Sam - TP - 3

On Veteran's Day I met with Hayriye at Starbucks. As soon as I got there, I felt nervous because the place was packed. Hayriye arrived just a moment after I did, with her gorgeous little baby Beyza and her mother-in-law. When Hayriye arrived, I asked if she had brought her GED study guide. "No, you didn't say," she replied. Oops! I guess I had assumed, wrongly, that she would always bring it regardless. I had this moment of panic where I felt so stupid and unprepared. I am someone who likes to have a plan and sometimes I can get quite flustered when things don't go how I expect them to. I had this urge to run or cancel the meeting... yes I know that sounds crazy. But these are some things I am working on changing! I decided to think positive, and I simply apologized and said we would do our reading lesson from the newspaper. I am always grateful for a chance to overcome my anxiety and think on my toes, it can only help me when I'm in some foreign land, no doubt facing countless changes of plan. Luckily, Hayriye had to go move her car, which bought me about five minutes to skim the article and come up with some questions.

THANK GOODNESS for the TEFL lesson plan assignments, because I had just completed one on learning the parts of a newspaper. I explained how newspapers are set up and together (silently) we read through an article about Veteran's Day. After each paragraph I asked Hayriye to summarize or asked some comprehension questions. We had to go over a few terms and I had to give a brief military history. It's fascinating to read a basic newspaper article with a non-native speaker and realize how much we take for granted the use of figurative language. For instance, the article said the Korean war was "eclipsed" by the Vietnam war. What a crazy thing to say. Reminded me of this awesome video that states we use an average of 6 metaphors a minute in English... No wonder it's so hard to learn, we are almost never saying what we mean! http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/james_geary_metaphorically_speaking.html

I think the lesson went well and it gave me some insight into Hayriye's learning issues. I think the biggest thing for her is vocabulary. We just use too many words in this language. Her reading test for the GED is on December 14th, so there's not much time to help her prepare. I really hope these exercises are showing her how English writing works!