Dhugal TP3

I met with Abdullah today before our class for a tutoring session. As noted before, his accent distorts the clarity of his speech and he can at times be very difficult to understand. This being the case, I printed out Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. There's a lot more to it than the 'I have a dream' bit, and it it's a true masterpiece and token of our American culture. 

We went through the first page stanza by stanza. As he read aloud, I noted which words he struggled with, and pronounce them to him afterwards. As the list of botched words grew, I was able to notice a few patterns. For instance, he often substituted the [p] sound with a [b] sound. He struggled with the past tense [-ed], giving it its own syllable. He often erred on whether to use the hard or soft [g]. Taking these notes will allow me to prepare for a follow up session targeting those areas of speech.

I was very adamant about Abdullah taking his time and enunciating each word. He has a tendency to blend separate words together and run over commas and periods, making it sound like one long, monotone sentence. I told him to exaggerate the movement of his mouth for this exercise, sit with a straight back and not to speak into his lap (I just realized I sound like my father, odd). I also made him do a warm up I’ve done in a phonetics class-enunciate all the vowel sounds, moving the mouth in an exaggerated manner. As far as words he didn’t understand, I gave him the definition but told him not to worry as this was a pronunciation exercise.