Tevyn TS#17

October 27, Tonight at 8:30 i met with Shu in front of the Strozier library. It was a pretty nice night out. Because he still wants help with his listening and speaking skills, we shared stories about our childhood, school trips, school activities and the such. I also asked about his son who is now in the states because he is experiencing a new culture; Schooling and societal. We also talked about traditional stories/fairy tales and explained the differences. One that was similar between us is the man in the moon for America, but in Japan they see a rabbit in the moon.

Danielle CP#6

On 10/22, I met with Vicky for out last conversation partner meeting.  She invited me over to her apartment to meet her husband and wanted to cook lunch.  She cooked my brother and I authentic Chinese food, which was very delicious.  We spent the afternoon hanging out and talking together, and her and her husband asked us about American television and if we knew any funny shows that they could watch.  My brother and I decided to put on The Office because we thought they would like it, and they did.  I also got to know her husband a little bit.  He is also from China and he works as an IT guy here in Tallahassee.  I noticed that his English speaking skills were a lot better than Vicky's, as he was able to speak a lot more clearly.  However, I noticed that Vicky had a superior level of vocabulary and comprehension.  It was a fun afternoon filled with delicious food and watching funny episodes of The Office.  Vicky also mentioned to me that she got accepted into the masters program at FSU for accounting, and she was very excited about that.  I am very happy for her, as I know she has worked very hard to get accepted.  I would also like to note the drastic improvement in her speaking skills that I have seen.  When I first met her it was a little bit difficult to understand her because of her pronunciation, but she has worked very hard to get past that.

Danielle TS#16

On 10/14, I met with Maritza for our last tutoring session. We focused primarily on pronunciation and speaking practice in order to better prepare her for the TOEFL test.  She has definitely improved throughout our time together, and I think she will do amazing on TOEFL.  Even though her speaking and conversation skills are fantastic, she gets nervous easily and thus panics when doing timed speaking practice, although it is just me there and she is not actually being graded. I have been trying to get her to relax, and although she has, she is still a little panicky.  However, I am not sure if it is possible to over come that, as it is human nature to get nervous when we know we are being judged or tested.  She mainly struggled with certain vowel sounds (for example, not being able to phonetically separate luck, lock, and lack), but has certainly improved and she is becoming increasingly aware of her habits.  We also recorded her speaking as a voice memo and listened back to it together so she could correct her own errors, which she successfully did. She was able to easily pick out grammar and pronunciation mistakes on her own and tell me the correct way to say it.

Diego TS#16

20 October

This is my last session with Lina! We agreed to keep meeting from time to time whenever she had questions because she's taking her TOEFL soon!

And she passed her driver's exam!

This session we focused on an essay she has to write soon for one of her classes. We spent the session just researching things together. We worked up a basic outline of it while she accumulated resources on the internet and library website. It was a very large topic so we worked together to condense it. I encouraged her to use any vocabulary she learned and try to incorporate them in her writing. She picked out words that were to be used while I supervised. We brainstormed topics but she was in charge of the majority of the speaking. I would ask her questions on what she wants this essay to be and she would answer them and record anything she thought would be useful down.

We may meet again for the editing part of this essay a little later in the future but I'm so excited that she's graduating CIES soon. I have complete faith she's going to ace that TOEFL exam.

Diego TS#15

18 October

Lina told me that she has a vocabulary quiz soon on a new set of words. She said that this quiz might also contain words that they aren't particularly covering but she needs to know by guessing what they mean using prefixes and suffixes.

For example, in her vocabulary, she never covered the word spectacles but her list did include the prefix spect- so she had to use her knowledge to guess what the word meant.

So not only is she learning 7-9 vocabulary words and 4-5 prefixes/suffixes, she has to be able to properly guess what other words mean. She caught on to it very quickly. She did get a little frustrated when I explained that inflammable and flammable meant exactly the same thing even though the in- prefix says otherwise.

There was a lot to cover this session but she took really detailed notes and we made sentences together with all the words to make it easier for her to use later.

Diego TS#14

11 October

It's been almost two weeks since Lina and I could meet but her and I have been very busy but she was very excited to have our tutoring session again. We met again at Harry's and split an appetizer before we dove into her new vocabulary words. This time we tried to define and explain the words as fast as possible and I wanted to try a speaking activity with her.

Once all of the words we covered and she had a great understanding of them all, we proceeded to have a conversation (seeing as how she wanted to focus on her speaking skills) and our goal was she was to use all 10 of the words. I told her I would correct any grammar mistakes she committed and would make sure her speech rate and enunciation were 100%. She agreed and the activity went great! There were instances where she used words a little unnaturally but technically they were correct. I wrote down any grammatical or word errors down so she could focus on her beautiful mistakes. When we reviewed what I wrote down, she said that almost all of them were common errors she always makes. She kept the paper and said she would focus on them.

Serena TS#16

Date/Time: October 19, 7:30-8:30pm

Location: PJ’s desk

Topic/Skill: Greek roots vocabulary, worksheets, atoms/ reading comprehension and vocabulary

Feedback provided to tutee: I encouraged PJ from the beginning because I could see that he looked overwhelmed when I pulled out the stack of worksheets he needed to fix for school. He prefers simple easy tasks over thought-provoking reading comprehension questions or anything to do with writing. To build his confidence I let him pick which worksheet he completed first which was the math related one and therefore the easiest for him.

Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: As a kid PJ likes learning with a lot of visual and auditory stimulation. Therefore to make the concepts more fun to learn and easier for me to explain I used a couple different videos. I made sure before the session I searched for the most level-appropriate and topic relevant videos. The videos helped to introduce the topic and explained the concept through repetition and had fun graphics. So then when I discussed the questions with PJ after watching the videos he seemed to be more comfortable with answering them. From past sessions I realized that just explaining the concept is not enough and he does much better with visual aids and fun stimulations.