FSU TEFL 120 Fall 1, 2025

 Date: November 12th Location: Over Zoom Lesson: Finishing speaking skills  Today was my final lesson with Seunghye. It went very good! I am excited and am confident (if she keeps up this pace) that she can get a good score on her Duolingo test in December. Today's lesson we just did a couple picture descriptions. One of the pictures was very hard - apparently it was a polar bear but I barely even saw that! And she still did a good job of describing it. I was shocked as she kept going after the timer had ended. This was a good final lesson, and I hope she reaches out whenever she has questions about natural phrases, slang, or anything about speaking English in America. 

 Date: November 7th  Location: Over Zoom Lesson: Speaking I thought this lesson was going to be the final lesson I would have with Seunghye, so we went for almost two hours doing picture description. This was a good session. Here are some examples from the picture practice.  At first I included the original transcription in my notes but I forgot to for this session. Anyways, this lesson was very and I am very confident in Seugnhye's speaking ability now. Just after a few minutes of warming up, after a few pictures, she was perfect in describing the pictures. Sometimes the pictures were really hard to see, or abstract, yet she still did a good job. I am very proud of her and I look forward to the last meeting on Wednesday. 

 Date: October 29th Location: Zoom Topic: American Culture and speaking Today I met with Seunghye. I started the lesson by asking her what she knew about Halloween, seeing it was later that week. She knew somewhat, and we discussed it. This was helpful for giving her cultural terms for Halloween. We then went on to do the Duolingo picture exercises. Here's an example from our lesson:  The end part included a short little tangent where I taught her different types of fur/hide.etc. and then clothing etc. So, organically, I could teach Seunghye natural phrases she wanted to learn through correcting her Duolingo practice.  We did about six pictures, where it was like I said before where I would write down what she said, and we were go through it together. 

 Date: October 29th and November 5th. (Two sessions combined in this blog, last two meetings with Luis, both were 1.5 hours, so I made it a three-in-1 blog).  Location: Zoom Lesson: Listening, dicussing videos.  October 29th:  Today I met with Luis over zoom. We started the pre-listening activity with a pre-pre-listening activity by talking about the topics from last session. He remembered the topic of football and that gave me a pretty good idea that has comprehension was solid. Sure, there were some holes, but this check-in at the beginning of the session gave me a great idea of where he was at for listening. I think the biggest part of listening is teaching it over a long period of time. Similar to speaking, or anything I could tutor ESL students in, the overarching progress is better to check than progress during the session. Anyways, we continued this lesson by starting with a pre-listening schema activity. I was nervous about this lesson because I did not choos...

Date & Time: 10/15/25 530-730 (2 hrs) Location: Zoom Topic/Skill: listening For this long lesson with Luis, I picked a specific topic and showed him information and videos and discussion surrounding that topic. The topic I chose was the NFL and American football. I chose this topic due to its cultural significance. American football is one of the biggest cultural topics for American English, and so I knew it would be a good topic to show him new words while using words he already knew. I started by explaining football. I asked Luis, "do you know much about American football?". He said he knew only a little, that he knew there was a team in Tampa, and that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers reminded him of Gasparilla, which I thought was funny. I then explained to him the basic rules of American football, how to play, where to watch, how Sundays are only football in some households, the star players, the contracts, the teams, my favorite team, etc. This topic made me really excited ...

   Date & Time: October 17th 2025 (Met at 5pm) Location: Zoom Topic/Skill: Descriptions  Today I met with Seunghye again over zoom. This was pretty routine. We got through the three pictures in exactly in hour. I can already tell that she is progressing fast, and I really want to help her pass this duolingo exam in December. I noted to her after our lesson that she should really do a practice the day of her exam.   

   Date & Time: October 8, 2025 (Met at 630-730 pm) Location: Zoom Topic/Skill: Speaking and descriptions For today's lesson, I met with Seunghye over zoom. One thing I got from this lesson (that I found interesting) was that I actually found this practice with Seunghye to be easier to teach over zoom! Which is funny because the listening over zoom had been challenging, but speaking lessons over zoom were easier than in public. This lesson, I created a strict format.  Go over three pictures -I transcribe what she says -She reads to the transcription -Then we go sentence per sentence going over errors while I provide good alternatives -Repeat for each picture This was really good for the picture descriptions, which Seunghye stated was the one thing she wanted to work on to prepare for her exam and to better her English. At this point she moved up to normal difficulty pictures, and I found time to move by very fast during this format. 

   Date & Time: October 1, 2025 (Met at 430 pm) Location: Outside Strozier Library on a bench Topic/Skill: Picture descriptions Today, and once again went over Duolingo picture practice with Seunghye. There were several pictures today, one of which was of a van in the countryside in the winter. Like I mentioned in my last blog, this was becoming a routine. What I meant by that is that this process was becoming easier and easier each time. Soon, she had no problem reaching the word limit and speaking in a way that was 100% comprehensible. Today was perfect from her describing, and I was impressed by how far she had come. It made me realize the biggest problem facing advanced non-native English speakers: the pressure. When she keeps practicing speaking, she becomes as good as a English speaker as anyone on the street. I think it's just about warming up, having confidence, etc. Of course you still need to know slang and phrases and grammar, and I am still including that in th...

