Zack - CO#1

 For my first classroom observation, I joined Olivia James's advanced listening class. The two topics that she spent the most time on in class were the local weather and a board-game similar to chess, called Go. Unlike chess, Go was created, and has been traditionally played, in the East rather than the West.

I paid close attention to the way that Olivia spoke: her volume, speed, vocabulary, and so on. Since this was an advanced class, I didn't notice too much in her manner of speaking that would have felt out of place for a native speaker. I did notice, however, that she used physical gestures quite often, especially when she had the weather radar pulled up via the projector. Many of the terms she used when talking about the weather could potentially have been challenging for the students: e.g. doppler, precipitation, and so on. However, this fit nicely with the idea that students' listening practice should contain around 75% known vocabulary.

When it came to the discussion of Go (specifically a documentary called AlphaGo), I noticed much the same patterns.

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