Bianca CO 3

            For my last observation I wanted to observe another Alexandra Ramos class. I really enjoyed her teaching style and how the students reacted in her lower level class. I choose to sit in on her reading class for the upper level students, this morning.

            The class began with a continuation of the previous lesson where they were talking about the peer-led discussion projects. The students seemed hesitant and a bit intimidated about the project but Alexandra ensured the students that they would succeed. She provided them with a rubric to follow loosely and the students seemed to be more at ease. This took up most of the time of class because the students kept asking questions about their expectations from the presentation.

            The last portion of the class was dedicated to reading an article out loud. Similar to the ones the peer-led discussions would be based on or similar to. This article was called- the secret to likability by Pam Holloway. Ms. Ramos read the article out loud, pausing briefly to check comprehension of the material. She asked questions about the paragraph or about a complex word and asked the class to try and define it.

            After reading the article the class broke up into pair and were asked to discuss their favorite qualities based on the article for about 10 min then Ms. Ramos called on a few students to explain their favorite parts out loud to the class.

Bianca CO 2

            Today I observed Felicia Ciappettas composition class. The students were much more advanced than the other class I observed at the beginning of the session. I wanted to observe different levels at CIES to get a better understanding as to how the program works across the board. Also, to measure what level 3-4 student behaves as.

At the beginning of class, Felicia, wrote out the agenda on the board for the class to get familiar with expectations for the class period. The first thing on the board was a journal prompt: “what does it mean to be successful?” this was a free-writing activity to measure writing fluency. The exercise was timed for 10 minutes. As the students wrote, or didn’t write, I scanned the room to see their reactions from the prompt. Felicia reminded the students several times that the purpose was not to focus on grammar rules. I noticed that the students were hesitant to write because they were worried about grammar and/or punctuation.

In the previous class session they had written and error log journal entry. This composition differed from today’s entry by various degrees. The error log entry was timed for 30 min. It measures accuracy not fluency and the feedback is based on performance not content.

After the students wrote and discussed how they felt during the exercise, Felicia collected the compositions and transitioned into the vocabulary portion. The words included: leery, juxtapose, cornucopia, embedded… At first, I thought the words were a little difficult for the level of students but Felicia presented the words in a friendly manner and comparison method to link similar words to justify its meaning along with its part of speech.

I noticed after listening to the student interacts, that their English was actually really good. They were able to decipher their feelings and explain themselves enough to be understood. Felicia comically used “KAPEESH” as a way to collect everyone’s attention and smile. I thought this was nice and supportive and the students seemed to respond well.

Bianca TP 13- CIES

When I met with Ahmed today he was hesitant to tell me in the previous session that he was responsible for most of the work that he missed. We dove straight into the lesson and I had him tell me all the things he had to prepare for and I would help him make a list and attack as much as I could within the hour.

Obviously he chose to leave the most difficult subject for last and because I have been his tutor for over a month I knew what his strengths and weaknesses were, he wasn’t able to fool me so I began from the bottom-up of that list.

We started with the reading portion because I knew that he has had problems with main idea in previous sessions. We read a segment from his textbook about the environment. I asked him to give me the main idea and a list of supporting details for the text. He stumbled a bit with the big words like environment and habitat.  Oddly I noticed something new about him today, it seems very difficult for him to pronounce the letter [u] in any context, such as: abuse, human, natural, pollute. I didn’t know how to fix this no matter how many different ways I tried to address it.

We only had time for one more subject because the reading portion took so long. I, as an instructor need to find a new way to help or at least address it better. We moved on to the listening portion. This lesson included 9 vocabulary words for which I made him made a sentence for and spell out. Our session ended and he thanked me repeatedly as usual.

I enjoy tutoring Ahmed; he is a quirky character with a great sense of humor. His willingness to learn and pass the program is impressive.

B

Bianca TP # 12- CIES

It’s been a while since I’ve met with Ahmed because he left to his country during the interim of sessions. He admitted that he was gone for longer than he should have been and missed a week of class. He seemed frustrated that he wasn’t being moved up in any levels of CIES at Florida State University for the summer session. Regardless of his absence, session continued and he was forced to catch-up to the rest of his classmates.

I asked him how his extended vacation was and seeing his family. He was very excited to tell me all about his trip and the good food he ate and his love for his family. The only negative comment he had about the whole vacation was the extended hours spent flying to and from. He admitted that Tallahassee is a very small and difficult city to get into. I laughed along in agreement. For this tutoring session I just wanted Ahmed to get into the rhythm of conversing in English.

