said the Korean war was "eclipsed" by the Vietnam war. What a crazy thing to say. Reminded me of this awesome video that states we use an average of 6 metaphors a minute in English... No wonder it's so hard to learn, we are almost never saying what we mean! http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/james_geary_metaphorically_speaking.html

I think the lesson went well and it gave me some insight into Hayriye's learning issues. I think the biggest thing for her is vocabulary. We just use too many words in this language. Her reading test for the GED is on December 14th, so there's not much time to help her prepare. I really hope these exercises are showing her how English writing works!

C. Smith - TP No. 12

This morning I logged on to teach Takahiro Shioji, a student of mine who is preparing to take the TOEIC exam. I noted that another teacher had used some online TOEIC preparation material to teach him a lesson, so for part of my lesson I used a TOEIC vocab quiz and talked about the words. The rest of the class was mostly spent trying to change Japanese expressions into English (which is a challenging task! Many of the set phrases can be used in a variety of different situations, meaning that when you translate them, those 3-4 words become almost a paragraph of text). 

After that, we discussed expressions such as winded, being blue in the face, getting the wind knocked out of you, getting your second wind, showing someone the ropes, etc. We also spoke about work and how to say some common work expressions. I mentioned the importance of talking about stress in order to avoid bottling things up. We then discussed things that we were going to do on our days off this weekend. 

Catalina - Class Observation #3

Monday at 10.00am I visited Ron’s composition class. It’s a lower level class. He was in class before time and wrote down on the board all those things the students had been over already regarding composition class so they can briefly revisit them. He then asked about the group writing the class is producing to see what the progress was. The class seemed very indifferent and very divided. There was a group of Arab women sitting at one of the tables, speaking to each other in their language and a group of Arab men at the other side of the class. In the middle tables are a Latin American, some Asian and an African student. It takes them time to start off the class, so while they pull out their group work, Ron gives them back they prior compositions with some feedback – these had been biographies of one another. The group writing is a good way of actually making students have to interact.

There is a very big difference in the class. Those that know the American alphabet are focused on their actual composition whereas most of the students are still struggling with capitalization, punctuation, spelling, etc. I can't even imagine how difficult evaluation has to be. Ron lets the more advanced students write the compositions on the computer, since this will change automatically the smaller errors and is a good practice for academic composition writings, while the other student still have to write their compositions down. When the students are divided by groups, he walks from one to another helping out with their composition and pointing things out. The Arab girls are still talking to each other in their native language at times, even though they have a South Korean in their group! I end up working with a girl from Venezuela that had missed the previous classes on her composition. We do some brainstorming and organization of ideas for the paper. Slowly but surely Ron has managed to engage all the students in the class, including myself, and they all end up working despite their initial uninterest. I am impressed at his subtle perseverance. Oh, and have I mentioned I love his accent? I am sure Matthew would appreciate its southern quality....

C. Smith - TP No. 11

Yesterday at 2:00 I went over to the library to teach Radka again. This time around I grabbed a pdf set of worksheets from http://www.esl-library.com featuring drills and vocabulary related to checking into and booking rooms at a hotel. I also made some other sheets featuring vocabulary words with pictures (these words covered things such as bell captains/bellboys/bell men/porters and concierges). This extra sheet also listed some sample tips to give to the staff of the hotel for doing particular things.

We also covered how to complain about particular things to the front desk and brainstormed for things to complain about (no hot running water, messes on the floors, unmade beds, etc.) After we had covered that, we did some speaking drills to reinforce concepts.

Finally, after all of that, we did a roleplay where Radka had to book a hotel room over the phone and get them to hold the room while she was arriving late. The roleplay required her to pay with her card and specify what kind of room she wanted to get (with a King sized bed).

C. Smith - Class Observation No. 3

Today got off to a bad start when I did not get up on time and made it to school later than usual, which means I made it to this observation later than I should have. Setting that aside for a moment, I'll talk about what I observed in this class.

