Ben - TP #16

I just got back from my final tutoring session with Glenda, and my final session for TEFL class!!! For this last time with Glenda I decided that it might be nice to share a bit of New Orleans culture with her, so we took a walk around Audubon Park (a beautiful park in Uptown New Orleans). As we walked around the park I simply asked Glenda to describe to me anything that she saw in as much detail as she could manage. For example, if there was a person riding a red bicycle around the park and the person had brown hair and it was a girl and she was going very fast I would have Glenda tell me as much of that as she possibly could. I thought this was a great exercise, especially for our last session together because it allowed Glenda to work on her speaking skills and it was also a nice time to spend together outside.
Glenda actually did very well in describing her surroundings in great detail. She mentioned all of the colors that she could see, what people were doing, what animals she could observe and what their actions were like. The idea behind the exercise was that it was supposed to help Glenda feel more comfortable describing the world around her in English. I was quite happy with it actually. I think it is important to have lessons where the student (tutee, etc.) has the opportunity to freely express themselves without the pressure of getting something right or being tested on something. Outside, in the park, Glenda actually spoke better English than in any of our previous sessions. I definitely plan on using what I learned today about this type of learning environment in my future experiences teaching English. Perhaps a fun field trip is in order, or at the very least a small trip outside the classroom.
Overall, teaching Glenda has been a pleasure. We actually discussed the possibility of continuing the tutoring sessions. I felt blessed to have another student who worked hard and really showed a desire to learn more about the English language. All three of my tutees: Fumie, Jason, and Glenda were a joy to get to know and I feel very blessed to have had the opportunity to teach them.

Ben - TP #15

I realized before meeting with Glenda yesterday that I had not assigned her anything to work on and I did not think it would be very useful to continue talking about Love Actually, so I brought along my "things that are awesome" speaking lesson plan. Of course, I took into account the fact that Glenda is in her mid-fifties and "awesome" isn't necessarily the most relatable term, so I modified the lesson into something more along the lines of "things that we care about." I asked Glenda to compile a list of ten things that she cares about and then three reasons for why she cares about each thing on her list. I purposefully did not monitor her while she made the list, though I did let her know that if she needed help with specific vocabulary terms I would be more than happy to assist her. She did not need much help however, which was nice, and had a list of ten things in no time. I do not remember all of the things she had on her list but I know they included: family, friends, food (which was actually a big one for Glenda), nature, work (another very important one), God (or faith), and a few others. Actually, Glenda's list was fantastic because many of her terms allowed for further discussion and exploration.
We started with family because for me that is the most important thing in our world, and Glenda shared my point of view on that. She explained that our families support us and we support them, our families care for us, and we can always trust of family members (this is of course debatable, but I was not about to split hairs). Food was another important thing that Glenda said she really cared about. She explained that food brings people together, it is a way of sharing culture and a way of life, and it allows us to live. I couldn't agree more with Glenda on that. This lesson was a real pleasure because it allowed Glenda to freely talk about things that meant a lot to her, and it helped me learn more about Glenda and the way that she looks at and approaches her life. By the end of the lesson I almost forgot to go over some of her grammatical and pronunciation errors I was having such a great time. I did though, I went over them.

Ben - TP #14

I met with Glenda again this past Thursday for our second tutoring session. As I mentioned in the last post, I had asked Glenda to prepare a dictation of her own to read to me about one of her favorite movies. To start the session I simply had Glenda read to me what she had written down, I did not correct her grammar mistakes or ask her to repeat lines, I simply let her read. She really did a very admirable job on her first try. To my absolute delight she talked about a movie called Love Actually which is a movie that I also love! Unfortunately for Glenda, it is also a movie with a lot of different characters, plot points, and story lines. That being said, this movie afforded Glenda and I a great learning experience. As I said earlier, she really did a great job on her first try. She explained, with some difficulty, that the movie is about a group of different people falling in love in their own unique ways. One of them is a politician, one is a writer, another is a man who lost his wife, and one is a silly young man who caters events. Interestingly enough, there is a plot line involving a Portuguese woman and when she spoke Portuguese, Glenda could pick up a lot of what she said (because Glenda is fluent in Spanish), something that I could not do without subtitles.
After Glenda did her first dictation, I taught her ways to more effectively and efficiently tell a story (particularly a movie's). We went over some vocabulary that I had used for Fumie: plot, action, characters, script, dialogue, etc. Then I went over some vocabulary terms that were pertinent to this specific movie: catering, love, Prime Minister, widower, affair. Using context clues, Glenda was able to figure out what almost all of these terms meant, with the exception of Prime Minister which I had to go into a little more detail about. After the vocabulary exercise, I asked her to read me the dictation again. This time I took notes on common grammatical errors I heard and wrote them down on a sheet of paper. After Glenda was done with her second reading we went over these errors together and I explained why they were incorrect and how she can fix them in the future. Before we knew it, our time was up and I felt that this session was even more productive than our first.

