First Observation

Yesterday, I taught for the first hour or so.  I went through the book, but tried to adapt some of the activities to make them more interesting for the students.  When I was planning, Katie gave me a chart to use.  It had the activity (including page number), dynamic (pairs, whole class, or individual), the instructions I would give, and the number of minutes it would take.  I like that idea--I might use it again in the future.

I still felt a little rushed, though.  I didn't have time to ask the students how their weekends were, do a warm-up, or anything like that.  Because of time, I didn't have the discussion of how to become good at something that's initially hard.  Katie and my advisor, who observed me, said I did well.  The vocabulary in the book was difficult for the class, but I defined some new words and gave the students strategies to take notes, deal with a hard assignment, etc.  I hope they can use those strategies in other subject areas, too.

After my lesson, Katie worked with the students on pronunciation.  The students had fun, I think.  She gave them some chants to repeat, then listened to each one individually for the rhythm of English.  Some of them faltered at first, but they all got each sentence right in the end.

Test Day

Yesterday, the class took two tests: one on past tense verbs, the other on listening from the book.  The past tense verbs test was dictation.  Katie had made up sentences about individual students, each one containing a verb on their list.  The students had to write each whole sentence, and would receive feedback on the spelling of all the words in each sentence.  They would only be graded on the spelling of the past tense verbs in the sentences, though.  I thought that was a fun idea.

To prepare them for the past tense verbs test, Katie had the students quiz each other in pairs.  Most of them had clearly studied--it's a good class.  One of them admitted he had not, however.  It was evident from his attempts to answer his partner's questions.  Katie has told me after class that she thinks he isn't as smart as the other students, and tries to cover that up.  Many of the students think that by talking with the teachers before class and being polite, they can negotiate their grades.  That may happen in Arab culture, but not here!

Katie has been telling the students all the time not to make excuses.  She said the student who failed told her he had a headache.  We laughed after class--people with headaches can still pass tests if they study!  I think he, and some of the other students, give up sometimes when they think they can't do well in English.  The Arab woman did the same thing last class.  I'm going to give a long lesson on Monday, and there's a life lesson I think I'm going to try to impart.  Maybe these students could cover up their lack of knowledge in high school, but that won't work in the real world.  Furthermore, it shows real maturity for someone to admit he or she needs help and study harder.  Perhaps these students don't realize that can happen in college and graduate school.  It's a message that could even reach the good students, because everyone has something (English or not) that they need to do, but is hard for them.

I gave a pronunciation lesson before the test, too.  I had told Katie that I noticed the students were having trouble, so I showed them how to shape their mouths for each vowel.  She said I'm good at diagnosing the students' needs--it seemed that what I can work on is actually time management.  It turns out that I think activities will take longer than they really do.  On Monday, I plan to have a mental time limit for each activity.

The Textbook

Today, the students plowed through several pages in the textbook.  Katie has done so many activities outside of it that she said she thought the Chapter 2 test would be easy for them.  However, she needed to make sure the students were familiar with the format.  Also, many of the listening comprehension questions in the textbook are similar to those on the IELTS standardized test.

Class was quieter than usual because of the book.  The better students among the Arab men were mostly the ones who participated.  There were true or false questions on a recorded conversation, as well as questions about intonation and vocabulary.  The students were good at figuring out the meanings of words from context, which Katie said is on the IELTS, too.  There was a part that had students listen to a recording about learning styles; Katie had them practice taking notes.

We finished with a pairwork activity.  One student in each pair told the other what to draw, and the other student was supposed to use his or her listening skills to draw that picture.  They had handouts with pictures of squares, lines, etc.  To begin, we went over vocabulary such as "upper right corner" and "lower left corner."  I helped the Arab woman and Korean woman.  I think the Arab woman is a very visual learner--she often got answers right when she focused on writing.  But when the students were supposed to repeat words orally, she didn't do so until I prompted her.  When it was her turn to draw the picture, she cheated by looking at it, not listening to her partner.  Katie said the Arab woman would benefit from a one-on-one tutor--I agree.