This class was a grammar class, and it was reviewing their use of questions. Instead of turning it into a writing exercise, Ah-Young played a game with them. The class was divided into 3 teams. One team was shown a secret word, and the other teams had to take turns asking questions about it. The questions they were able to ask were limited:
Five Yes/No questions
5 Wh type questions (including How)
2 Tag Questions
4 Choice Questions

The first questions in each round were usually shaped to determine whether the object in question was a person, a thing, or a phenomenon. Sample questions included 'where can you get it' and 'what do you use it for'.

The game was surprisingly hard for the students because although they knew a lot of vocabulary, they did not know name brands for things (post it notes, scotch tape, etc.) which impeded their ability to guess. As they made questions and guessed, Ah Young took notes on what they said. After the game was over, she wrote sentences on the board and had students correct them.

Does Is it something you use everyday?
Where can you see this thing?
It's depends on the area.
Who uses it often?
Children under 5 uses use it, doesn't don't they?

Chris - Class Observation # 3

Shortly after my experience at the ESL class at TCC, I headed back to CIES to observe Ms. Ah Young Kim's speaking class. This was the first class observation where the teacher was expecting my arrival. Right when I walked in, she gave me a critique sheet for a girl who was preparing to make a presentation. Her presentation consisted of her research compiled in a powerpoint presentation. I commented on her grammar, organization, and pronunciation. Her presentation was about alternative energy sources, which I thought was a very advanced topic. It was a very informative presentation. After the class, Ms. Ah Young Kim asked me to talk with the student about her presentation.

I saw many familiar faces in the class, including my tutee, Pete. I'm becoming more and more a part of CIES myself these days; I'll have to stay involved next semester. The class continued planning out a debate which is taking place in tomorrow's class. The question was "Should same sex marriage be legalized?" I asked around to see if the class had come up with this on their own, which they affirmed (you all remember my risky speaking lesson about abortion, I'm sure). Interestingly enough, the class seemed to be divided into teams based on how they actually felt about the topic. There was a group of three people who were judges. Their job was to judge the debate based solely on the clarity of the arguments. Ms. Kim would judge everyone on the linguistic aspects. I got to look over one of the instruction sheets and saw that the debate was meant to be very civil and organized, with time allotted for each team to speak and cross examine one another.

Overall, I think I enjoyed this class the most for the cheery atmosphere. Everyone was awake and ready to work, but also not afraid to joke around a bit.

Chris - TP # 4

Hey folks,

Today I woke up early and headed over to TCC to see what this ESL class was all about. A friend of mine told me about it and said that the teacher is always looking for volunteers to help out. It was from 9-12 and I couldn't imagine what they could possibly do in there for three hours without getting bored. Not to mention, it's Monday through Thursday.

Most of the students were ladies older than me who were born in other countries and working on their English. However, there was one African guy (I didn't get to talk to him so I'm not sure what country) and, although he sat in the back, he made himself heard. I'd say about half of the ladies were Spanish-speaking and the rest were a mix of various African countries (Ethiopia, Sudan) and Middle-Eastern.

The teacher is a young woman named Kristina Pereira, who teaches at TCC and is involved with PACE. It was immediately clear that she spoke Spanish because she would sneak in some quick explanations to the Hispanic students. I'm not sure if this is a good idea because they should be learning to understand explanations in English, and that kind of alienates half the class. She told me that it was only her second week with that group of students though, so she was still feeling everyone's skill levels out. She was very happy to have me there to help.

When I first got there, some higher-up people at TCC came in and asked us to help them shoot a promotional video for the conference center. It was funny because most of the ESL students that volunteered weren't exactly sure what they were signing up for. We just sat around a conference table while they filmed for a minute. The TCC ladies asked me to communicate the point of the video to everyone, which I thought was silly, since I just repeated what they said in English. Then the ladies kind of laughed when I didn't translate into Spanish. I decided not to waste the effort in telling them that Spanish isn't spoken in Ethiopia or Slovakia...