Ben - TP #13

This past week I was having some troubles finding a tutee here in New Orleans to help me complete the remainder of my sessions. I talked to my parents and my grandparents, asking them if they knew of anyone who did not speak English very well and would like some tutoring lessons. That's when my grandmother reminded me that she has a close friend, Glenda, who she has known and worked with for over a decade, who still cannot speak English very well and would probably love the opportunity. So this past Tuesday I met up with Glenda for our first tutoring session together. Glenda is in her mid-fifties and from Honduras, so this gave me a brand new valuable experience teaching an older woman from a South American country. Turns out, it wasn't all that different from my other teaching experiences.
At first I just wanted to get a feel for how proficient Glenda was in English. She had taken classes at Tulane a few different times over the years, but never enough to become fluent. I asked her if she felt most comfortable reading, listening to, or speaking English. She said reading was not too much of a problem but her listening and speaking skills have always been something she would like to work on. This was great news because I had two lesson plans focused on those very things. So for our first session was spent on listening. I used my lesson plan that involved reading a story to Glenda and then having her do a dictocomp and a dictation exercise. This was useful (for her to do both) because it allowed me to get a good measure of where exactly her skills were. To start, I modeled each exercise and went over some vocabulary terms. Then we did the exercise. Glenda had no problem doing the dictation exercise but the dictocomp was a bit more difficult for her. She could articulate some of what she thought the story was about, but other comprehension questions confused her. We went over these together and by the end of it she had a great understanding of the story. I decided that for our next session I would switch it up and do something I did with Fumie that worked really well. I asked Glenda to prepare her own dictation about one of her favorite movies and read it to me out loud.

Bianca CP 6

04/15/14

            Mahsa and I have both been swamped with schoolwork and I have been so busy with an over-booked schedule. I definitely took on more than I could handle this semester and I was trying to explain this to Mahsa and she was compassionate about my situation and agreed that she has had a difficult and busy semester. I thanked her for taking out the time to hang out with me a couple times out her busy schedule and she gave me the same response.

            I really enjoyed meeting Mahsa. She was a breath of fresh air for me amidst all the pressure around me. I promised to keep in touch with her throughout me endeavors and asked that she would do the same. We exchanged email addresses and hugged and as she said good-bye I interrupted her and said- its not “good-bye” its “see you later”. She smiled and said “see you later!”

            The conversation partner program is a great way for students of different cultures to get together and learn differences between them. My only wish is that more students knew about the program and were able to get more involved.

Bianca CP 5

3/21/14

            When I met up with Mahsa today she seemed a little down. I asked what was wrong and she said she was feeling a little homesick for the past couple of days. I could totally sympathize with her because I went through the same thing when I first moved to Tallahassee. I let her try to explain herself but she kept interrupting herself because it made her too said to talk about it. I tried to change the subject to lighten her mood and invited her to get some coffee. She declined and we just sat outside of CIES because she was in between classes.

            Our meetings are great and I can feel that she enjoys talking to me. Her English has improved tremendously since the first meeting and I’m glad we met. O asked her about life in Iran and what she liked to do on a regular sunny day and she smiled instantly and rambled on for about 10 minutes about going to the park and having a picnic. I told her that she can do the same things here in town and she assured me that she does, often.

She hugged me and ran off to class. As previously stated, I truly admire Mahsa and all that she has done thus far and continues to do.

Bianca CP 4

Meeting up with Mahsa doesn’t seem like a chore anymore. She is a really nice girl with a lot of ambition for her future. I envy her dedication to CIES and her goals to get into Florida State.

Today we met briefly as we walked around campus because it was a beautiful march day and we both had only a few minutes to spare. We talked about fashion because I complimented her on her scarf. She told me about the day she bought it in Iran before she left in a market commonly knows as “shuks” in Iran and most of the middle east.

 I was familiar with this because I, too, had shopped in a shuk before in Israel. We talked about the different styles of dress in the USA vs the style in Iran. I already knew about the religious hijab but it was interesting to hear it from her perspective. She holds her culture to the highest degree and that is admirable.

We split up before she had to run to her next class but it was nice to see her again.

3/10/14