5th ESL Class

Today I worked with Lisa and "Noah" again. This is the third time working with Noah and his English is getting to be so good!

We all worked in the book for the most part. There was an entire section about terminology of places in a city setting, like theater, shopping mall, restaurant, post office, etc. Lisa and I asked Noah questions about each place, like what restaurants he likes and what you would do at each of the said places. There was a reading about a shopping mall in Brewster that we had him read. We really drove the point home about pausing where there's a period or a comma. Then following up with the reading was a series of questions about said reading. When asked to answer them, Lisa and I realized that Noah hasn't really absorbed much of what he had read. We explained what some of the English words meant. Whenever he saw the term, "video store," he would call it "DVD store." I'm realizing that he wasn't even trying to sound out the word, but merely associating the word "video" with "DVD." Interesting...

At some point, I was realizing that Noah could read alright for the most part, but he had an issue with writing, in English AND in Spanish. So we had him write out the Spanish alphabet and the English. He nailed the English better than the Spanish. Hmm. Then we had him write out some simple sentences in English and Spanish.

He is definitely great at verbal communication, but really needs some more instruction with writing. We also had a conversation about buying houses and working in Guatemala versus the U.S. Apparently there is almost no work in Guatemala. People work mostly for themselves and only for a few hours everyday. His family built their own house. (At least that's what I got from what he said.)

Lisa is a great teacher by the way. She has a lot of patience and won't stop until she knows the lesson has been absorbed. Thanks for a great lesson, Lisa!

4th ESL Class

Hank and I worked with "Noah" for the second time. We did some readings in the book, but most of the time, we just had open conversations about general life topics. To continue the conversation from the previous week about this girl "Kaitlin," Hank and I helped Noah write a conversation that he might have with her if he worked up the courage to ask her to church with him.

It went along the lines of this... first saying what it would be in spanish, then translating to english. 

N: Te gustaria venir a la inglesia esta domingo conmigo? (Would you like to come to church with me this sunday?)

K: Maybe. Where is the church?

N: La inglesia es en Norwood en La calle de Norwood. 

K: What time is it at?

N: A las dos en la tarde. 

K: Can you pick me up?

N: Si, donde vives?.... Te gustaria ir a la cena despues de la servicio?

So he seemed really excited about being able to have this potential conversation with her. We rehearsed the script together with me pretending to be Kaitlin. 

When we did get around to the book, there was a couple pages about family member terms and an illustration of a family tree. I was curious about Noah's family and it seemed he needed a little guidance with the English words for family terms, so in order to illustrate what a family tree was, I drew my own and said in Spanish the relations of my family and how they were connected to me.. then I had him tell me about his family and I drew out his "arbol de la familia" as well. He has an enormous family, many of which still live in Guatemala. 

Noah is a great student, but like me, he gets nervous at the prospect of holding a formal conversation. I encourage him to read things aloud and to speak more English at work. He really wants to get a different job at work, but I can tell that he's afraid that his English isn't good enough. He's so close!

3rd ESL Class

             Today Hank and I worked with "Noah." He's originally from Guatemala and he has been in the U.S. for roughly 6 years. He knows enough English to get his away around, but he does not know how to hold a formal conversation, like introducing himself to someone. Hank and I went over some of the textbook today. One of the topics was describing the activities surrounding a wedding ceremony. That in itself was a conversation topic. When we talked about "la boda," Noah didn't understand what part of it.. the church ceremony versus the reception afterwards. So I said "primero, hay es un ceremonio a la inglesia por cureinta minutos, despues hay un recepcion a la casa cuando la familia y los amigos celebran juntos." Then he understood. 

             After there was an exercise about the activities surrounding a birthday celebration and what each member of the family was doing at the partty. "Para celebrar una fiesta de cumpleanos, a veces hay una fiesta y un pastel especial. En E.E.U.U., hay es un pastel especial por todas fiestas." Noah thought that was funny. 

            Hank and I then went over a family tree and over family words like "grandparents, husband, wife, children, grandchildren," etc. We would point to a person in "el arbol de familia" and say "who are kevin's cousins?" 

            When we came across the word "wish," Noah could not seem to pronounce the "w" and he would pronounce the "w" as a "g." Hank would then try to compare "wish" to other 'w' words like "world" or "watch." When he heard "watch" the 'w' sound seemed to have clicked for some reason because he was then able to pronounce the word correctly. 