Then it was back to the classroom. There was a reading about the occupations of a couple different people and the educations they received to get those jobs. I circulated while the students worked on those, offering assistance wherever I could. I saw that this was truly a mixed level class and Kristina dealt with it in this case by telling the more advanced students to write in complete sentences.

Halfway through the class, Ms. Pereira told me that the administrators at TCC sent her an email about me being there. Basically, they said they'd rather me not be there because the liabilities they'd have to deal with if I somehow died in the classroom would be too much to bear. We both laughed this off and filled out the necessary paperwork.

Then we moved on to contractions. There were two worksheets, with fill-in-the-blank problems using contractions. This was just a warm-up for contraction bingo. The bingo sheets had contractions written in each square and Kristina would read a sentence with one contraction in it. This was a great listening activity. There were a lot of false bingos, but that's OK. It was hard to help the students with this one without giving away the answer. All of the students really liked playing the game; it was a great way to end the lesson.

I really enjoyed spending time in this class. While it was more like a class observation at times, I got numerous opportunities to go around and work with individuals. The students thanked me for coming at the end. I'll go back next Monday and probably every Monday and Wednesday until the end of the semester.

Catalina - TP #12

Jia, Hanan and I go together on Monday for another tutoring session and I guess this week it just one of those critical times where everyone is falling apart!

We started the class in one of the classrooms at CIES, and I wanted to drop a bit of the grammar oriented tutoring to try and focus on composition since I have read the latest papers by both of them and they need to work on their sentence structure. We started with writing on the board what ideas they have on what you can do on a free day. With brainstorming came many sentences and actions, until the board was full. Then I asked them how they would organize a composition on ‘What would you do on a free day?’ and how they simply had to combine and connect what they had already said. I was going to give them some time to actually write the text and then go over the structures when Jia freaked out. She was having boyfriend problems and was a mess, and could not concentrate on the writing. It was hugging time and chocolate time, so I stopped the tutoring session and all three of us went to Circle K, I bought some snacks for all of us (and diet coke to compensate, of course) and we sat at one of the small booths to finish the lesson.

The informal setting had helped Jia calm down and I decided we would just finish the pronouns activities we’d started the previous day. This way Hanan wouldn't feel bad about the time she was taking off from her son to be in the tutoring, and she'd feel as if she'd accomplished something. Although relative pronouns became an issue - and I discovered how much I actually don’t know about them while trying to explain them- we ended up finishing all the pronoun activities. We went over ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ together, because Hanan preferred to do it as a group instead of filling it up first and then correcting, and it ended up being a very good idea. It kept Jia concentrated and not overwhelmed, and they both could explain why they chose one form of pronouns or another to each other! They really liked the story, I thought it was funny how they really enjoyed a children’s tale. I guess no one ever truly grows up! It ended the class on a lighter note and, I hope, kept Jia from worrying for a while.

Catalina - TP #11

This session started two nights after the barbecue that Tony invited me to on Sunday. I met some of his friends (and they daughters and sons) and had amazing Salvadorian food and a great time. I have to add that, since I started teaching them, both Tony and Emma have been telling me a lot of personal stuff in our traveling to and from my pick up. In a sort of way I am the perfect shoulder to cry on, since I am external to their daily situations and relationships, am non-judgmental, pretty positive about every problem and, after all, I am going to leave pretty soon. Well, ‘perfect shoulder to cry on’ actually became more than an expression when Emma drank a bit too much and let’s just say that a lot of the stuff they had both been telling me about sort of surfaced.

So Tuesday rolls around and Emma comes to pick me up, starting off with apologies that I shrug off... and there we go to class again! I can say our relationship has grown stronger, yet I try to keep myself objective towards everything. They confide in me and have given me, over our sessions, a lot of very personal and maybe dangerous information. I wonder if it affects the classes in anyway and would like to see myself in the first sessions to recognize the differences.

