FSU TEFL 120 Summer 2

 Date: 8/13 Thursday Tutee: Urania Topic: Past progressive and future progressive Feedback provided: I encouraged her to think of this grammar as changing it from the present progressive to the respective other tense, that way it may be easier to process than having to worry about doing each step over and over for both past and future. I encouraged her when she got questions right, and I tried my best to not give away the answer immediately when she didn't get it completely right, instead I tried to steer her towards the right answer by using a general rule as feedback. Lessons learned: Teaching concepts in groups can make things far easier to understand for students. Additionally splitting things over several days can also be beneficial, because you can introduce the foundation of the topic on the first day, and then include variations on subsequent days to build on and reinforce the foundation without overwhelming the student.

 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.

 Date and Time: August 1, 2026 7-8 am  Topic/Skill: dependent and independent clauses feedback to tutee: Corrected my student by showing her that dependent clauses are incomplete thoughts. Lessons: I learned that complex sentences are hard to understand.

 Date: August 6 Thursday Tutee: Urania Location: Zoom Topic: Pronunciation Feedback provided: I walked through pronunciation of common Spanish L1 errors and their corrections (adding e in front of s+consonant, as well as y sounding like j). Since she previously mentioned she struggles a lot with pronunciation, we drilled these a few times, and I explained them in various ways. We will continue working on these L1 errors in the future, but progress was made and I made sure to provide encouraging praise whenever a pronunciation was clear and correct.  Lessons learned: Pronunciation can be challenging to teach online, since video compression and audio devices take away from the clarity of pronunciation. That notwithstanding, when speakers struggle to formulate sentences on their own, it can be helpful to have them read off example or modeled sentences, that way you can assess some of their errors and teach the basics of pronunciation, intonation, etc.

 Date: August 5th Wednesday Tutee: Wei Location: Zoom Topic: Speaking, specifically about AI Feedback provided: We took turns speaking about our opinions about AI, during which I took notes. I then went over the notated errors after we concluded our conversation. Errors included omitting third person singular -s with verbs, using the gerund, as well as several miscellaneous errors. Lessons learned: It is very important to notate errors, because otherwise you will forget them and be unable to provide error correction. It is best not to interject errors because it will disrupt the train of thought and the speaker's development of automaticity and fluency unless  the errors severely hinder or break down communication, are heavily stigmatized, or are very frequent/patterned (as per Snow in our textbook).

 Date: July 27th Monday Tutee: Urania Location: Zoom Topic: Needs Assessment, Speaking, Grammar errors made in tutee's speech (gendered 3rd person pronouns, gerunds/infinitives when describing likes, countable nouns, etc.) Feedback provided: I provided general error correction, as well as doing my best to explain the grammar rules behind each correction. I also provided some pronunciation feedback when asked, since she stated it is something she would like to work on.  Lessons learned: Teaching beginners requires very careful and slow speech, to make sure that they understand and follow your general idea. Urania understands a fair amount of basic English, so I at times also have to use Spanish to clarify or explain completely. While this is a good skill to have I can't over rely on it. 

  Tutoring Blog # 11   Date/Time: 7/29/2026; 5:30-6:00-Wei Location: Dirac Topic/Skill: Conversation Feedback provided to the tutee : Wei had questions regarding eating customs in the U.S. She wanted to know why people bring food to a dinner where they are the guests and then proceed to take it home. She finds this strange (me too). We then spoke of different dinner types such as potluck and Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner. She wanted to know my customs, and I asked her about hers. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Wei has many questions and loves learning new things. I learn a lot about her too. We arranged our following classes.

  Tutoring Blog #10   Date/Time: 7/29/2026; 3:00-4:00 pm-Neil Location: CIES Topic/Skill: Homework/Speaking Feedback provided to the tutee : Neil wanted help with homework from his listening class. There were a series of questions based on the listening activity. I had him tell me what the listening was about and then I helped him answer the questions. We discussed why he was providing the answer and to give reasons why. We then practiced speaking. I asked him about his favorite restaurant and where he likes to go out to eat. We then talked about the restaurant he had been to the night before and what he ordered. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: I need to help Neil a lot with vocabulary. He is a pleasure to teach because he is wiling to learn.

  Tutoring Blog # 9   Date/Time: 7/27/2026; 5:00-6:00 pm-Wei Location: Dirac Topic/Skill: Conversation Feedback provided to the tutee : Wei wanted conversational practice. I set up guidelines for a conversation and went through them. We spoke about her graduating from her master’s and her plans for after. She wants to apply for a Ph.D. and I encouraged her to do so. I corrected her pronunciation. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Wei has many questions and is very interested in all sorts of topics. I have noticed that when Wei is nervous, she has more difficulty speaking.