Logan_CO#3

J Logan Matthews
CO#3
Sep 2, 2014 (2:00am-2:50am)
Hecht House, RM 313
Felicia's Foundations Listening

At the beginning of the day's final lesson, I was once again introduced as a guest with elaboration and elicitation of meaning. Some of the students had remembered my name from the grammar session that morning so It was nice to know they remember more than I do on a regular basis. Felicia then segued into the next activity which was a warm up "Bell Ringer" of two sentences students use to describe the everyday activities. This part proceeded in much the same way as the speaking class with the instructor providing the linguistic support up to the level of listening for the words individually to write them on the whiteboard.

I noticed a difference in Felicia's speaking style though with this being a listening class. It appeared that she spoke in longer and more complex sentences but she enunciated with pauses in a similar fashion to how I had spoken to my adult tutees for them to better here. It was a subtle shift but I knew that she was actively challenging them to listen.

A pairwork worksheet activity was introduced based on listening to the names for members of a family tree whereby students would have to recall the names based on the relations to the boy in the tree. I would not have considered it before but the name "Rachel" does sound similar to "Angel," which appeared to confuse most of the students in their recall.

Activities that followed included listening to a chronological sequence of events twice and reporting back on the comprehension of the details as well as evaluating the listening ability for common prepositions by numbering them in a sequence of pictures of a ball and box.

The lesson was ended with Felicia correcting a students statement about his father as being fat by introducing the American mores of using euphemisms for terms like fat and skinny, finally relating them to the saying "Never ask a woman her age."

I was happy to see the sequence of classes for a particular ESL group at CIES for how it builds on established material. It reminded me of one of the golden rules for public speaking: "Tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them."