This time for sure we were going to keep the lesson useful and communicative, so I prepared information that you might need for a hotel reservation and/or payments through the phone. Role playing with a phone conversation was how we approached this, but I’m pretty sure stuff like ‘what is your card number?’ or ‘what is your billing address?’ can come in handy at many situations. We went over numbers too, and Tony was happy about it, since it’s very important to write amounts correctly on checks. We started with the basic payment information and then added to actual hotel information towards the end of the lesson. I had printed out many payment form papers, so we role played for a while. When it was my turn to be the client, they both hated it, since they had to ask me several times to spell things out and they are still having problems with the vowels in the alphabet!

What made me feel really good is that, after the lesson ended they actually wanted to go over ‘Hello, Godbye’. They don’t hate the Beatles! They actually have grown to like the song and wanted to sing it! (Well, it’s more like muttering it under their breath, but, heck! It was their idea and that is enough for me!). You say stop, and I say go go go!

Catalina - TP #10

Alberto has definitely dropped the classes. He stopped working with Tony and has changed companies for a larger one with more work and I think he feels like he shouldn’t be coming to the classes that Tony set up. It saddens me; I wish I could do something about it. I insist on Tony calling him, but he has not returned.

Anyway, on Monday I thought trying a Cloze test with ‘Hello Goodbye’ by The Beatles would be a good idea. Boy how wrong I was! And I even thought, before going, that the song would be too simple and they would be a bit disappointed that I considered them such a low level… well, that didn’t happen! ‘Hello Goodbye’ took us about an hour and a half. Beatles, I hate you. We listened to it a ton of times, went over all the vocabulary, spoke about contraries and comparisons, and listened to it another ton of times. The problem was that neither of them believed that they could ever understand the song and they were not capable of comprehending they could get most of the vocabulary through context or even copying it from another sentence, since it was a very repetitive song. This is where their non-academic background really became obvious. When we were finally able to finish the song, they were curious about the other activity I had brought in the sheet. Since we would be talking about comparisons in the song, I thought it would be good to introduce the structure of comparatives and superlatives in English. They were already tired but headstrong about finishing the day activities, so we started out with them. About twenty minutes into the comparatives I suddenly asked myself “what am I doing? This is definitely not a priority to learn, it’s completely grammar based and they are not going to have to apply it to communication any time soon.” That’s when I stopped. And I told them! I told them I think it was wrong that we spent too much time on the theory of comparatives and superlatives because they were not going need to use them immediately and that we should focus on more practical things. We went over some examples they might find: ‘cheaper prices!’, ‘the fastest oil change’, ‘the best deals in town’… and after such a long and grueling session decided to end it there. Ugh! How could I have not realized when I was organizing the class that this was not a good idea?

Chris - TP#3

I met with Pete again on Tuesday. I felt bad because I had to pull him away from a game of Scrabble o the breezeway, but he didn't mind. We talked for a few minutes about how our weeks have been going.

We got into talking about modals, which Pete said he was very confused with. He had a worksheet for homework and after my first glance at it, I admitted that I was also a little confused with some of the examples. It was tough to describe to him the differences between "could, should, must, may, might, etc." Pete doesn't get discouraged easily and beared with me. I tried my best and I think that I helped Pete's understanding of modals in the end.

I asked Pete if he wanted to continue reading the exchange student journals from the Rotary website. He asked me just to give him the link rather than read it together. I'm excited that he showed some interest in reading in his free time. He's clearly beyond the point of intensive reading limitations.

Lindsey CP #3

I volunteered again as an English Conversation Club tutor recently. It was my second session there and at first only an elderly Korean woman showed up. She had also attended the week before and we were glad to recognize each other. Her listening skills are very high, but she struggles producing, so her speech is very slow and limited. It had been Halloween the weekend before and she had been to a pumpkin carving Halloween party hosted by the Center for Global Engagement. She was very interested in the holiday and all of the traditions. She had been given part of one of the carved pumpkins after the party and told me how she cooked some kind of porridge with it. Apparently in Korea pumpkin dumplings are a popular dish, which sounds amazing to me!

