Sebastian- Tutoring - 12

Today I used short scripts for the tutoring session, and concluded with a reading comprehension exercise. I told my student to read the scripts first so that she could understand the story, and after she went over them, we acted them out.

Since you need to understand the meaning of the story in order to be able to read it with feeling (which is what I wanted her to do), we had to try it a number of times. Every time she found a word that she did not know the meaning to, I would first explain it to her and then give her the dictionary definition.

I saw that she enjoyed reading the script once she understood what was going on in the story, and that made me feel good about teaching. It is nice when you help someone understand something that they did not know before, because its like creating bridges between you and that person. Suddenly, you have one more thing in common with each other.

And that is another reason why I like learning other languages. My student also enjoys it very much when I try to say something in her native tongue. She quickly helps me with pronunciation, making a student out of the teacher.

Soon I will be in Japan, and this blog will be a part of my memories past. After I get my TEFL certificate, I hope to help other people learn English just as I learned more than 14 years ago. Perhaps the next blog will be in Japanese...

Sebastian- Tutoring - 11

Because of lack of sleep, I have started with this introduction. My brain is not working properly at the moment, so please bear with me. No teddying, please.

So, yesterday I had the usual tutoring session with my student, and we went over the IPA phonetic chart. As I showed it to her, she told me that all Japanese student encounter this chart while in school, and they learn the different characters that represent the sounds.

In Japanese, R and L are pronounced exactly the same. There is no difference between them. So, once in a while, my student will come across a word which she does not know how she should pronounce. For example, once, she was talking to a friend (a close girlfriend of her's, thankfully) and she said the word "election". But remember, to the Japanese person, l and r sound the same. So it sounded more like "erection", which I do not need to explain further. But, don't worry, there were plenty of laughs.

We worked heavily on this difference, as well as the words bought, but, bat and bet. To the native English speaker, these are easy to differentiate. To the learner, it can be a nightmare, since there are slight differences to be detected. I used plenty of humor to make the studying bearable.

We did a little of reading comprehension as well. This time we read a story about a man who bought a winning lottery ticket. We did the usual question and answer, but a little more open to interpretation. It was fun.

Sebastian- Tutoring - 10

Last night we had our usual tutoring session. I gave my student a sheet with various sentences for her to correct. The sentences used "say" and "tell", and she had to figure out which was the correct way of saying them. Another worksheet was more open. She would have to find and correct the errors, if any. She did very well, but I helped her with a few when I saw that she had gotten stumped.

After that, I had her read a few stories, one of them about the winters in Irkutsk. It was interesting to read about people's everyday lives in such a harsh climate. My student learned some new words, and I saw the importance of the lessons for her. She can communicate very well in English, but she still needs to learn more vocabulary and phrases to completely understand certain things that she reads. In this lesson she answered about 60% of the questions correctly.

The second story was about a toddler that was bitten by a snake. Since this was a shorter story with simpler words, she answered most (if not all) questions correctly.

I plan to keep using the reading comprehension stories as part of our lessons, as I can see things in which my student can improve. I hope that I can also keep making the lessons interesting for her. After all, no one likes a boring teacher...

Sebastian- Tutoring - 9

Yesterday I was looking at different activities for English learners in the internet, and I stumbled upon a nice ESL site with suggestions on how to teach and with activities. As I was looking, I found a random word generator.

Now, what good is that? Well, it happened to be very useful as we played "pictionary" during our tutoring session. We used a white board for that purpose.

We also played charades. It was fun, and my student was constantly learning new words. I was surprised at how many words she learned, everyday words for me, but totally new to her.

Lastly, I had her read another article regarding a change in the immigration laws in Japan. I focused more on pronunciation and vocabulary. If she pronounced a word incorrectly, I would show her how to pronounce it correctly at the end of the paragraph or sentence. This would give her some time to try to capture the gist of the paragraph and would give her a better chance of finding out what the word meant.

As always, I am looking forward to the next session!

