6th Session & final session REFLECTION- Friday 4/8/11

Today was my last session with Makia. Thinking back to the first meeting with Makia, she has made tremendous progress. If I had to pick the most major improvement I have seen and I like to believe is the most important in any teacher’s eyes is seeing Makia more confident in their abilities and overall language skills. I see confidence radiating from her when she talks about and communicates using the English language.

In this last session, we had planned to do a campus walk where we would discuss topics based on what was occurring in our surrounding environment. Unfortunately, due to the weather, we were unable to carry out our plan so instead, we decided to switch it up and have our last session in café diem. Usually, Makia and I would sit in a breakout room in the library where it was quiet and our focus could be put towards her pronunciations and articulations. However, as I have seen a major improvement over the past 5 sessions with her pronunciations, I thought we could graduate to a more real-life scenario such as a coffee shop where she could apply some of those skills to a natural conversation/typical environment. However, I still pointed out the exact point of errors and gave her corrective feedback. As many articles this semester have encouraged teachers to set up a scenario for the L2 learners to role-play and gain a better grasp on the culture/language expectations in regards to the setting, I thought this would be a perfect last session to end with.

Makia loved the idea, and both of us grabbed a cup of coffee and the Montclairian as she was very interested regarding an article about her current Professor, and an altercation on campus he was involved in. Because Makia could put a face to the names mentioned, she was very interested in this story. I find the best lessons come from the ones where our students direct the discussion. When giving this choice to your student, the topics generates interest and a need for focus on the concepts that build from the given topic. Additionally, we discussed more about cultural differences from her beliefs to ones of Americans. And at the end we debriefed about what this experience of working with me has been like, and in return, I shared my blog with her.

It was nice to hear Makia read a newspaper article as this not only prompted a different type of discussion among us, but also exposed her to reading a different type of writing style. Makia read the article fluently, and constantly paused during important and key parts to clarify certain words and or phrases that were unclear to her. Her comprehension of the article was great, and she often acted out what she was reading in the story to better clarify and ensure she understood. The great thing about working with Makia was she took a great deal of responsibly for her own learning. She made my job not only easy but enjoyable.

In this last session Makia and I both shared what this experience has been like for us. I found this to be important for me because it allowed me to reflect on what worked and what I can take in my bag of tricks for the future. As a future teacher, I believe reflection is one of the most critical pieces to learning to become even better! Makia expressed her gratitude for helping her, and was extremely happy Dr. Sotillo gave her this opportunity. When showing her the blog I have been building session after session, she was amazed, and her positive facial expression and reaction was all worth the work I put into this experience. I explained to her that now she has a new friend at Montclair, and that I would be more than happy to meet up with her at anytime to help edit papers/give advice/or just meet up to engage with a native speaker.

We agreed that we would make an effort to meet up in the near future, and possibly get together this summer before she leaves for Afghanistan till the beginning of September. Again, as I have reinforced throughout this entire blog, this experience with Makia is one I will forever be grateful for and has been one of my more unique opportunities I have been able to capitalize on while pursuing my undergraduate degree at Montclair. I said to Makia that as much as she has gained from this experience, I believe I have benefited more.

Now, when approaching graduation in about a year, I am confident in my abilities to engage with an L2 learner, and make a difference for many other L2 learners I will come across in my career. As I told Makia, I give L2 learners so much credit for pursuing a second language. I especially give people like Makia a lot of credit that leave their native land, to instead come to a foreign one and completely immerse themselves in a different culture! People like Makia are truly an inspiration to all of us!

5th Session- FRIDAY 4/1/2011

Today, Makia and I started out with reading through her Microsoft Office 2007 computer's book. I made it my goal to look for a pattern in words that seem to trip up Makia.

/w/ sounds in particular are difficult for Makia.

I found /wh/, /sh/ and /sp/ consonant digraphs give more difficultly and she has master the /th/ and /ch/ sounds very quickly.

When examining this pattern further, I asked Makia whether she had the /th/ sound in her language. I was curious to see if this sound was easier because of her L1 native language. Indeed, Makia started uttering many words the began with the /th/ sound. She said that it was a very common sound in her native language. I was excited to make the connection because is shows the growth in my own learning of recognizing how L1 can reflect and effect much success in L2 learning.

