乐播传媒

2nd Place Winner

Post1:

I'm volunteering in the Employees English Program with Carolyn Allen. I have never done anything like this before, but so far it has been very rewarding. The students are Teresa, Maria, Luisa (all Spanish speakers) and Laxmi and Ang (Nepali speakers). This diverse group of students is a challenge because of the differences of their first languages. For obviously reasons, the Spanish speakers have a head start when it comes to learning English. Their language uses the Latin alphabet and there are many cognates with English. Thus, I find that they are a little further along than their Nepali counterparts. Maria (whose sister Luisa is also named Maria), is very good with her English, and I feel she might get bored sometimes waiting for the others to finishing their work. I need to find ways to keep her interested during class, because I don't want her to lose interest. Her sister Luisa is also very good, and in ways that constantly fascinate me. She is very quiet and does not speak except when asked to. However, she surprises me with her knowledge of English and her ability to help the Nepali women with their homework. My goal this semester is to help her become more confident in her speaking ability. Teresa is just wonderful, and is full of unforeseen skills. Her speaking ability is very good and she does her homework before all the rest. She's also a bad ass lady who is probably - I don't know - in her sixties if not older, and today, shovelled snow in the sub 0 freezing weather for her job. I felt bad about this because her back hurt.

The Nepali ladies are really great. They are both really talented and I can't wait to see what happens. I enjoyed working with Laxmi last week, where we went over English prepositions and I think I saw a great breakthrough with her, she seemed to be very excited about this. Ang is also fantastic, and today we worked with her on sounding out English vowels and blends. She was very good at this and kind of surprised me, because she is very quiet which makes it hard to know where her knowledge stands. I did find out that we will need to work with her in learning how to pronounce the /f/ sound. I assume this is not a sound in Nepali, I will have to look into this.听听

听听 听All around, this has been a great time so far!听

Post 2:

听听 听One of the challenges I had this week was keeping order in the classroom. Don't get me wrong, no one was running around hanging off the chandeliers or anything, it was more of a subtle problem. Carylon has given the students homework over the semester which was started to pill up, thus, this week she gave them new folders which they loved. Then we brought out a hole puncher for the students to organize everything, which was great on one hand, because it needed to be done, however, it became a distraction after the lesson had started. Eventually, I had to take it away, so everyone could focus on the lesson at hand. They were all trying to figure it out while the lesson was going on and talking to each other in their first language. Obviously, this was nothing "serious" but something I realized probably a little too late, because it did become an unnecessary distraction. Next time, I will be sure to keep something like that within its proper time, then tell them we can finish (whatever they're doing) later on.听听

听听听 听Following on that thought, I've sensed that the class often doesn't understand when given certain commands, or, maybe they don't listen, but I will assume it's the former. Whenever Carolyn gives instructions I will need to back them up and make sure everyone is understanding what is being said. Assertive teaching is what I will work on. For example, "Okay class, turn over you page" or "For now, let's stop what you're doing and focus on the lesson" etc. I will first need to assess if they are even understanding the commands before I ask them to follow through with them. Often I've repeated these commands but it seems communication is not being had. I will need to figure out what is going here and work on ways to fix this.听

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听听 听We had to say goodbye to Laxmi this week who will be returning to Nepal for the rest of the semester, so that was her last day. I will miss her. However, this will give me extra time to work with Ang who has really improved in many ways over the last month. Her writing is considerably faster, and, although she is pretty shy, she is speaking more too. I also think, without Laxmi being there for her, she'll have to speak more anyways, which will be good for her.听

Post 3:

听听 听This has been quite the rewarding experience this last semester. Having never taught English before, going into it I wasn't sure what to expect, however, I was pleasantly surprised. Watching Carolyn teach has made me realize just how much goes into teaching a class. Furthermore, I've always thought teaching English would be relatively "easy" considering it's my first language and all, but if this semester has taught me anything, it's that "knowing" a language and teaching a language are two entirely different things. This experience has made me really appreciate the teachers in my life.听

听听听 听One thing I've learned this semester is how different people are when learning a new language. Just when I thought one of my students wasn't getting something, they would surprise me with some other language skillset they were hiding all along. For example, the "quiet" ones really showed their strengths in diverse ways by often helping their fellow students or reading a passage with good pronunciation. And the more talkative ones would surprise me in needing help with their writing or pronunciation etc. So what I'm trying to say is that I learned to get rid of all of my preconceived perceptions and just show up and be ready to help wherever someone was on their language journey. There is definitely nothing better than seeing their smiles when they learned a concept they were struggling on at he beginning of the year.听听

听听听 听Overall this experience has been very beneficial for me in learning new skills that I will need to be Latin teacher.