Past Tense Verbs

Yesterday's class was fun.  The students were all rejuvenated after the break.  The first thing Katie had them do was a surprise speaking presentation.  They had two minutes to prepare speeches about their breaks using past tense verbs and sequence words.  She said they would have to do something like this on the TOEFL or IELTS, so it was good practice.  I wonder how she graded them.

Next, she had them do a cloze activity in their packet on past tense verbs.  They worked in groups of two and three while Katie and I monitored them.  Katie had me go over the answers at the end.  I had each person spell each verb out loud, which Katie said was good--Arabs have trouble with spelling.  Classroom management is still an adjustment, though.  The class and I agreed to start with the Bhutanese student and go around the room, with each person saying one answer.  Yet the moment I called on him, everyone else started talking.  After a little while, the class settled into the proper routine.  Katie said I should have told everyone else to be quiet from the beginning, though.  In Arab culture, students call things out and work together.

When I monitored the students, many of them had trouble with words that change tense according to vowel: hang/hung, choose/chose, etc.  I wonder why we didn't spend more time on pronunciation in the speaking/listening class, because I'm not sure they can hear the difference between each two vowels.  One student said /hang/ (in IPA), which is neither "hang" nor "hung."  Another student had a good question: is "read" pronounced the same in present and past tense?  We did read the list of present and past tense verbs aloud together once, but it seems like they need more help.

We did another activity out of a grammar book by Betty Schrampfer Azar.  One person would tell someone else to do something.  The other person would do it, and then the first person would ask him or her what he or she had done.  The other person would describe it in past tense.  The students worked in pairs, then as a whole class.  It was fun for them to move around, I think.

The last activity of the day was to talk about the 18-24-year-old brain.  We flipped to a reading in the textbook about that.  It was interesting that the students admitted the brain at that age is not fully developed.  I looked at the book during break, and I like that this chapter has a study skills theme.  Katie said she doesn't like its focus on intonation, however--Arabs tend to be good at that.

Teachable Moments

Today was the last class before spring break.  When the students come back, they're going to have a test on past tense verbs.  On Wednesday, Katie put the students in pairs and had them write 2-3 minute speeches.  (She changed it to an individual activity at the end--they weren't doing their own work.)  So today, we spent the whole class period working on the speeches.

Katie and I walked around the room for almost the first hour, monitoring students.  We helped them with pronunciation and grammar.  The next hour, each student gave his or her speech.  In between, Katie went over how the students were graded and had each person watch for one thing.  We had a mini-discussion of strengths and weaknesses after each speaker.

I definitely saw improvement in the students I had monitored, which made me feel great.  There were still areas where I was unsure about the effectiveness of my teaching, though.  Katie and I had a short meeting after class, when I asked her if we had missed anyone as we checked students' work.  There were two students who had more mistakes than the other seven.  Katie said we might have, but she didn't grade them terribly hard.  She keeps telling me that each teacher will have a different style.  I think if I was teaching by myself, I would make a big effort to get to everyone so that grading would be fair.

During the meeting, Katie and I also talked about different forms of assessment.  The students had done very well on the test they took on Monday.  It was controlled practice.  The speeches were much harder, though--she told the class that.  I saw the difference between getting grammar and pronunciation right on a simple listening test and trying to actually talk like a native speaker.

We talked about how to find a balance between the needs of the outgoing Arab men (six students) and the others (one Arab woman, a Korean woman, and a Bhutanese man).  The Arab woman is taking the class for the third time.  She's very shy, but Katie said in class that she is a strong woman for going in front of the class to speak.  The Korean woman is very serious and intrinsically motivated, but it can be hard to get her to write creative stories and speeches.  The Bhutanese man is older than the college-bound students, and set an example today.  He presented a story with a moral: selflessness.  Afterward, the rest of the class sat in awe.  They said the story was "beautiful."  Katie used it as an example: "He doesn't just do this because he has to, it's because he loves it.  You guys should do what you love."

