Dana P. -CP #4

A few colloquialisms came up today with my CP. The phrase, "shot out of a canon" came up when talking about a very hyper person. This is one area that can only be learned by living and integrating yourself into the culture of the new country, even then , you will probably never really get it. She made a comment how some American students, "don't put care in their clothes." Basically, she was trying to say some of the students dress a bit more casually than what she is used to at home in Saudi Arabia. She felt appearance was important and was a good barometer of the person you are. I have noticed this also in Italy and Romania,the woman and men tend to take a bit more into their appearance when attending college. I explained how it really varies from student to student and university. It seems we are a bit more casual with many students,especially freshmen (generally speaking) going to class in pajamas, baseball caps and sweats. I explained it is more of a casual environment, maybe students are more concerned about school or there is no real pressure to dress up for class?? Wasn't really sure about the answer, although after spending four sessions with her now, I realize appearance is an important part of society, even though the females are covered 3/4 of time in public.

Dana P. -CP #3

My CP and I met with some other students in our TESOL class for the Japanese drummer, Matsuri, at the student center. Normally, she is quite talkative but she shut down around the other TESOL students. As I probably would when around a group of non-English speakers. She is actually quite fluent in English and is studying here mainly to pass the TOEFL, so she can go to a university. It's funny I actually find myself saying, " go to university" instead of going to college." I find myself leaving out some connectors, prepositions like ESL students! This is quite interesting, I think I am doing this because I feel they would understand me better. However, this is completely defeating the purpose of them learning English. Another thing I discovered is I am slowing my speech and thinking more about what I am going to say next. Do you know how non-native speakers tend to say a few English words, then will pause, as they look for the right English word? I am picking up these little habits from being around it so much. I have discovered, although for different reasons, that is better too slow down sometimes to find the right word to express yourself. I tend to talk fast with emotion sometimes not really using the correct vocabulary. Just something I discovered while working with non-native speakers.

Myrick, J. TP #12

Saturday, Marie and I had our writing lesson and this one was probably going to be quite difficult, but it allows me to see how great of an improvement Marie has been making over the past few weeks. I decided to have her do a critique of the most recent movie that she's seen. She told me the last movie that she saw was Tron 3D. I gave her 30 mins to write the critique. 5 for brainstorming, 5 for outline, 15 for writing, and 5 for review. I instructed her to write a summary of the movie, what she liked, didnt like, and her final thoughts the movie. I allowed her time to read one of my critiques I had to do for one of my classes to give her an idea of what a critique looks like. She finished within a reasonable amount of time and she didnt seem to have much of a problem with her outline and organization of her ideas. I read her paper, and it had way less mistakes than her other writings. I was happy that her thoughts were clear, connected, and well thought out. She made me want to see the movie as good as she wrote it up.

Myrick, J. TP#11

Friday, I got the chance to meet up with Ken'ichi again and I definitely had some material for him to look at it and read about. For this session, I decided to give Ken'ichi a test on his comprehension and if he can choose the main ideas. I gave him three one page passages that I had him write summaries about after each one to gauge his understanding of them. When he read them(summaries) aloud, he seemed to understand them, but his reading was slower than the previous session that we had. Though he comprehended the readings, it took him awhile to read the pages he wrote. So, we decided that the next session, we would do a timed reading exercise.

Myrick, J. TP#10

Marie had some free time this pas Thursday and we met up at the usual spot. Today was a speaking lesson so I decided to let her choose an activity to do and what she thought would be interesting. Of course, I asked if there was anything she was confused about this week, and she said she didnt understand the debate about the Healthcare Reform that is happening here in DC. She said she didnt understand why so many people were so against it. I actually gave her some of the information from my job so she can make her own informed decision about everything. I felt that my bias might have come into play and I didnt want that to happen. She said that since American Idol just started, she wants to do karaoke which I thought was an interesting take on "speaking" since you have to make sure that you have the proper tone, cadence, intonation, and etc. So I commended her for that. We talked about how we can do that, and we decided we would pull up some of her 2 favorite songs on youtube and she'd just go at it. The first song that she pulled up "Hit me Baby One More Time" which was quite funny since I havent heard it in ages. But, she actually did very good on it, aside from pronunication on a few words. We had to go over "baby" a few times, but she eventually got it. Another song she did was "California Girls". She had a harder time on this song because there were words that were stressed on and others she didnt know. We went over the song again until I made sure she was able to get each word properly. We worked on both of the songs multiple times to make sure everything was good. She actually sounded really good on both by the time we finished our session. It was fun and different for both of us.

Myrick, J. TP#9

On friday, Marie wasn't able to meet up, but I did get someone to tutor. Since I need the money, I had my friends put up postings around GWU for tutoring. I received a call from someone on Saturday who needed some help with reading. This is supposed to be our introduction meeting where we discuss his goals, and what he needs. I met with him at MLK library, and he seemed eager to learn. His name was Kenichi and he was from Japan who came to America to study engineering. He's over here for the semester and will return back home in June. We talked some more about a few things, the transition, people, culture etc. He said that he wanted to increase his reading level as he said he has a hard time grasping the main ideas. I told him I would come up with a plan for him to follow. But, I asked him to read a few magazine passages and I noticed that it was a bit choppy and I can tell he didnt understand what he was reading. He eventually asked what it was about, and I pointed out the main ideas for him and told him we would get something together for him to help.

Myrick, J. TP#8

Apologies for the long break, but things have gotten busy at work and Marie's schedule has been conflicting with mine. But, we got together last Thursday for our writing session. as usual, I asked if there was any questions that she had, and sh told me she heard a song by Lil Wayne where she said he kill people, and didn't understand why he wasnt in jail. She was truly outraged but after I explained it to her that it was entertainment, she understood. Afterwards, we got into the lesson which I chose to do a letter writing exercise, as she's told me before that she wanted to write her family back home, one of the reasons she wanted to increase her skills. I gave her examples of letters I've written and showed her examples from online. After a few tries, I gave her a prompt (write a letter to your favorite actor about your favorite movie they were in). 5 minutes to brainstorm, 5 for outline, and 20 for writing, and 5 for review. We went over it after the 30 minutes and it wasnt too bad for writing towards a prompt. She had a few issues with the structure of the letter, and we explained it again to make sure she understood. After a few more tries, we finally got it down.