FSU TEFL 120 Summer 2

 Date: August 12 Tutee: Wei Topic: Reviewing Conditionals, new vocab, and speaking Feedback provided: I gave positive feedback to Wei for answering the questions with the correct conditional and for recognizing with condition each question was eliciting correctly. As for the new vocab, I introduced her to a corpus tool called SKELL which can help show which words are most associated with or collocate with other words. This is because she asked me about the difference between mindset and mentality, which are incredibly similar. Afterwards, we did a speaking activity where she told me a story about Chinese history, and I notated errors and provided error correction afterwards. Lessons learned: Advanced students often know which errors they have made and how to correct them, they just often need them pointed out. Additionally, synonyms may also trip up learners, because they may expect two words to have different contexts or meaning, when they are in fact almost universally interchang...

 Date and Time: August 8, 2026 9-10 am Topic/Skill: writing complex sentences Feeback to tutee: I helped my student use different transition words to write more smoothly and efficiently. Lessons learned: Students have a hard time with transition words because they need to be placed intentionally within a sentence.

 Date: August 11th Tuesday Tutee: Urania Topic: Present progressive Feedback provided: I first checked to see if she understood how to use the grammar point, and when it became visible that she had not yet really come across it, we went over it, learning it and then doing a few practice questions. I mainly provided feedback after teaching the concept by reminding her of certain rules such as we have to use the verb "to be" in the correct form before using the action verb. Lessons learned: You have to be both very thorough and very consistent when teaching a grammar point, because students need something to grasp and consistently refer to when they are learning the material. I opted to use the phrases helping verb and action verb, highlighting them each a different color when I used them. I think this helped make the concept a little clearer as well as help visualize the steps necessary to say something in the present progressive.

Date: August 8 Saturday Tutee: Wei Location: Zoom  Topic: Intensive listening, intonation, and conditionals Feedback provided: I used a brief moment of our 3 minute podcast segment to describe how different intonations can create a difference in meaning, and why making sure to pay attention to the way we use and listen for intonation can be crucial at all levels of conversation. As for conditionals, I helped clarify their use cases and the differences in each conditional in terms of what they communicate. Lessons learned: When using native samples, they can be a lot more challenging than they seem to me as a native speaker, so I need to manage my expectations to make sure I am making the segments small enough to be digestible and not overwhelming. Additionally I should prepare potential vocab that may be new to the reader and be reader to answer spur of the moment questions. With the conditionals, I learned that intuitiveness is not always enough, and that I need to be very deliber...

 Date and Time: August 8, 2026 8-9 am Topic/Skill: connecting independent clauses Feedback to tutee: Helped her to understand when to place commas between clauses. Lessons learned: I learned that comma placement and understanding independent clauses in complex sentences is a difficult topic for students.

 Date and Time: August 1, 2026 8-9 am Topic/Skill: Independent clauses Feedback to tutee: Told my student that an independent clause has a subject, verb, and action and is a complete thought.  Lessons learned: Independent clauses are hard to identify when next to a dependent clause.