Practicum, Day Eight
I had three new students tonight! Isabel, a semi-regular student, brought them - her mother-in-law Silvia, sister-in-law Carmela, and Carmela's husband Miguel. They all came a bit early, so I decided to try Genia's immediate testing thing. OH I am never doing that again. I started them all with the low-intermediate CASAS test - 31 or 32, I think. Well, it was too easy for Miguel, who only missed one question. And Silvia refused to try it, insisting that she couldn't read it at all. So I had to give her the test for non-readers. She did too well on it, but fortunately her score was still below 180, so she is officially a novice-beginner. I gave Miguel a second test, and he placed intermediate-high. Carmela placed right in the middle, low-intermediate. Have I mentioned how much I hate the CASAS testing? It is too vague, and I don't think it's accurate. Carmela took a long time on her test, and thought about each answer. But when I asked her questions for the needs assessment, she turned to Miguel for translation. This could be cultural, but whatever the reason for it, I have to put a stop to it. The first four students who arrived worked on the computers, as is their wont. Pedro helped with that, which was great. I was trying to get the new students' paperwork together and figure out Genia's filing system when the other students arrived. I tried to split the class between intermediates on computer and beginners on book (I need to work on this class division thing), and had Pedro go over their homework that Genia had assigned last week. Then they worked in the book. Everything seemed to take forever tonight. During the break, Yolanda organized Carmen's baby shower for next class. She had everyone draw a slip of paper from a basket to determine who would bring what gift. I drew, and of course it was written in Spanish. I acted like I had never seen a Spanish word before, and exclaimed, "Oh no!!! I can't read this!!!" They all laughed, and several of them tried to translate (pacifier). This gave me an idea - after the break, we'd make sure we had English translations for all the items on the list for the shower. I also wanted to make sure everyone knew each other, since we had the new students. We sat around one big long table (we had 13 students!), and I started by introducing myself: "My name is Emily. I was born in South Carolina. I've lived in Franklin for 25 years." I was amazed by the combinations they came up with for introductions ... "My name is ___. Me living in Franklin quatro ... sorry ... four years." Mental note: go over "I" vs "me". I didn't want to over-correct, but I led a little "discussion" of how we introduce ourselves. Then we brought out our slips of paper, and worked together to find the English word for each item, and discussed each one. Some of them were easy, like "blanket" and "towel", but Lee, the Korean student, had "bottle" and she wanted to know what size bottle to bring. That led to a gesture adventure, with several of the Mexican students taking part. She eventually understood - I think she may have just wanted to remind us that not all the students speak Spanish. She is way smarter than Genia gave her credit for, but I've noticed that she relied on Genia's slow/loud speaking style, which makes it harder for her to understand my laid-back conversational style. It's not like I talk very fast, so she'll catch on soon enough. After we'd finished the list of gift items, I passed around a list for food items, which they had to write in English. They consulted their picture dictionaries, and each other, and came up with who would bring what, in English. I was very pleased with how well that went. Their spelling is pretty bad, but we can work on that as we go. I hate that I lost the first half of class for the stupid testing. I'm not doing that again. I'm afraid Carmela won't come back. She didn't seem to be having fun at all, and her baby cried so much that the babysitter brought him in before class was over. I hope she will - the other students were welcoming and encouraging, and it wouldn't take long for her to gain the confidence to become independent from Miguel's translating. On Thursday, we're going to have the shower for Carmen starting at 8, and I want to get an idea of where they are as far as grammar and vocabulary go. Last week I noticed problems with contractions, so maybe I can start there.
posted by E.M @ 9:52 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home