Midway through the drop-in session, two Chinese girls arrived. I switched gears a bit and we all introduced ourselves. Then I led a small group discussion between the 4 of us about travel. I asked them about different places they had traveled while they had been in the States - in Florida and elsewhere - as well as any travel plans they had coming up. I think it was a topic that interested everybody. At the end they all asked if I would be back the same time next week and I felt awful that I had to tell them no because my working hours changed. Hopefully a great ECC volunteer took over!

Lindsey TP #4 and #5

I met with Y, my TP, twice last week. On Tuesday we met at the library as usual. The week before we had briefly touched at the end of the session on the American structure of governmnt. Y had mentioned that the next time she wanted to explain to me something about the Korean system of government, because she knows a lot about it. So on Tuesday it was one of the first topics I introduced and I think it was a successful one. Because it was a topic she knew a lot about and was interested in, there was a lot she wanted to say. When she came to a vocabulary word she needed to use but couldn't remember - like 'constitution' - she drew a diagram and from there I came up with possible vocab selections and she quickly found the word she needed.

We met again on Saturday, again at a Starbucks near her house. Unlike the last time we had met there, she had already ordered her own drink by the time I arrived. I congratulated her on doing it by herself! During our session I was reminded again how speaking with a non-native speaker can make you question your own understanding of some words. For instance, I used the word 'duplex' in our conversation and when she queried it I struggled a bit to answer. "A duplex is like two houses that are attached. But only one story, otherwise it's a townhouse. Or can a duplex be 2 stories? And a row of more than 2 is still a duplex, right?" None of which is helpful to Y who is staring at me confused. I left her with the notion that it was a place to live in, but not a stand alone structure. Sometimes sharing a general sense of meaning is the best you can do.

Lindsey - Class Observation #3

Last Monday I observed Anisa's AE/LI Grammar class. It wasn't a perfect day to observe a grammar lesson because she didn't do one. Instead, she introduced a new assignment to the class - a presentation using present perfect and simple past - using material covered previously. The students were supposed to spend the hour getting started on their presentation - picking a topic, brainstorming, etc.

While observing wasn't particularly useful grammar-wise, it was an interesting class anyway. The students had no motivation to begin their work, and most didn't even try to start. So Anisa had to spend the whole hour motivating them. She went over the assignment criteria multiple times to make sure they understood, and wrote several examples/suggestions on the board. She also repeatedly reminded them that the benefit of getting a good start on the work in class was that there would be less to do at home. Still, it was like pulling teeth to get them to write down anything. But she didn't give up!

Myrick, J. CP#5

Hello again beautiful people!

For our most recent 'hangout', I decided to take Onur to a movie on campus, which proved to be a good time. We saw the movie, "Scott Pilgrim VS the World", and it was a great movie. It was about this guy who has to fight these seven evil ex-bf of this girl he fell in love with. It's a comedy that I thought that Onur would be confused about a lot of the parts in the movie but he understood about 98% of the movie. He told me that it was his 1st time going to the SLC movie theater and he thought the movie was very funny. I noticed that he likes to laugh a lot, so I might take him to the Comedy Zone the next time we hang out.
Cheers!

Myrick, J. CP#4

Afternoon fellow bloggers! Hope everyone weekend was well. Onur and I are having quite a time getting to know each other. For our conversation time, we decided to head back to the SLC and he taught me how to play chess. It was alot more daunting then I originally believed especially since he learned a complete different way from what I'm use to. During this time, we talked about his goals while he is in America. He applied to go to school at Ohio State which he is excited about above the other choices he has. We also talked about Allen Iverson playing in Turkey where Onur is from. He says that alot of people are excited about Iverson coming to Turkey and hopefully have a winning season.

TP #6 - Matthew

Hello all fellow bloggers and bloggies. errr... Yep. I'm going to go with it...

