Erin - CP 2

On Wednesday, Thomas and I met at Chili’s after his classes were over. This meeting was less formal than the one on the day before, so our conversation did not start out as learning facts about each other, but instead talking about each other’s day. When he had told me that his speaking English had not been that great only a week before, I did not believe it, but at this meeting, I could tell that his English already sounded even more fluid than it had the day before. However, there were still several moments when I noticed the internal translation and processing; a couple of times, I would ask a question and then thought that he didn’t hear me because he didn’t answer at all…only to hear him answer about 5 minutes later; so I finally realized that he did hear me, and even remembered what I said, but had to process it first.
We continued to share our love of music and of going to the gym; so he shared a protein shake and some Raggeaton with me. I tried to tell him about fun things to do in Tallahassee, although I don’t know that much about it myself, and he told me all about what it was like growing up in Medellin and what he and his friends would do for fun. He also broke a small stereotype of mine; we were watching soccer on the restaurant TV, and when I asked if he liked soccer, he said, “Yeah, kind of.” He told me that, in fact, he had always wanted to play American football. Honestly, I was shocked because I didn’t think other countries even watched American football.
Our only official day to meet is on Tuesdays, but I don’t think that not meeting enough will be a problem, as he has already expressed his desire to see more of Tallahassee, and we have mentioned several activities that we can do together.

Francis- TP 1

I was assigned two Tutoring Partners on Thursday. Jin is from Korea while Kukit is from Thailand. I met with both at the same time. When I asked what aspect of their English skills they each would like to work on the most, both indicated their pronunciation and listening skills. Kukit was especially concerned with improving his pronunciation of the letter R and L; Jin also expressed this concern. I learned in class that this is a a general difficulty among people from both Thailand and Korea so I will try my best to be sensitive and helpful. They also said they have trouble following native speakers, especially when outside CIES. My first impressions would put Kukit in the upper tier of Group 3 and Jin in the upper tier of Group 4. Jin seemed to have a better handle on his vocabulary and spoke with little pause. Kukit on the other hand, often had to pause to translate and organize what he was trying to say.

Our conversation centered around the basic introductions. I asked them what brought them to Tallahassee, what their interests where, what they studied or did for a living, etc. I learned that Jin was part of Korea's sail boating team in the last Olympics. He will try out for the national team next year for the Olympics in England. Kukit came here on an invitation from his sister who is working on her PhD at FSU. Both are here to better their English.

During our conversation the pronunciation and spelling of the word clarinet. This word came up when Jin told is he played this instrument. He had some trouble with this word but i managed to figure out what he was saying. Kukit then asked me how to spell it. I took this opportunity to see how well they could identify the spelling according to the way a word was spelled. Both were close but I saw that each missed either the l or the r.

Before ending our session, I made sure to agree on a weekday and time with each. I will meet with Kukit on Fridays and with Jin on Mondays.

Carlos-TP2

On Friday, I had planned to meet with Dongseok and Mohammed to work out certain specifics as well as set up our separate meet up times. Unfortunately, Dongseok had to cancel because he had to take care of rent related issues. I decided to go to the lounge early to meet with Mohammed and eat lunch before we began. Upon arriving, I found Mohammed waiting with some inconvenient news. He had to leave early in order to make it to prayer at a nearby mosque. Luckily I had gotten there early so I could make up for the time we would have lost had I got there at the planned time. This is my first time experiencing schedule conflictions with the tutees and I will make sure to learn from this. I had asked several times what would be most convenient for my tutees to meet with me the day we first met. They were both extremely friendly, but I think in a way, these scheduling conflicts were a result of being overly polite as well as being a little timid with me. This is perfectly understandable, and I will just make sure next time that our meeting time will be agreeable to both sides.

Because Mohammed was under time restraints, I had him write out a paragraph about the favorite place he's ever traveled to. I told him to just write it to the best of his ability and to just be comfortable with it. He wanted to focus on his proper grammar skills as opposed to his conversation skills, so I wanted to get an idea of how well he could form sentences. He was able to write half a page of English, double-spaced. When I looked over his work, I could tell what he was trying to write made sense when spoken. Unfortunately, this didn't translate well in his writing because many of the problems he had had to do with sentence structuring, use of commas, and spelling. I will make sure to focus on these key points and to look over his paragraph when we meet again.

