2nd Session- FRIDAY 3/4/11

Today, Makia brought two of her academics books with her. She choose "The World of Religion" book to work on. She says she has the most trouble pronouncing words in this book, and is unfamiliar and often lost with many of the meanings of these words. In addition to Makia's home language, she also has studied the British language. Because of her native language and British background (as British dialect does not have the /r/ sounds), this presented an issue for Makia, and we immediately addressed this /r/ throughout our session. The following words are examples of the sounds we worked on together throughout the session.

[bears] Pronouncing as [beers] with the long e. Two different sounds, with two different meanings

[Judaism] /a/ sound is really and /e/ sound.

[estimated] reinforced with syllable blending and sounding out.

[third] [breath] vs. [the] [either] [they]- unvoiced vs. voiced (θ vs. ð) sounds

Grammatical and pronunciation of the word [its] vs. [it’s]

[two]

[too]

[to] – all pronounced the same but three different lexical meanings.

[center]- pronounced as [sinner] instead of [center]

People’s names such as [Danielle] /yell/ sound vs. [Daniel] /yul/ sound vs. [Daniella] ending connection similar to [Makia]

[heritage] pronounced as long /a/ when really its an /dige/ sound at the end.

[pyramids]- again had a lot of trouble pronouncing the /r/ sound and

/peer/a/mids/ to stretch it, blend it, and sound it out for her.

I reinforced these sounds through a variety of ways. In addition to keeping scrap paper out and showing Makia the different spelling of certain words, I encouraged her to watch my lips and mouth closely to see the formation of sounds. We discussed different dialects and how they affect and put stress on certain syllables in a word. We discussed compound nouns and how one word such as reject can have two meanings depending on where the emphasis is on the syllable.

She is a reject.

We reject his request to return back to school in the Fall.

(I additionally explained the meanings in a way she could better understand.)

I reinforced with examples of pictures to convey lexical meanings of certain words and ‘terms’ common to the culture and slang of the English language.

With corrective feedback throughout the session, Makia seemed to have a better understanding for the words in the chapter. Once correcting her once, she would repeat the word several times before moving on. At the end of the session, we recapped on the words we discussed, and she repeated them all back to me. If she mispronounced one she caught on after the first utterance, and immediately corrected herself. Again, Makia is a highly motivated individual, and works extremely hard.

Next session, Makia and I made it our goal to meet for an extended session equivalent for 2 sessions since we were not going to be able to meet over Spring Break.