Zeb CP#5

    Thursday afternoon I met with Bayasaa. I started out with saying “Bayasaa, since you are a doctor I have a question for you. I have a sore throat. What should I do?” He asked if I had a fever, which I didn't, so he thought maybe it was because it was so hot outside and maybe I had drank something very cold. It was sort of interesting getting a mini-consultation. I asked him if a radiologist has to study any general medicine, or if they only study radiology. He replied that in Mongolia first there are doctors of general medicine, who must study for six years, then there are specialists such as radiologists, who must study for an additional two years after their general medicine studies. Within the field of radiology there are also four or five further specialized branches, including sonography, (diagnostic ultrasound) which is Bayasaa's field of practice.

    I have found that with Bayasaa I don't need to worry about trying to come up with any kind of specific plan of conversation since there are so many things in which we share similar interests. About 30% of Mongolia's population are nomadic or semi-nomadic livestock herders (that number used to be much higher), so agriculture is something that Mongolians are well acquainted with. I forget how we got on the subject, but Bayasaa asked me if I had a dog, which I do. I was explaining what kind it is (Border Collie) and that it is a working stock dog that I trained myself. I then showed him a video of Border Collies working sheep, which was interesting to him (Mongolia has about 7 times as many sheep as people). He then told me about a horse he has that he started training when it was very young (it is 15yrs. old now) that is very good at working cattle. From there the conversation moved on and he asked me what my hobbies are. I told him I like to hunt and fish (things that are common in Mongolia) and do mechanical work. He said that he likes to do mechanic work as a hobby too. When he was 17 or 18 he took a bunch of parts from old Russian cars (Mongolia is a former Soviet republic) and put them all together and made a car. I then showed him pictures of my mechanical project where I took the original engine and transmission out of a Toyota Land Cruiser and replaced them with the diesel engine and transmission out of a heavy truck.

    Bayasaa asked me when I was going to Costa Rica, and I replied that I don't know for sure, but maybe in several months. He was trying to express the concept that he would miss me, but he didn't know the word yet, so I explained it to him. It took several minutes before he understood, and I had to use the example that he misses his wife and children because he is here and they are not, so anytime we are absent from a friend or our family we can say that we miss them. I asked him if he knew the word 'enemy', which he did, so I gave the opposite example that if we are absent from someone who is our enemy we do not say that we miss them, because we are glad that they are absent.

    We finished our conversation talking about the upcoming CIES field trip to Wakulla Springs. I explained what it is and showed him pictures of a river boat tour that I took there late last year, including pictures of alligators. He knew the word 'crocodile', but alligator was a new word for him. He had said that due to having had some kind of near-drowning experience in his early teens he doesn't like to swim now, and I'm afraid that the pictures of the gators finished off any possibility of him ever swimming at Wakulla Springs.

Lila Mandela CO#1

I completed my first classroom observation on July 12th.  I observed Mr. Angel Rios' grammar class.  He did exactly as Mrs. Kim told us in our class; he wrote the agenda on the board.  Mr. Rios greeted the students, collected everyone's homework and then passed out the worksheet for the day. The worksheet introduced the usage of the words, "just", "already" and "yet.  Instead of independent work, Mr. Rios explained the words and then asked the students throughout the class to answer the questions.  Since this was a group 2B class, Mr. Rios was constantly correcting grammar mistakes and gave the students multiple chances to adjust answers.  After completing the worksheet, we transitioned to a different assignment. Mr. Rios discussed an assignment in which the students needed to select a survey and create five questions related to that topic.  The survey must be completed by four different people outside of the classroom and they were allowed to work in pairs.  After conducting the survey, the students had to provide a conclusion based on the survey findings.  Of course, before ending the class, Mr. Rios gave a model of the survey, which was very helpful.  After providing the model, Mr. Rios set the students free for their next class.

Zeb TP#6

    Wednesday afternoon I met with David Hong (it had been decided that Lindsey and I would split the Hong twins up after the difficulty that I had with them the last time). Mrs. Hong had made a comment to me about the boys liking reptiles, so I decided to take a different approach and try to exploit that bit of information that I had. I picked out three different National Geographic video clips that were two-three minutes each. The first was about the Archer fish, the second was Cobra vs Mongoose and the third was Burmese Python vs Alligator in the Florida Everglades. After watching each video I asked a series of questions, such as “Where did this video take place?”, “What is it about?”, “What does this animal do?”, etc....

    I tried to get David to answer in complete sentences as much as possible since I was writing his answers out as a short summary (writing seems to be one of his weaknesses, and at this point I feel that I need to try to get him to enjoy our meetings rather than insist that he write). There were a number of times that I had to help him rephrase his sentences, but overall he did fairly well, and I almost think that he realized and appreciated the fact that I was being a little easy on him.

    It was about 40-45 minutes before David started getting restless and wondering when we would be done, whereas the time before this had happened almost right away. There were times that he was actually conversing with me instead of just giving very short answers to my questions or trying to dodge them altogether. Overall I think that in spite of himself he almost enjoyed this session.