Sebastian- Tutoring - 8

For yesterday's session, we worked on both reading and listening comprehension. We discussed news articles. Since my student is Japanese, I chose articles pertaining to Japan. I read the first one, and asked questions about it afterward. It was about the Toyota company and how they might be innocent of the allegations that many made against them and their products. The article was very helpful for my student since she got to learn new words, like blackbox. I explained to her what a blackbox is, and how it helps determine the causes of an accident or crash.

After we examined another article about the same topic, I asked her what she thought. She gave me her opinion on the matter, and shortly after we tried another activity. I would draw pictures on a white board and then she would give me the corresponding phrase or word. She had a lot of fun with that one. During the activity, I even learned a new phrase from her. It was an adaptation of "First come, first served".

I always try to use a different approach for each session. If I don't, I feel like I am going to lose the student to boredom. As soon as I notice that she is losing concentration, I try to improvise according to the material that I have gathered and the needs of the student. I hope that I can master the art of teaching one day. This is the first step.

Sebastian- Tutoring - 7

Hello again. Our last tutoring session was about listening comprehension. I would read a story and ask my student previously prepared questions to see how much she had understood by listening. Although she answered correctly most times, there were instances where her answer would be very far from what I expected. In those occasions, I would find out what word or phrase she did not understand and explain it to her.

There was also some new vocabulary after each story, so she learned some new words there too. For example, she learned the meaning of "moniker".

On the last half of the session, we again went over proverbs in English. She learned a lot with those. I also had learned at least 1 or 2, so it was great for me as well.

I hope I can keep making every session interesting, because once it gets repetitive, the student gets tired of learning and the instructor of teaching. Something that has also helped me is my attitude. To keep a humble mindset is important, since even experienced instructors do not know everything about the subject they teach. So whenever the student asks me something that I do not know, I will reply that I do not know, but will find out for them. I imagine that doing this in a real classroom would help both the instructor and the students by keeping that bridge between them. They both are continuously learning; the difference is that one is more advanced than the other.

Sebastian- Tutoring - 6

On Friday my wife and I had another tutoring session. We covered verbs, especially those that are used to express types of sounds (or onomatopoeia). I would read the verb to her and she would give me a sentence using the verb. If she did not know what it meant, I would repeat the word again and ask her what it would sound like.

It is interesting that in Japanese, (as well as other languages, I am sure) they have onomatopoeia that does not closely resemble their English counter-part. For example, the phrase for crunch in Japanese is kuri kuri. They usually use two words instead of one to describe a sound.

During the latter half of the session we played a mini board game where we had to ask each other questions in the form of "Have you ever?". The responses were very interesting. The question "Have you ever loved someone at first sight?" generated interesting responses from both of us.

I feel that during this session we learned a lot of new things, not only about language, but also about both of our cultures and personal experiences.

Sebastian - CP2 - Week 4

This should have been the blog for week 5, but seeing as the world cup was playing on tv during the tea time, we did not talk much.

Anyway, I met Sungsub last Thursday again and we talked about different things, some of them being my trip to Puerto Rico. I showed him what the beaches looked like over there, and he also showed me an island off the coast of Korea. Apparently the island is desolate (I taught him that word), but it is very beautiful.

He also asked me how to say other things. For example, we discussed street terms like "gold digger". It was a very fun conversation.

I like speaking to Sungsub because he does not give up whenever he gets stuck on how to express something. At the same time, I find it enjoyable to teach people new things, so whenever he understands an idea that he did not understand before using the English language it makes me feel great.

I hope that I am able to help him as much as I can before our time is up.

Sebastian- Tutoring - Week 5

Hello!

Yesterday I had a very interesting tutoring session with my student (my wife). I started out by reading a fable to her regarding two frogs that decided to move because the well where they lived dried up. I first read it once, and asked her questions about the story to see how much she comprehended. Once I explained the words that she did not understand, I read it again, this time asking her what she thought the moral of the story was. She learned new words like "marsh", and also the expression "by and by".