It was really nice for me to witness a teachable moment.  It's one of the things I want to focus on in my professional growth--thinking on my feet.  I think Katie is really good at shaping the young Arabs as people in this culture, and I hope I do that someday, too.  It must be a great motivator for them.

Practicum

Now, I am participating in a practicum at an intensive ESL program at my university.  My class consists of mostly young men from the Middle East, one Arab woman, a Korean woman, and an Asian man.  It's a middle intermediate class on listening and speaking.

I missed the first two classes when I was taking comps, so my first class began with a quick test.  I feel that I learned a lot from my supervisor, Katie (not her real name), about how to introduce a listening test.  She had clearly listened to the CD ahead of time.  She knew that it goes extremely fast, so she played it two or three times in each section.  She also read some of the directions aloud even though they were written for the students.  When I started teaching before graduate school, I never questioned tests or textbooks--but Katie knew the test's flaws.  One section wasn't well organized; that was the one she played the greatest number of times.  Afterward, the students seemed comfortable with how it had gone.

Next, Katie handed out a list of present and past tense English verbs.  The class went over the different forms as well as the rules--there are many of them!  She gave everyone an index card and asked us to write a present tense form of a verb on it.  After checking to make sure that no two people had the same verb, she had us stand in a circle, holding our cards in front of us for everyone to see.

We made a story together.  Each person had to make a sentence with his or her verb in it, in past tense, and repeat all the other sentences from the beginning.  I started it, about a dog.  As the story evolved, the dog became a model student!  I noticed that Katie had been emphasizing American educational values throughout the class--she made a big deal out of telling the students to keep their eyes on their own tests, for example.  The students seemed to have fun making the dog get up early every day, go to class, and do well on his English test (with some prompting from the teacher).  I hope that I can take advantage of teachable moments like that, silly ways to maximize learning opportunities.

Lastly, we got into small groups, each with a baggie full of sentences.  Some were correct, Katie explained, others not.  She had us gamble for pennies, which seemed to motivate the students.  My group consisted of the Korean, the Arab girl, and one Middle Eastern man.  The girls were much quicker than the guy at giving answers.  He would wait for them to say whether the sentence was correct, then still hesitate to give his opinion--I prompted him.  I started only letting the penny go to the first person who got it right, and that seemed to make him go faster.  My reasoning was that culturally, students are used to working together, so he needed guidance to own his individual work--the American way.

Overall, I am very excited about my practicum.  I have enjoyed getting to know the students so far, seeing what Katie does, and trying out some concepts I have learned in my classes.  I look forward to doing some informal research on this class!

Headaches, Armaches and Legaches

Yesterday, Min and I talked about parts of the body.  She drew me a picture and labeled the many different parts in Chinese.  I asked her if there was a song for kids with the parts of the body in Chinese, since there are so many in English (Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, The Hokey Pokey, etc.).  She said no, but she used to play a game with her son when he was little: she would say a part of the body, and he would touch it.  We played that for a while.


Min had suggested a lesson on parts of the body in case I needed to go to the doctor while in China.  She introduced me to a Chinese friend of hers, a neighbor whose husband is studying here.  As we studied, Min and the friend asked me questions about how tell a doctor what is wrong in English.  For example, people can have a toothache, headache, stomachache, etc. but not an armache or legache.  Why?  I have no idea.  We have to say "My arm/leg aches."

Min said it's cheap and convenient to go to the doctor or hospital in China, and that many Chinese Americans move back for that reason when they grow old.  She could not believe that people have to wait three weeks for an appointment here!   She said it would only cost about $20 to have a dentist pull a tooth, too.

She pointed out that sometimes the same spoken word corresponds to different characters, which is something to watch out for.  She said when she was growing up, she had to take a class in Chinese calligraphy, but her 12-year-old son does not do that now.  It's always interesting for me to learn about Chinese writing, even though I can't read it!