Claire TS #10

Date/Time: April 5, 12:00-1:00pm

Location: CIES

Topic/Skill: TOEFL Q6, pronunciation, and composition editing

I met with Ana for the sixth time on Wednesday. I brought a resource I had found on the TOEFL website that clarifies what each question on the Speaking portion of the exam will ask her to do and we discussed it. I had her do another practice TOEFL Speaking question (type 6) based on an audio clip of a lecture. Next, I gave Ana a choice of several pronunciation games for Portuguese speakers that I had found online, and she picked one called “Turn Words,” which focuses on English words that all have the “er” sound in the middle but have a variety of different spellings. At first she found the game very challenging and didn’t think she could identify any more words after she did just a few, but I encouraged her to try to do the activity methodically one word at a time and see if she could get a little farther. This worked for her, and it was cool seeing her eyes light up every time she got to a correct word. Later, Ana asked me to help her correct an essay that she plans to submit to the CIES Voices writing competition. I grabbed my sheet from class with the writing correction abbreviations and marked up the paper. I was glad to have the chance to practice this, especially on a nice essay with relatively few problem areas to address. Ana figured out how to correct most of the errors that I noted, but there were some places where she didn’t understand what the error was or how to fix it. I explained what was needed in those instances and she made the final corrections. Ana’s paper is a reflection on the positive learning environment at CIES and how CIES has given her an international family. It was very encouraging to read.