After reading the story, I pulled out a list of "hot topics" of conversation and asked her to rate from 1 to 10 the statements, 1 being "strongly agree" and 10 being "strongly disagree". After she rated them, she would give me a thorough explanation of why she chose one or the other.

Finally, I handed her a little quiz where she had to match the correct expression to the sentence. She also learned new things there, like the expression "Been there, Done that!".

During this session, I was able to help her with listening comprehension as well as writing. She told me that she had enjoyed it, something which I was really happy about.

Sebastian - CP2 - Week 3

Yesterday I went to Starbucks with Sungsub and we had a very interesting chat while we had lunch. We spoke about a lot of things, but one of the most memorable was talking about work. I asked him how it was like working in Korea. He said most jobs in Korea are usually from morning to night. Very exhausting. I told him that I did not think that was good for families in general. He said that he agreed with me, and opened up about his feelings on the matter. He told me that he was envious of the Americans in that aspect. Most people in the US have 8 to 5 jobs, from Monday to Friday. He wishes that it was like that in Korea, because unfortunately, fathers do not spend enough time with their kids and wives.

We also spoke about the abuse that happens in many work places regarding illegal immigrants. I expressed my feelings on that matter, and he had similar views on it. He even told me that in Korea people from Thailand and other poor countries suffer discrimination in many places and are ill treated. We chatted a little more about a few other good subjects (like police in both Korea and the US) , and then had to cut the conversation short because our lunch time had ended. I hope to continue our conversation next week.

Sebastian - CP2 - Week 2

Last week I picked up Sungsub near his home, and we headed for Starbucks. My wife came along with us as well. After looking for Starbucks for a good while, we could not find it and decided to go to Chick-Fil-A. As we were eating our meal, we talked about a few things. Since Sungsub had traveled to Japan, we asked how he liked it, and apparently he enjoyed it. He also talked about his country, and how they calculate their age. In his country, he is 28, but here he is 26. I did not fully understand this when Juseob explained it to me. I did not fully understand it this time either. In any case, they say that they add a year because of the time spent in the womb, and the other reason I still did not catch.

After our meal, we drove back to his apartment to drop him off, and we started talking of what kind of movies we liked. He said he likes horror movies. Especially Japanese horror movies, which have the reputation of being the scariest ones. I said that my issue with that genre is that most of them have something to do with the supernatural, and I really do not mess with that. But it is interesting how big an audience that genre has in the world.

While we arrived at the apartment complex, I told him that next time we would go to Starbucks to have some coffee. He happily agreed. There must be some connection between Koreans and their love of Starbucks... (Do they get a discount?)

Sebastian - CP2 - Week 1

Last Thursday I met another CIES student by the name of Sungsub Song. I really enjoyed speaking with him. His English was very impressive. He told me that he was from a small town in Korea. He started asking me about my background, and I told him that I am Puerto Rican. Apparently, he did not know where Puerto Rico is, so I had to show him using Google Earth. I even showed him my town via the software! He also pointed to the place where he came from in Korea.

The conversation started getting more exciting when we talked about languages, accents, and dialects. I told him that, although most Spanish speaking people understand each other in daily conversation, we share certain words that mean totally different things. For example, I shared with him a story about something that had happened to me while I was knocking on a door in a Mexican neighborhood (I am a Jehovah's Witness). As you all know, we usually preach with a partner when we go door to door. My partner happened to be Mexican. As I approach the door, I am thinking "I got this". I knock. My partner looks at me in horror. I am dumbfounded. I had no idea what I had done wrong. You are probably thinking, "Man, just spit it out". I will...

In Puerto Rico, we have a certain way of knocking that indicates to the resident that we are friendly. Apparently, the same knocking pattern means something totally different in Mexico. Instead of saying "I come in peace", I was saying something cruel about their mother. Hence the horrified look (this happened to be a neighborhood with a very bad reputation). Thank God nobody was there (maybe they were hiding because of the message I inadvertently sent them).