Katie- TP 2

I met with my second tutee, another Korean named JongOuk Park, on Thursday afternoon during the tutoring meeting. When I first arrived at CIES I actually met one of my conversation partners, Yasuko, and spoke with her until she was paired with a tutor. By the time all of this had occurred, though, it appeared that everyone already had a tutoring partner, so I sat with Jung, whose tutoring partner had to go home early. I saw her cousin JongOuk sitting alone, though, and had her call him over. I discovered he didn’t have a tutor, so I offered to tutor him.

We spoke briefly about what he was hoping to gain from a tutor. Unlike my other tutee, who is just hoping to improve on her English ability in general, he knew exactly what he wanted and how he wanted to go about it- making my job much easier. JongOuk is hoping to improve his pronunciation and listening skills by reading books or journals about daily American life and watching movies. He also wants to learn American slang like the phrase, “Leggo,” meaning, “Let’s go.” I’ll have to spend some time looking for blogs and magazines that suit his preferences, but I think tutoring him will be an enjoyable experience, especially since he appears to have direction, interest, and a clear goal in mind.

Katie- TP 1

I met with the first of my tutees, a Korean woman named Jia, on Thursday afternoon at Strozier. We spent the majority of the time getting to know each other and talking about what she hopes to gain through our tutoring sessions. Jia is a CIES student on break, hoping to continue improving on her English despite not taking classes this term. She told me that her biggest trouble is that she really just doesn't enjoy studying. My biggest challenge will be attempting to find fun ways for her to practice English. Until then, because her schedule is so open, I’m hoping to meet with her more often, possibly two or even three times a week. I think having someone to study or spend time with will make the task of studying English less daunting, and some of our sessions could be light, fun things like watching a movie for listening comprehension.

Some other things that came up during our meeting were that she feels her grammar is really lacking in comparison to other Korean students, and her foundation in grammar appears to be a little weak. The next time we meet I intend to go over the Group 1 PDF file provided with her for some basic review. She doesn’t like reading, either, so we’re going to go through a book together. I think by reading a book together I can help her with her pronunciation and guide her through any grammar questions she might have. As we get further through the book I might ask her to write a short response every few chapters in the book so we can discuss what she thinks about it afterwards. Jia also told me that because her CIES courses were strongly centered around the TOEFL exam, she wants to continue doing some TOEFL related things as well, even though it seems that she doesn’t plan on taking it, so that will be something for me to look into for future sessions.

Overall, Jia is a very nice girl and her English seems very good for someone who has only been here for eight months. I’m excited to be working with her.

Carlos-TP1

On thursday I met with my tutees through CIES. Their names were Mohammed Aljebreen from Saudi Arabia and Dongseok Lee of South Korea. Both were extremely friendly and we had a very warm conversation introducing ourselves. This was especially enjoyable because we were from three different continents and knew nothing about each other. I explained to my tutees how excited I was about this experience and that I couldn't wait to start learning from each other through this tutoring process. As we continued to get to know each other, Mohammed told me he had visited the Philippines before and that he thought it was very beautiful. He even knew some basic phrases that surprised me. I learned that he's traveled quite a bit but this was his first time to Florida. It was Dongseok's first time to the states as well. Dongseok is closer to my age and I could tell he was a little younger than Mohammed. Dongseok was very friendly as well but had a harder time communicating. He explained that he wanted to focus on getting better at having conversations. In South Korea, students study English grammar and writing so he wanted to focus on his weakness. Mohammed on the other hand was comfortable speaking and wanted to focus on proper grammar. Although they both wanted to learn different things from the tutoring sessions, I decided to have them both meet me on Friday so I could gauge out how well their English is. From there, I will probably meet with them separately so I can focus on each of their needs.

Jung- CP 1

My conversation partner, Joyce had already left school on Tuesday when we had scheduled our first tea party so I still didn’t get a chance to meet with her. I sent her an email and introduced myself, where I am from, what school I graduated from, and asked her when she would like to meet up. I informed her of my availability since I drive back and forth from Panama City and later that night, she emailed me back saying how we can meet up at the next scheduled tea party on Tuesday.

Anyway, instead of meeting my actual conversation partner and getting to know her, I sat with a group of people who Katie was sitting with and actually had good conversation with them. I met a guy name Muhammad, and a girl name Anna. They both came to the states probably a couple weeks/days ago so they were still new with everything that was around them. Their English was pretty good considering that they came to the states not that long ago. I was pretty surprised because I remember back in the days when I only knew how to say “I can’t speak English” in my first couple of weeks in America. I had a fun and interesting time conversing with them and I hope they have a great time while they are in the states and I cannot wait ‘til I meet up with my actual conversation partner, Joyce.