   Date & Time: September 24th, 2025 (Met at 430 pm) Location: Outside Strozier Library on a bench Topic/Skill: Speaking - Describing pictures Today I met with Seunghye, and we once again went over Duolingo pictures. We started getting into more of a routine with these meetings, and I was already seeing improvements on her description. One of the pictures from today was of a man on a train. She was good at using the strategy I taught her, and she started with the man wearing a red-coat in the middle of the picture. We did a couple more pictures, and above all it was a pretty straight forward meeting. 

   Date & Time: September 24th, 2025 (630-730) Location: Virtual (zoom) Topic/Skill: Listening For this lesson with Luis, I came prepared with videos to help his listening. I showed him a video by youtuber Mr. Beat titled "Greenland and Iceland Compared" and some podcast clips. I chose the Mr. Beat video because it would be academic listening, and I chose the podcast clips based on entertainment. I knew Luis would prefer the less academic listening, but I wanted to try to train his ears to more academic words. I chose the clips because they were about soccer, a topic we talked about in the previous lesson. At this point I was really challenged by trying to teach listening. I remember I talked with a CIES teacher a day before and expressed my worries about teaching listening, and he agreed with me and said "It is hard. Because you never know what's going on in someone's head - what they are thinking" but he gave me useful tips to employ such as having a p...

   Date & Time: September 17th, 2025 (430-530 pm) Location: Outside Strozier Library on a bench Topic/Skill: Speaking This next lesson was spent with Seunghye going over the Duolingo test again. Before we started, I showed her a PowerPoint I had made for my TEFL course. It was on Idioms and it seemed to be very helpful to her. A lot of advanced students have trouble with idioms, because they are not as literal as they say. For instance, when I say "you're on thin ice" it doesn't mean I am telling that person they are literally on ice. I had the PowerPrint printed out so it was easy for her to read while I explained each slide. Then, we went over some Duolingo Test practice pictures. We went through three, and she got better with each one. One of the pictures was of a boat on a dock on a lake in the mountains, and she had a little trouble with this. I taught her a strategy that would help her use her descriptive factors. This strategy involved looking at the center...

   Date & Time: September 17th, 2025 (615-715pm) Location: Virtual Topic/Skill: Introductions and listening This lesson was the first lesson with Luis! We started this lesson with introductions: talking about where we each were from, our jobs, and our English backgrounds. I learned he was from Orlando and works in helping carpenters with wood. He told me that his biggest need for help was in the field of listening. This was my hardest topic during the TEFL course, so I knew this would be harder than the speaking lessons I had with Seugnhye. This was supposed to be an introductory lesson, so I did not bring anything prepared for I did not know quite yet what he wanted help with. I tried speaking about my day - like I had with Seunghye - in order to help with his listening. This did quite work as well as it did with Seunghye. I think that was due to me talking too fast for him, my accent, and my internet. Teaching listening was already hard, but doing it virtually posed anot...

   Date & Time: September 12th, 2025 (Met at 430 pm) Location: Outside Strozier Library on a bench Topic/Skill: Speaking & Looking at Duolingo Test For the second meeting with Seunghye, we started by going over the recording I took last class. At first she was a little shy to listen to the recording, but it did help her see some of her "mistakes". By looking over this, we both found out that most of her errors come from pressure or being put on the spot. This transitioned well from what she brought up at the beginning of the lesson: the duolingo test. I was unaware of this test, but she described how it is very similar to the TOEFL test... and how she needs it to get into a doctorate program for music school. She showed me the practice she has done with the test, study-guides and etc. Then we did a practice of describing a picture. At first she had trouble with the picture, so we stopped for a moment and I asked her to describe her surroundings: the park bench, the li...

 Date & Time: September 5th, 2025 (Met at 430 pm) Location: Outside Strozier Library on a bench Topic/Skill: Introductions and speaking Today I met with Seunghye for the first time. She told me about who she was, what she was studying, and what she needed help on. I was fascinated by her stories about being a music student and I knew immediately that I could use the topic of music as a starting point to our tutoring session. We met for two hours. She told me how her biggest concern with English was speaking and using more natural phrases. We used phrases from movies we were both familiar with, such as Whiplash , and we shared cultural information about our individual countries - for example I told her about the significance of American football while she relayed different Korean cultural dishes. At the end of the lesson I decided to tell her my day - describing it using natural phrases. This took longer than I expected, because it taught her natural phrases and some words she w...

 Date/Time: November 12 (2hr) Location: Kellogg Building  Topic/Skill: Grammar,Writing, Speaking Feedback provided to the tutee: In our session we did three separate activities to practice the use of active and passive voice. One focused on grammar, one focused on writing, and another focused on actually speaking. The feedback I provided to her was to think about the context of each sentence before responding to ensuring you are using the proper tense. Additionally I corrected minor pronunciation errors and worked on some vocabulary with her to strengthen her speech.  Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: I learned that for my tutee specifically the Scaffolding teaching method was very effective. Starting off simple and increasing the level of complexity helped her understand all parts of what we were doing and by the end of the session I noticed improvement and even self-correction.  

Date/Time: November 5 (2hr) Location: Student Union Topic/Skill: Grammar and Speaking-- Active vs. Passive Voice  Feedback provided to the tutee: I recommended she try to first identify if the sentence is in active or passive voice before continuing with the practice activities. Once we went over that we went over the verbs used commonly in active and passive voice. This with a mix of different examples helped her identify the differences between the two and use them correctly.   Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: One thing I learned is letting them making the mistakes first and then going back to correct them showed to be the most effective since it did not take the confidence away from the tutee while they were completing the activities but instead it helped them learn from their mistakes and ask follow-up questions.