So, after sharing this somewhat embarrassing story, I asked Sungsub if people experienced the same issues in Korea, or if the language is more standardized. He told me it did vary, but the biggest difference is between the people of the North and the people of the South. However, they can still understand each other.

Next time we talk, I hope we can exchange more stories and information about our different cultures. It feels so good to share experiences that seem exclusive to our culture, but in reality, are so universal.

'Till the next time!

Sebastian- Tutoring - Week 4

Hello again, everybody!

I wanted to re-enter the blog world by stating, even if no one reads this blog, that I have missed our classes and conversations. I will always remember each one of you wherever I go in the world and will share the wonderful experiences that we had during our brief, but strong knit class.

Now, back to business as usual.

Last week I had another tutoring session with my wife, this time talking about adjectives. She learned new words, like "gleaming" and "drab" (I had learned that word recently myself, which shows how much more English I need to learn). We also read from a list of adjectives, and I asked her to include the word in a sentence, which sometimes proved to be humorous (the word "handsome" brought up some interesting responses, including Will Smith, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, amongst others). It was an interesting session. My name came up as well... eventually.

Anyway, I am glad to be tutoring again. It has been a while since I have formally sat down (or stood up, as a matter of fact) with the purpose of tutoring. I will try my best to keep blogging each week and perhaps throw in a picture or two.

Updates on English Classes in Costa Rica

Hello All,

I'm happy to say that after a month I have a roster of 50+ students signed up for my classes. I have 3 beginner and 1 intermediate class. This week we are still signing students up, but come Monday my classes will be in full swing! We weren't given much to work with as far as materials and curriculum go, but I am using all of your great lesson plans and great info from Ramin as a base to create activities and lessons. I met all my students when they came to sign up and they are from all different walks of life. There are middle-aged men and women who work in the airport, taxi drivers ranging in age from 20s-60s, and I even got some young guys who work in a Disco! They were really high-energy so that class should be very interesting.

Life in Liberia is gorgeous, to wake up everyday with mountains in the background is amazing! I hope life in the states is treating you all well! I'm gonna post a picture of me ziplining and things.

Pura Vida

Conversation partner meeting # ? - I lost count by Rita Schwab

Its become so natural to meet with Eric weekly that I don't consider this meeting anymore as credits for a cetificate, rather as a meeting with a friend or son.

I have enjoyed seeing Eric mature in getting acquainted with this country, its social environment, the English language and I have to say that he has progressed so much. I am really proud of him.
I will really miss him as I am leaving north within one week. But I am sure that we will stay in touch via phone and/or internet.

At our last gathering I brought Eric the CD by Bela Fleck ' Throw Down your Heart' as it was recorded in Africa. Bela Fleck recorded in Uganda, Mali, Tanzania and Gambia, with Mali a bordering country to Burkina Faso, Eric's resident country. He recognized one recording artist on the CD, namely Ah Ndiya, and said that she was very famous all over Africa.
Eric did not know what a banjo was. We explored and found out that the origin of the banjo is assumed to be the akonting, a hand-made 'primitive' African banjo.

Eric enjoyed the music very much and I am making him a copy.

Tutoring 12 with Eric Passouc by Rita Schwab

Last Friday Eric and I met again. I had asked him if I could give him a tutoring session so that I can complete my requirements. He has been my conversation partner. Of course Eric agreed and
was excited about the subject matter: Florida State Parks.
When I inquired where he has traveled in Florida, he mentioned Gainesville, Tampa and Jacksonville, but nothing further south from that.
I showed him a Florida map and we discussed the travel distances and I had him look up several distances on mapquest. He had not been aware of the size of this state.
Then we looked at a map of all the state park of which there are many.
Next I presented a slide show of my experiences in 3 different state parks. I realized right away that my slide show was way too long. Eric enjoyed my artistic photography.
The I presented the book 'Florida State Parks' by Michael Strutin. I asked him to choose 2 state parks, one close by and another in south Florida and compare the facilities of both parks, the size, the recreation possibilities and how to access the park, namely finding driving directions.
Eric chose Wakulla Springs as it is the closest state park to Tallahassee, which he also had visited before. He found out about the history of the park, its discovery and its large springs. We noted vocabulary of recreation activities, habitat, history and wild life.
On my recommendation Eric chose Bahia Honda as the State Park in the Keys, as he was least familiar with that area of Florida. He was impressed by the difference in climate, the beaches, the difference in coastal lines of the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic and the abundance of recreation available. We made a comparison chart of the 2 parks.