She also clarified the differences and dialects in her country...

Dari-Afghanistan

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Urdu- Pakistan

At work or to make a purchase, Makia uses Dari. Dari she said is a more formal way of speaking. At home, Makia uses Hazargi as a less formal way of communicating with her relatives and parents.

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We discussed words like /wh/ as in when and many other /wh/ words such as what, when, where, why, whose...

The word /sp/ as in (specific) Makia seemed to struggle with. I reinforced with forming a complete sentence, and relating it to the word (Pacific).

I explained the words suit vs. suite vs. sweet.

suit---I.P.A.- [sut]- (emphasis on the /u/ sound) is used to reference men's clothing or a suit in a deck of cards.

suite- with the silent e also pronounced the same way as sweet. I explained the context in which we would find suite. I explained how in a hotel you may have a basic room, or a suite which is more expensive. (Ex: Suite 2A vs. Room 2A) Makia understood this connection and the distinction between suite vs. sweet.

Makia had trouble with the word: supervisor [su pər vaɪ zər]

I explained that the /s/ sound is more of a /z/ sound. She immediately corrected her error.

I found the /v/ is also difficult for Makia such as the word developer.

When I used a different teaching strategy, such as syllable segmenting, Makia seemed to understand it better.

de-vel-o-per when clapping and hitting the desk with our hand, Makia began pronouncing the /v/ rather than skipping it like she had done before.

A large part of our lesson was spent pronouncing the word necessary right.

Makia could not make the distinction with the last syllable (sary) she kept saying (sory) as in accessory.

Makia was beginning to get frustrated because she could not hear the difference.

I felt like my pronunciation was confusing her so I outsourced to dictionary.com where I could allow here to hear another voice pronounce this word. Again, she still could not hear the distinction.

In the word necessary the I.P.A. translation is: [nɛs ə sɛri]. Without getting into a full complex conversation of why I was using I.P.A. to help her pronounce the [sɛri] portion of the word necessary I had her repeat word such as bread and bed that have the /ɛ/ sound. Once doing that and again repeating accessory from necessary, she saw the difference! ***That was like the teaching "AHAA" moment where the light bulb goes on! I was so happy, and so was she. She was so happy that she continued to pronounce the word (necessary) to ensure that she was doing it right.

Additionally we talked about aspirated letters in the English alphabet and not aspirated letters.

I explained...

/b/ /t/ /k/ are aspirated with a puff/burst of air... I gave examples such as: bat, tap, kit

/p/ /d/ /g/ are non-aspirated consonants... I gave examples such as: pop, dog, goat.

I reinforced this with a paper in front of my mouth so she could see the difference between a word like bat vs. dog. The paper moves when you say /b/at vs. /d/og. I noticed she started to talk lower almost when pronouncing the word /dog/, I explained that it is not that we lower our voices, it is that when we encounter the /b/ /t/ /k/ sounds we put more of an emphasis on that particular letter-sound in a word.

Again, we discussed many other words that came about in conversation when moving about the reading in her computers book.

We ended our discussion when going over number placement such as twentieth and eightieth where Makia was struggling with the /ieth/ sound. She is aware of her error, and put this and many of the other things discussed in her notebook of things to work on.

Before leaving, we reinforced the concepts we had touched upon in the session. I encouraged her to always put a word in context to form a syntactical structure. I find that this method helped her as it took her mind off of focusing on the actual pronunciation. She more naturally was able to correct her mistake by the second or third time.

Again, much of my approach with Makia is in regards to the Negative Feedback approach in SLA instruction. When stumbling upon a word, I point it out in text without saying it and asked Makia to repeat the word. Once repeating it, I assessed whether she was just reading too quickly and pronounced it the 2nd time without any errors; or I pointed out her error explicitly and went through the above methods listed throughout this blog to help her come to understand her error.

In the next session Makia would like to combine the pragmatic competence instruction focused in the 3rd & 4th session with today's session. We plan to either hold our session outside as we walk around campus having a natural conversation brought on by the scenery, or sit in a cafe setting where we can hold a normal conversation in a setting. Of course, throughout our session, I will point out her errors, and it will be like any other teaching session.