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!