Gabe - TS #7

     I begin the lesson by having Masoud read aloud some minimal and near-minimal pairs involving "cl" and "gl." I did this because I noticed last meeting that he couldn't hear the "l" in "include" when I pronounce it. I thought that this might be due to the fact that the "l" in this context in English tends to get devoiced. After he said them then I said them and he noticed the slight difference in my pronunciation from his. We talked a little about voiced and voiceless sounds in English before moving on to the main topic of the lesson: the present perfect. 

    I wasn't sure if this was something he would've already been familiar with, but I chose it because we've been going through the tenses in English, and we're done with the past tenses, and I know he knows the simple present and present continuous, so I figured that it'd be logical to move on to the present perfect. It did turn out to be something he hadn't studied before. Even though he was unfamiliar with it, he picked up the structure quickly. He was initially confused over how it differed from the simple past but I was able to explain it to him well. I had him come up with some example sentences so that I knew he understood the difference between the present perfect and simple past. 

    After this, we talked a little more about southern accents. I mentioned that we almost always use contractions in speech and he asked me to go over some contractions with him, so I did. He then told me about some of the characteristics of Southern Saudi Arabian culture versus Northern Saudi Arabian culture, and I found these fascinating because in a lot of ways they resembled Northern versus Southern American culture. 

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