            Contractions were also a big topic of the day. In order to get across the point that two words can become one word, we demonstrated the point of a + el = al and de + el= del. I also mentioned the fact that in Spanish, when a verb is conjugated, the subject or pronoun is often dropped, and the conjugated verb infers the pronoun. He seemed to understand the concept of a contraction better after that.

            At some point, Noah wanted to know how to say something very specific in English. He had met a girl at work and wanted to ask her to go church with him on sunday. Unfortunately, he had forgotten her name and didn't know how to properly address her. So I first asked him what he wanted to say in Spanish... "Te gustaria vener conmigo a la inglesia este domingo."  And he nodded. I explained that "would you like" is the same as "te gustaria" in Spanish. After he learned what to say, he seemed very excited at the prospect of being able to say it. 

            One more thought I had about cultural differences.. I've noticed that when meeting people in the U.S., people will first ask me if I'm married, in school, or what my major is, but hispanohablantes will consistently ask me if I have kids. Kids must be a popular topic among Spanish speakers. Hmm.

2nd ESL Class

            During my second ESL class, I was paired with Mary, a 20-year-old from Guatemala. Her boyfriend, for lack of a better word, will be called "Alex." He also comes to the ESL class. Mary is currently 8 months pregnant and works at Target. Being from Guatemala where there are many different languages spoken, she speaks Mam, a derived form of the ancient Mayan language. So it was a very interesting situation when I learned that the person I'd be teaching English was in a very similar boat as me: she, too, was also learning Spanish. 

            First, I started with an introduction to break the ice, just as I had with J. I wanted to see how good her Spanish was versus her English. Sometimes, when I would talk hurriedly, I would conjugate a verb wrong and she would correct me, which I'm glad she did. I asked about working at Target and about her pregnancy. She also has another kid with Alex. Dennis and I were sitting next to each other while he was simultaneously instructing Alex. At times, Dennis would try to talk to the 2 of the them at the same time and try to see what each of their answers were about a certain situation. For instance, he asked them at the same time who does the shopping and who does the cooking. It turned out that Mary did both, and she seemed to know more English than he did. 

            I then moved on to the text and had her read some paragraphs to see how her pronunciation was. Then I would translate some of the paragraphs to Spanish and she would correct me here and there. 

All in all, it was a great experience, but very different from teaching J because I did not know the first language in which Mary spoke, so I didn't really have anything to compare English to, except for the little she did know in Spanish. Hopefully everyone understands what I mean by this. 

1st ESL Class

During my first ESL class, I worked with J. He's a 33-year-old male from Michoacan, Mexico. (He had to spell that one out for me.) Just to break the ice a bit,  we introduced ourselves primarily in Spanish to make him feel comfortable. I found out some of his interests, for example what he likes to eat at home, what kind of American beer and music he likes, what his job is, etc. Having a conversation entirely in Spanish with a native Spanish speaker is very different for me. I rather enjoyed it. After our introductions, we changed to a more scholarly note. I went through the English alphabet and had J pronounce every letter while also writing each letter out on paper. We then went through the Spanish alphabet to make sure that I had it right, and it turned out that J could not remember some of the letters. I then had him name an English word for each letter of the alphabet. If he could not think of a word, I would open my Span-Eng dictionary to the English side and have him look through there for any words he recognized. I could tell J was struggling a bit, so we went through the pronunciation of all the English vowels, and I broke down what a long vowel sound was as opposed to a short vowel sound by using them in different words.

Then for a lesson that was more reality-based, I went through the dinner menu from the restaurant I work at. I broke down the menu into  parts: Appetizers, salads and soups, entrees, desserts, and drinks. I would first say what I thought the menu item would be called in Spanish and then what it would be called in English, and then have J pronounce it. For example, I explained that there was fried calamari on the menu as an appetizer. J told me that anything fried was called, "dorados en aceite." I told him how the process of ordering food in a restaurant would go and the prices of menu items. He seemed to have fun with this because it was a reality-based situation and also because he could help me with some of the words in exchange. I am definitely looking forward to working with J again, and possibly working in the textbook next time.

Introduccion

Me llamo Brittany. Soy tocar esa clase este semestre para aprender mas la lingua de Espanol. Me gusto Espanol mucho, pero necesito una experencia mas "hands-on." Este darame el opurtunidad. Tambien, me gusto ensenar y ayudo la gente en general, estara beneficiarme!