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.