Carolina CO1

I observed Victoria Paul's Elementary Speaking class yesterday at 1pm. After introducing myself, the class went around and introduced themselves, by saying just their name. Most of the students were very shy and scared to speak English in front of me--I tried to make them feel more comfortable by saying that I was learning too, but most of them didn't seem to understand me. There were an uneven amount of students in the class so I was paired up with Metib, a young man from Saudi Arabia. He was very, very shy and his vocabulary was extremely limited. The activity we did was tell stories. We were split into partners and one person would tell a short story to their partner and then they would switch and tell their new partner their previous partner's story. The purpose of the assignment was to be able to listen, remember, and speak. It was impressive how many of the students remembered their partner's stories and were excited to speak! I told Metib a story about swimming and going to the park for 4th of July. His grammar was so limited he didn't know park or food. It was frustrating but really made me think about how to simplify my vocabulary and rely on actions and pictures. After the activity, Victoria passed out quizzes from the previous day and went over questions the students had. I really liked that some of the questions on the quiz had to do with the other students' cultures. For example, 6 of the students were Saudi Arabian and they got questions on their quiz regarding a Taiwanese student's culture and tradition. The class atmosphere was comfortable and the students felt free to ask questions about what words meant. I really, really enjoyed sitting in on the class and am looking forward to the next one!