Eric thought that the idea of educating foreign students on the abundance of Florida's wilderness areas and the recreation possibilities as well as the distances for traveling to these places would be very helpful. I think I created an urge to explore for Eric and I am sure he will want to visit some of these places.

Focus was on vocabulary, pronunciation and comprehension.
We met for 1 1/2 hours.
I found this prep tutoring session before my final presentation very helpful. But now I can see that tutoring one person is quite a different approach than what is needed in the classroom. I believe that the tutoring session went very well, but the class presentation was not as successful and I would make many changes.
Thank you.

Richard -- Tutoring #12

This is the last session. It was somewhat emotional.

Anyway, for this last session, I dedicated my lesson to the differences between gerunds and infinitives.

Like articles, teaching gerunds and infinitives is very hard to teach. But I felt more prepared for this compared to the former.

I started the lesson by writing "Gerunds vs. Infinitives" on the white board. Of the two terms, Kyung had no idea what a gerund was, so I told him in this way:

"Gerunds function as a noun. Gerunds are formed from modifying the verb infinite. For example, "to go" is an infinitive, but its gerund is "going."

I explained to Kyung that the word "going" could function as a verb in some cases, but I did let him know that such cases make the word "going" no gerund at all. I told him, as an example, the word "going" was a verb in the sentence "I am going to the store today." I let him know in this case, the modified verb refers to the "present continuous" rather than it being a "gerund."

I know this my way of describing this seems confusing, but I assure you that Kyung knew exactly what I meant.

Anyway, I gave him some examples of the gerunds and infinitives.

"Eating an apple a day is healthy."

In this example, I told Kyung that "eating" functions as a noun because "eating" is an activity (one of the things we use to identify nouns... is it a person, place, thing, idea, activity, etc...).

Here is my infinitive example:

"I want to eat an apple."

I asked Kyung what the principle verb was in the sentence. He said "want," and he was correct. I explained why it was correct. The verb "want" is expressing the action. The infinitive "to eat" only specifies that action.

Kyung got this, of course. He is literally a language sponge.

After I taught him the differences, we worked together on a worksheet. This was the first question (the words in the parentheses had to be modified to either infinitives or gerunds):

You should think about (save) until you have enough money (get) a decent video camera rather than (rush) (buy).

I'm so happy to share with you that Kyung got this correct! In fact, he got nearly all of them correct! But here is one where he slipped a bit:

I have trouble (understand) modern art as some artists only seem out (shock); I cannot understand them not (want) to make the kind of beautiful things we all like (look) at.

This was Kyung's answer:

I have trouble to understand modern art as some artists only seem out to shock; I cannot understand them not wanting to make the kind of beautiful things we all like to look at.

In this case, I would remind Kyung that (understand) describes an activity, so the answer would be "understanding" since it functions as a noun.

Like I said, Kyung only had few slips here and there, but he definitely did get most of them correct. I was so proud!

I had to end the lesson there to make room for Karen to give Kyung an improvement test. With my tutoring and his independent studying, it turns out Kyung moved up by one whole level.

This made me feel accomplished.

Kyung let me know that I was an excellent tutor, and so did Karen. But Kyung made me feel very special when he said that he felt that he improved a lot. It made me feel good about that. I feel like I can take this experience and apply it to my first class.

I sure am going to miss Kyung.

Richard. Out.