The second session of TP time went very similar to the previous one of last week. All of us seemed to enjoy our lesson plan last time so we decided to do it again with different examples.

This time, instead of youtube conversations, I used music. I picked a few different styles of music. Rock, Rap, and country. I was careful to pick songs that were not too intense or distracting. This way, I could copy/paste the lyrics and then delete a few. I made sure to delete a few that were easy to understand and then, later on in the songs, delete a few hard lyrics. I know that learning lyrics are difficult in the first place because some words sound very similar, especially when sung, so a lot of thought went into which lyrics made the cut. This went over well. The exposure to different genres of music is always a good thing and both my students really seemed to enjoy the different sounds they were hearing. As always, the lesson seemed to get a bit off topic with the songs. One question of a meaning stems a whole new conversation. I do enjoy teaching this way because I find that my students are genuinely interested because they are asking the questions.

I found it important to tell my students that they can do this on the own as well. Teaching students self-sufficient learning tools is critical to their advancement at home. If they can pick a tune that they find interesting and then attempt to learn the lyrics, they will be interested in learning while they are being entertained. That is a win-win situation.

Until next time,

Matthew

TP #5 - Matthew

I had two Tutoring sessions this week that kind of touched on the same subject and covered the same information. Therefore, TP #5 and TP #6 will probably look quite similar in review of discussion. Anyways, Cheers. Today we continued our listening and speaking skills and listened to a few youtube clips. I had copied down the subtexts of the clips and printed them out, deleting a few words. This allowed my 2 students to listen to the missing passages (which were usually the parts where the accent really effects the words). I found it interesting that the English and Australian accent was easily picked up. Nasser said it is so because in Saudi Arabia he communicates mainly with English folk.

The southern accent is a genuine mystery.

There was no luck in even trying to comprehend half of the southern accents I picked. Honestly, I was having difficulty understanding as well. The next lesson, I chose a less difficult southern accent to listen to. After the few passages of different languages, we felt confident to move on to speaking. I used the America Today passages from the website Ramin gave us and had them each read a passage. Then we would go over what words were difficult to pronounce. Often we would get off topic because the subjects of the conversation were interesting. I did not mind because, even though we were off topic, we were still speaking and learning.

Everything is a learning process.

Until next time,

Matthew

Matthew - Class Observation #3

Last Tuesday I sat in an afternoon class with Ryan for a listening class in the intermediate/high level. The lesson plan for the day was on the board and together they briefly went over what was going to be covered. At the beginning, Ryan handed out a teacher evaluation for the class to fill out. This will let him see what is working for the students and what they are interested in learning for the remaining weeks.

After this was completed, the first lesson was based around watching a movie and filling out a sheet with the missing words in a sentence. The class first observed a 4-5 minute scene from the movie "The Terminal" and was asked to look over the document before really trying to fill in the missing words. They then proceeded to watch the segment two separate times. Each time the scene ended, the students were given a few minutes to fill out what they comprehended. I thought that this was challenging, even to myself, because of the slang and dialect that the actors were speaking in. This seems like a good method of learning how to listen because the student gets to understand the context of the conversation and can determine what they expect to hear by how the conversation is going. I found that the students were generally interested in the movie because it had a good level of entertainment. To me, having that level of enjoyment while learning is important. One thing that I found challenging in this lesson was the speed of the language while trying to fill in the blanks at the same time. It was noticably challenging for one section of the paper because there were a lot of missing words in a small segment of conversation. Personally, I could understand what was being said, but being able to write as fast would definitely be challenging. I will take that into consideration when I use this teaching method (considering the level of the students).

The second portion of the class was dictated around a listening to different accents approach. There were two speakers that would discuss different topics. One had a very interesting southern accent and the other was a teenage african-american male. Students were to write down key topics and general outlines of what they were talking about. It was a good exercise to allow the students to experience the melting pot of American accents.

Until next time,

Matthew