Fall 2015, 3rd prize winner
Blog Post 1
Hey it's Michelle here. I have yet to be paired with a student in the SWAP organization; however, I very much look forward to it. My parents are Polish immigrants in the U.S and so I understand the struggle with learning one of the hardest languages to learn, English. I have gone through the training at SWAP and can give you some insight into the ways I will be helping with the pain of learning English. Number one is patience! I can't express to you how important this is. Learning another language takes time and motivation. DO NOT get frustrated with the student for not grasping some concepts. It's all about practice. Keep them motivated. Number two is enunciate. First of all, there are so many different sounds for English vowels compared to Spanish for example, that I just learned about, which students may have difficulty differentiating. Look it up I dare you; I didn't even realized we had so many different sounds for the same letter. Also, there is difficulty in distinguishing between the letters "v" and "b" and with the sounds produced by "th" and "t". All of these sounds depend on the way you position your lips and tongue so exaggerate the pronunciation of a word so your student can hear the difference. Getting these specific sounds down will help your students be more understood by others. Number three is relating learned material to everyday life. Language is only good to learn if you can use it to communicate in day-to-day interactions. SWAP also provides a handy everyday-situations book which describes for example what to do/say if you get pulled over. This is very valuable information so, I would ask your student what he/she has difficulty with or what he/she wants to learn because it is truly scary living in a country where you can't communicate with everyone or you're not easily understood.
Well this is all the news I have to offer. Stay tuned 'til I get paired up with a student.
#excited
Toodaloo my fellow bloggers. Till next time :)
Blog post 2
My fellow bloggers, the news is in. I got paired up with a student. Her name is Rosa and she is from El Salvador. Her L1/primary language is Spanish while her L2/second language, which she is acquiring, is English. She can communicate in English but we are focusing on pronunciation to prevent miscommunication and on grammar. I have noticed that English has so many different pronunciations of vowels that we are constantly reviewing/ practicing with different words. I constantly keep her motivated by congratulating her when she tries her best and especially when she pronounces a word correctly. There is definitely L1 interference with pronunciations but once she gets a word down, we practice it a few more times, come back to it later on, and repeat it the next day. She then writes the word into her own notebook, which is highly recommended, that way she has it with her wherever she goes. She often switches back to Spanish when describing something. I understand Spanish but ask her to explain it in English because the only way to acquire another language is through repetition and practice. In Lang 1000, I learned that one's ability to acquire another language drops after age 6, while Rosa is an adult, which is why there are some difficulties; however, she is making great progress, though!
We are currently working on am/is/are, time periods (in the evening, during the week...), locations (across from, in front of, behind, to the right of...), and the world map, which she has difficulty with.
Slowly but surely we are making progress! Stay tuned!
#thrilledtoseeimprovement
Toodaloo my fellow bloggers. Till next time :)
Blog Post 3
My fellow bloggers, Rosy's pronunciation is great! She has been doing her best. She even brings a notebook to class and jots down vocabulary that she keeps forgetting or finds useful. For a couple of weeks she had been struggling with the words sheet (meaning bed-sheet or cookie sheet) as well as shelf. She quickly memorized cabinet and drawer but struggled with shelf and so she wrote down the Spanish word for shelf, which is "estante", and we have been practicing it every time we meet. She is teaching me Spanish in the mean time haha. She has also struggled with the words above vs. below and so we did the same and found ways of memorizing these words. The Spanish word for above is "sobre" or "arriba" while below is "a bajo". "Bajo" and below start with the same letter , "b", while above and "arriba" do as well, "a".
In lecture we have been learning about computer mediated discourse and the dimensions of it like synchronicity and audience scope. Synchronicity is showed during our class when we are speaking to each other while asynchronicity can be seen when we text each other, for example that we cannot make it that day. Our classes are one-to-one and this exemplifies audience scope.
We have also learned about adjacency pairs, which are 2 utterances that come in a pair for example, when a question is asked and a response is expected. Every time we greet each other before a lesson, adjacency pairs are used for example when we say "Hi, how are you?" the response is usually "good and how are you?"
We have been working on locations/places/rooms/housewares, comparisons (like which is larger/more beautiful/more expensive), recipes, which she is great at, and describing people, which she finds useful and plans on implementing in her language. When we practice ways that she can incorporate words that we learn into her every day language, she memorizes them quicker and is more excited about learning.
The progress continues and seems easier. Stay tuned!
#thesemesteriscomingtoanend:(
Toodaloo my fellow bloggers. Till next time :)