For tutoring purposes I asked him to place my order at the Starbucks were we frequently met. While he hesitated at first and asked me to repeat my order more than three times, the cashier was able to understand the order and not make a mistake. I stood by him as his said Hello, May I have a passion tea lemonade, please?” He stumbled on the word ‘lemonade’ but he was understood. I congratulated him and then we kept talking about his vacation and jetlag.

Until next time

B

Ben - CP #6

For my final conversation partner meeting I hung out with a young man from Venezuela by the name of Jonathan. Jonathan was actually a friend of Daniel's (the last guy that I met with), and Daniel was the one who suggested that we spend some time together. Like Daniel, Jonathan told me that he has a tendency to hang out with other students at FSU that speak Spanish because he is still isn't confident about his English speaking abilities. I told him not to worry at all about that because it is hard for some people, regardless of what language they speak, to go out there and meet new people and that eventually everything has a way of working out for the better. Hanging out with Jonathan was a great experience because I had the chance to share some of my own interests with him. I took Jonathan to a musical theatre showcase last Wednesday night. Originally I had planned to meet with Jonathan and hang out for a little while at Atomic coffee. This was nice, we shared things about our cultures (Jonathan told me about a particularly delicious Venezuelan dish called arepas that they eat for breakfast, I totally need to try that at some point in my life), and I had a good time talking about school and whatnot. Eventually it came up that I was a theatre major and I explained that actually after we were hanging out I was going to go to a musical theatre showcase that a few of my friends were participating in. In the moment I asked Jonathan if he would like to come along and he said "why not?" He told me he did not know that much about theatre, he was more interested in video games (no judgement from me, video games are awesome), but he would definitely be up for trying it out.
Turns out Jonathan had a great time at the showcase. It was really nice because afterwards I introduced him to my friends and he seemed to have a great time. He said he was particularly impressed by the students' abilities to sing and dance, sometimes at the same time! I encouraged him to seek out theatre in Venezuela if he ever has the chance. Of course, we talked a bit about the tumultuous environment over there right now. Mostly though he did not seems to want to discuss it, which is understandable because it is such a troublesome subject. In the end we had a great time hanging out and like my time with Daniel I wished we could hang out some more.

Ben - CP #5

This past week was my last week at FSU and try as I might to get in touch with Jin, it seemed that he was indisposed for most of the week. So instead I met up with a couple of other students at FSU who do not speak English as a first language and come from cultures quite different than our own here in the U.S. The first of these was Daniel. I met up with Daniel (who happens to be a friend of a friend of mine) at Gaines St. Pies for some pizza. Daniel is from Columbia, and he is studying at FSU hoping to learn more English and more about American culture. He's been in the States for a while (and I believe he has citizenship) but he explained that his English is still very underdeveloped and he still tends to drift towards friends who can speak his native Spanish.  I was more than happy to oblige him in this. He says he would like to stay in the U.S. for as long as he possibly can, hopefully to live, and his parents are encouraging enough to support him in this endeavor. I found to my pleasant surprise that Daniel is interested in theatre! He told me about a theatre festival back in Columbia that he saw a few years ago where the theatre troupe performed an entire Samuel Beckett play on the walls of the theatre. He said it was incredibly interesting and impressive.
I asked Daniel what some of his favorite things about FSU and Tallahassee have been during his time here and he mentioned Stevie B's pizza buffet. This was another piece of fantastic news, as I also love Stevie B's pizza. I told him that if we had enough time I would have loved to go there with him but as I was graduating in a few days I probably couldn't swing it. Overall, I had a very good time with Daniel, he seemed like a guy I could definitely be friends with and I was sad to have to say goodbye after basically we had just met each other.

Isaac TP 16

After my our most recent experience, I wanted to give Abdulrahman a lesson that would build his confidence. I had used the Toy Story video with my tutees before, which led me to use it with Abdulrahman, but previously when a student showed difficulty with the Toy Story video, I would show a scene from Forrest Gump. I gave him the comprehension worksheet and some vocabulary words to become familiar with, and we watched the video. The accents in the video gave Abdul some more difficulty than other students but generally speaking, the speed of the dialogue was much easier for him to follow. We watched the video twice and answered the comprehension questions. He was curious about why Forrest had metal on his legs, which led to me explaining the term “brace” in both verb and noun form. Adbulrahman seemed much more comfortable with this video given that the dialogue was slower, and the accents were consistent.