Richard -- Tutoring #11

For our last week together, I started the first half of our last week discussing the future, which is to say the lesson focused on the future tense.

I had prepared a board game. In a way, it was like the board we played in our TEFL class that allowed us to talk about a specific thing for 1 minute.

Only I didn't give Kyung a time limit.

Anyway, there are basically 4 ways in which we English speakers tell about the future. So I focused it on these 4 common expressions:

1. Will

2. Going to

3. Plan to

4. Intend to

This lesson was going to be a speaking lesson about the future obviously. Kyung went first and his game piece would land on a square labeled "brush my teeth" for example.

Here, Kyung had to use any of the 4 common expressions and a time, i.e. tonight, to complete his turn.

So this is what he had to say: "Tonight, I intend to brush my teeth!"

Kyung is quite the quite the natural. I feel he learns more when he speaks, so I would ask him follow up questions.

"Where will you brush your teeth?"

"Are you going to use a toothbrush?"

We kept our focus on the future tense, so any time Kyung said something in the present tense, I would tell him to put what he said in the future tense. He did! He only did this present tense thing one time. The rest of the time he stuck with the future tense.

Kyung said he liked the lesson because it made him talk a lot. His enunciation has vastly improved, I must say! I'm so thrilled that he is learning! :)

Tutoring 10 with Yongheon by Rita SChwab

Yesterday I saw Yongheon at the library again as usual on Wednesdays. He is feeling better. He has been dealing with a bad cough and was sent to a specialist. This got us talking about the health care system in the US compared to South Korean health care. We spoke in detail about health insurance, a very acute issue and Yongheons direct coverage for himself and his family. This conversation was good practise for Yongheon's pronunciation as his goal is improvement in speaking and pronouncing and sentence intonation. I therefore always encourage conversations and will pause to correct mistakes and repeat words to practise better pronunciation.

The focus of the class however was Tallahassee, the city, its history, its government and politics, its climate, its demographics down to urban planning and expansion ( see attached file). Special attention was given to the Leon County Sustainable Community Summit to be held May 6th and 7th at the newly rebuilt Turnbull Conference Center. As Yongheon is employed by the south Korean government and is working on his Master's degree in political science with focus on urban planning, I thought this summit be of primary interest to Yongheon.

I had Yongheon read the entire summit information, practicing sentence intonation, focus on syllabus and pronunciation and repeating sentences with 'proper' language flow. The "f" and the "th" is always difficult to pronounce and needs extra practice.

I hope Yongheon will attend the summit as there are many speakers and the focus is on sustainability and planning for future living. Yongheon felt that Korea is more progressed in this subject matter as well as in technology and computer knowledge.

Our time for tutoring is almost over as I am leaving north the beginning of May. Yongheon gave me a going away present, which I thought was so sweet and he suggested dinner the next time we meet.

Tutoring this student has been a good and educational experience. Thank you.

Update on Ongoing Tutoring with Shansahn

I've been tutoring Shanshan since our class ended. She is almost too good to tutor anymore! What do I do when the student has surpassed the need for instruction? I guess I just have to keep running her through some essay writing drills, instilling her with the confidence she needs to kick the serious ass that is the LSAT writing section.

I recently started having her write the essays by hand, to mirror the LSAT conditions, and also keeping the composition time under 35 min. To my surprise, this actually improved her writing! One of her problems seems to be a lack of confidence in her first thought. This is actually a common creative writing issue, people going back over and nit picking at something until it's neutered of the original vitality it had. Her typed essays weren't this extreme, there were just a few points in every one where, as I know can see, she tried to insert ideas in the middle of sentences and thereby screwed up the rhythm, grammar of them.

She also said recently: how can I make my sentences less primitive? I almost got angry at this. I told her emphatically that her sentences were not primitive, and in fact her intellect of argument was well expressed, her creativity in analysis as well. This is what the admissions people are going to be looking at, not the rhetorical flights of fancy.

She's a great student. I'll have to keep her number on file for when I need a defense lawyer :)