    As we were finishing up we looked out the library window into an oak tree and saw a mocking bird attacking a hawk, so as sort of a bonus we watched a video 'Hawk vs Rattlesnake'.

Hayley TP#8

Sally

I started by talking to Sally a little bit. She is currently in science camp and her cousins are visiting her. She had said she liked math and her dad told me he wanted her to work on word problems. I had a worksheet with six word problems. I can see why her dad wants her to work on this because her math is great but sometimes her comprehension of what the question is asking isn’t as good so she gets the problem wrong. There was one question where she did a fraction of the pizza eaten when the question was asking for the amount of pizza left and only one other question gave her trouble. They didn’t take her long so I think I will bring more word problems to our next session.  

Next we did a worksheet on conjunctions which was way too easy for her. After that we did a worksheet that was about subject and predicate. I explained what a predicate was and then we did the worksheet. The worksheet had picture riddles to guess words and phrases. For example the word ice was written really tall and thin for thin ice after she guessed all the riddles she filled them in to the matching predicate. This was good because she learned the words forecast, walking on thin ice, and a few others. When she was finished we joined Lauren and her group playing Apples to Apples. This game was really fun for all of us and they learned some new words which is great!

Hayley TP #7

Abdul

I met with Abdul at Strozier. He had his TOEFL book with him so we looked through that a little bit. He told me he is most worried about the speaking section of the test. We looked over one of the readings together which was about the evolution of cetaceans which are aquatic mammals (dolphins, whales, ect.) I didn’t even know the word cetaceans and there were some technical terms that I probably wouldn’t have known if I wasn’t a science major like vestigial organs. We went through the questions together. It was easy to focus on main ideas and searching for sentences because the book has the paragraph the question is from written above the question to help learn skimming skills.

He also asked me what the zodiac signs were and I told him about horoscopes and how people get really into them but I think they are all made up. We looked at some examples on-line and I pointed out how all the ones predicting the future are so broad that they could apply to anyone for anything. Like: things may be what they seem this month, but don't jump to any conclusions! I think a girl had asked him his sign and I told him that is kind of like a really cheesy pickup line. I will meet with him again on Monday and we will start doing phrasal verbs again.

Zeb CP#4

   Wednesday afternoon I met with Simone for a conversation partner meeting. She is from Brazil and teaches English, Portuguese and several other subjects in a public school. She mentioned some of the difficulties in teaching English as a non-native speaker who learned the language in her own country.

    It was rather interesting to note the directness, and at times bluntness (at least from my cultural perspective) that is sometimes present in a non-native English speaker. When I asked Simone to give a brief description of her country she wondered if I wanted to hear the good or the bad. I replied that in order to have a realistic perspective I thought that both were necessary. She then proceeded to describe some of the general things about Brazil (the climate, details about the city where she lives and her work in general). She wondered if I knew anything about soccer and carnival, two things that are very 'Brazilian'. I replied that I did know that soccer is very popular in Brazil, but I didn't know anything about carnival. It turns out that these are two things about her country/culture that Simone hates. She said that as a teacher she is sort of looked down on as a rather unimportant person and is on the lower end of the pay scale, whereas a soccer player who might not even be able to read and write is viewed as a national hero and earns ridiculous amounts of money, all for just playing a game. Carnival is an event where for several days people just go wild with drinking, partying, lawlessness and at times vandalism and destruction of property.

    Simone went on to further highlight some of the negative aspects of being a teacher in Brazil: if one passes a certain test (which she has done) consisting of elements of language ability, knowledge, teaching ability and several other skill sets that person cannot be fired from their job unless they commit a serious crime such as murder. I asked if such a situation contributed to having people in the system who shouldn't be. I don't know why, but she sort of beat around the bush, but ended up pretty much confirming that by saying “Lets put it this way: everyone has a bad day from time to time and does things that they shouldn't, but they can't be fired for it”. Another thing she mentioned was the hours she must put in: I asked her how many, but she didn't know right off hand. It is five mornings a week, three afternoons and two or three evenings. The best I could tell it was somewhere around forty hours per week. She is supposed to earn a large bonus for some kind of extra work she does, but because of corruption she doesn't get everything that she should. She also said “I heard that in the US you pay a tax rate of around 7%. In Brazil we pay 40%”.

    A question that Simone asked me was “Why do you want to be a teacher?” She says that she will soon be getting out of teaching and going into law or something similar, where she will be more highly respected, put in about half the hours that she currently works, but make twice as much money.

Adam CO # 3

Today at 1:00 pm I observed Ryan's Speaking class in Room 403. He had a pleasant, friendly attitude and used humor to lower students' affective filters. The approach was largely student centered and depended largely on the students making progress on their own. For the exercise the students did during this class period, they were assigned into pairs to read a story out loud and to talk to each other about the story. Ryan made sure to collect their errors and take notes as the students were speaking. He presented their "beautiful errors" on the board and asked students to correct them. At the end of the class he told students about their homework, which entailed making a persuasive presentation. Ryan modeled this for the class by giving his own sample persuasive presentation about why it is good to write in a diary. In general, Ryan facilitated a positive learning experience for the students by giving them a friendly, conversational environment and modeling an example of what they would have to do for their projects.