Zack - TS3 (Zheping)

 I felt that my second session with Zheping went quite well. We met in the basement lounge of the Hecht House and spent the whole time working on pronunciation, as he had requested last time. Before the session, I downloaded a number of exercises and pronunciation charts to aid us during the session. The most helpful exercises were "minimal pair" lists, which include many pairs of English words with similar pronunciation that learners tend to mess up (e.g. mouse and mouth). We went through these lists together; first, I would read one from each pair and ask Zheping to tell me which I'd said. Next, I had hime read through the pairs, to see which sounds in particular he was having trouble with. His biggest problem sounds were the following:

1. The "v" sound as in "very".

2. The "th" sound as in "thought".

3. The "th" sound as in "breathe".

4. The "zh" sound as in "Asia".

We narrowed the minimal pairs down only to those that contained these sounds and drilled them for the remainder of the lesson. I used a helpful tongue/mouth chart along with my mouse cursor to indicate where the tongue goes for each of the various sounds. At first, he was pronouncing "mouth" and "mouse" both as "mouse"; by the end, however, he was able to clearly pronounce the "th" sound in "mouth". For next time, Zheping will read a short passage out loud, and we'll go through his pronunciation errors one by one.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Evan TS#13 (Bruce)

           Today, we tackled clauses again. However, it was more because we were focused on the nitty gritty of the sentence. This happened by accident. We were working on adjective clauses again, he was asked to omit the relative pronoun if he could. He was struggling with knowing when he should. The difference being if the clause describes the subject or the object. If you omit the relative pronoun from the clause describing the subject, there is a mix up with the verbs in the clauses. I had to break down an individual clause and describe the idea of "complete thought" to Bruce, though that proved rather easy. We went into detail about what a subject is, and he came to the intersection of nouns and subjects. This proved more confusion as it was difficult for him to grasp that a subject must be a noun, but not all nouns are subjects. It was hard to describe his mistake to him because of how logic and language intersect. I used the sentence, "a square...
Read more

Zack - CO#3

 For my third classroom observation, I joined Ryan Flemming's beginner/intermediate listening class. This class was unique in that it contained mixed skill levels. Based on what he told me, I don't think this is typical for a CIES classroom, but was unavoidable this semester because of enrollment/COVID-related issues. Since this was a listening class, Ryan did most of the talking. More than any of the other classroom observations, the manner in which the instructor's speech was modified for the students' sake was most apparent here. Given the level of the students, this was totally appropriate and to be expected. I think it takes a lot more skill/practice than one might think to speak in a way that is comprehensible to beginner and lower intermediate students of English, but I think Ryan did a terrific job, and I sought to emulate him specifically when I was giving my own lessons (both the "fake" one during our class meeting, and the real one where we taught i...
Read more

Gabe - CP #5 (Dojun)

      Since Dojun lives in South Korea, I met him via zoom. We first started talking about how he learned English and what he does for a living. He told me that in Korea, when he was a kid, that learning English is mandatory and that he took six years of it during middle and high school, as well as taking a business English class at university. Apparently nowadays kids begin learning English in elementary school, for a total of 12 years including middle and high school. He majored in Aviation and works as an air traffic controller. He says he that in school, he learned how to read and write well but that his conversation and listening skills need improving, which is why he wants to have conversations.       We spent a lot of time talking about the Covid-19 situation and how differently it's viewed and handled between Korea and the U.S. In Korea, everyone wears masks - it's required, but hardly anyone complains - whereas over here, masks are optional in...
Read more