Stories from my ELL classroom

Pronunciation, Linguistics, and Speeches...

Working on pronunciation of the L versus R sounds last week with an elf who is a native Korean speaker, I used the beginning of Lady Gaga’s song “Bad Romance” to differentiate between the two sounds. My elf took that reference and ran with it. He LOVES that song. I couldn’t get him to stop singing it, “La Ra-Ra Ra Ra…” (a.k.a. my theme song... LA-RA). I had him implement the fingers-in-mouth technique to get him to feel the shapes his mouth is supposed to make to form the L and R sounds. (If you want to try this at home, put your finger in your mouth, in between your lips and teeth. Say “La.” Your tongue should hit your finger. Say “Ra.” Your teeth, and maybe even your lips, should hit/close around your finger.)

Another story… When working on completing a worksheet about definite and indefinite articles (the/a/an), the word “zoo” came up. Asians often times have trouble with the sounds L and R, S and Z, TH and GH. Can you guess how the word “zoo” came out sounding? “Jew.” The Elf couldn’t even hear the difference. Then he started saying “chew.” Jew to Chew. Progress? I’m not so sure. We practiced making what I refer to as “the buzzing bee sound” zzzzzzzzz…. And then put on the “oo” sound at the end. He could make the buzz, but just couldn’t combine it with the rest of the word. We moved on to other examples of Z sounds. Speech impediments are hard to work with. Thank God I understand Linguistics! The other Koreans and Chinese students had no problem with the word.

Today, we were talking about the students’ current events articles that they bring in weekly to learn new vocabulary and have class discussions. One of my students brought an article about Obama and Romney’s campaign-spending. In discussion of U.S. presidential candidates, Elf #1 said, “Obama is A Frickin’ American.” What?! Come again? “Frickin’ American!” Hmmm? “Black!” Oh, “African American.” Yes, yes he is, young Elf. Then Elf #1 was describing what he heard Obama stands for, telling us, “Obama like China and South Korea. He say they good.” Then he said, “Obama like Usher.” Again, what?! The rapper? How does he know that Obama likes Usher? Elf #2 chimed in, “Oooooh, Asia!!!” Speech impediments and accents make for entertaining guessing games.

In other classroom happenings, we have just finished a unit on speeches. The topic/prompt for the speech unit was "a time you were scared." Students were given prompt questions (the 5Ws and "How" question words) to help them create a complete written speech. Then they wrote drafts and edited/revised, finally practicing pronunciation and dictation, and delivering their speeches in front of not only their classmates, but also other AIAN faculty members made up the audience. The Elves delivered their speeches, gave each other feedback, did self evaluations, and received evaluations and feedback from me too. Clara video recorded the delivery of their speeches last week Friday. This week, we have been reviewing, evaluating, and learning from this experience, to grow and strive to be better during the next round.