FSU TEFL Certificate Course Fall 2 2018

For my 15th tutoring session I held a forum of sorts with Mauricio, Santiago, Paula, Natalia, and Andrea. They all wanted assistance preparing for the speaking section of the ITEP exam, and I decided it would be beneficial for them to see, hear, and critique each other. To start the session, I had each of them take 2 minutes to give a brief introduction of themselves. The ITEP website suggested 2 minutes for this, so I set a timer for them each time to help give them an idea of how much time they would need. We then practiced answering short answer questions with 1 minute on the clock, followed by the task of describing a random picture; also with 1 minute on the clock. To finish I asked them opinion questions, and had them spend 2 minutes answering. After one answered, I put 2 minutes back on the clock and had the next person talk about whether they agreed or disagreed. They all had a decent amount of fun with this, and said they felt it helped them a lot in preparing for the exam.

For my 14th Tutoring Session I met with Andrea on Wednesday, December 12th, 2018. Like Natalia, Andrea was referred to me by Paula for the session. Andrea wanted to work on both reading and listening. I started off having Andrea read me a few advanced-level passages and walking me through her rationale for the answers. She was spot on when she had the text to refer to. I then read her a few upper-intermediate and advanced level passages. She did fine answering the comprehension questions, but expressed concern on whether my pace and accent would be dissimilar to that on the exam. To remedy this, we finished the session listening to passages recorded on a different website and she did a wonderful job comprehending and answering those as well.

For my 13th Tutoring Session I met with Natalia on Wednesday, December 12th, 2018. Natalia was referred to me by Paula and was also interested in working on listening. Mauricio, Santiago, and Paula gave me positive feedback about the strategy I'd been using for practicing listening so I continued as such. Natalia asked me to start slowly so I began with a mid-intermediate level passage, continued with a few upper-intermediate passages, and eventually worked into advanced passages. I think this was a good strategy as she did not seem confident at first, but easily worked her way up to comprehending the advanced passages. Through the entire 75 minutes she was only mistaken on 3 questions, and each were ones that were worded poorly in my opinion. We focused on the questions that were well done, and her logic on each. Twice she got the correct answer, but misunderstood the information leading her to the answer. The beautiful mistakes were explained and she left the session feeling that...

For my 12th tutoring session, I met with Paula on Tuesday, December 11th, 2018. Paula stopped in on the tail end of my tutoring session with Santiago, and asked if I could help her work on listening for ITEP prep as well. I agreed, and proceeded to work with her once I finished with Santiago. Using the same website but different passages, I read Paula several upper-intermediate and advanced level passages once through before asking her the attached comprehension questions. She did an excellent job with all of them except for one about a lake drying up in Africa. The article was similar to the one that gave Santiago trouble in that it followed several different people and provided quotes from each within a very short article. For that article I went back and reread the section of the article containing the key information for each question; explaining the difference between the wording in the passage and the wording in the question answers.

For my 11th Tutoring Session, I met with Santiago on December 11, 2018. Santiago was preparing for the ITEP examination, and asked if I could tutor him after speaking with Mauricio about our session. Santiago was also having the most difficulty with the listening section preparation, so I approached with a similar structure. I visited the same website I'd used with Mauricio. I first read Santiago two upper-intermediate level passages, once each, before asking him to explain his answers for the reading comprehension section. He easily deciphered the passages and selected the correct responses. I then read him two advanced level passages. The first section he answered all questions correctly, though he did need one paragraph repeated. The second passage gave him a bit of trouble, but to be fair it was confusing to me too. It was a passage styled in the form of a news report containing several names, and the questions were worded poorly. I explained to Santiago that this should not di...

For my 10th tutoring session I met with Mauricio at his apartment complex on Tuesday, December 11, 2018. Mauricio and a few of the other Colombian students asked for assistance with listening in preparation for the ITEP examination. I returned to the same website I visited in our previous session; though this time I read the passages aloud to Mauricio. I read the passage at a steady pace slightly slower than my normal speech pattern. I read the passages only once, and then asked Mauricio to answer the comprehension questions and explain his rationale. This time around he had no problems, aside from a few words he didn't hear well. He exhibited ambiguity tolerance in still deciphering the information of the passages despite this.