Ted Hong - TP4

The time: Noon... high noon on a muggy, 15th summer day in May.
The place: Classroom... 404... on the fourth... freaking... floor.

Anyway.

I gathered Butsawan (Nok) and Rose into a classroom for a better suited environment to practice their listening and speaking skills. I was originally going to use a movie or a TV show to employ their listening skills, but I think I'll save that for a little later. In the grand scheme of things, I think it's a little advanced, so I figured there's still time to warm up to it.

And so, I looked for resources and found a pronunciation document on blackboard and thought, "Eureka!" Then I thought to myself, "Yeah. You really can't pull that word off." I looked it over and saw ways in explaining how to get one's mouth to produce a particular sound. I figured I'd add that to my arsenal. I then took more than several tongue twisters for Butsawan and Rose to practice using.

Funny story. Before class began, Rose was telling me how she had gone to the beach (or wanted to go to the beach ...=/) and made note of how when she was talking with someone else, she was saying, "bitch". Rose knew what it meant, rather a form of it. She knew that it was a variation of complaining but I explained to her what it meant. We all laughed. Good times had by all. Then awkward, mind-numbing silence of us staring into space. (Kidding on the last part)

We did tongue twisters like some of the following:
"French fried potatoes are my favorite appetizer."
"Who wanted to feed the walruses?"
"Those three brothers threw a leather ball."

And some pronunciation comparisons:
- Sheep, Ship
- Bad, Bat
- Tail, Tell

In total, we did about 13 tongue twisters and 12 sound comparisons. We went through each line thoroughly and repeated them several times. Rose and Butsawan would bring up sounds they had trouble making. E.g., Car/card, word/ward, tale/tail/tell and we would cover their pronunciation.

Rose had also brought up the fact (again but described it much better) in the difference Vietnamese and Americans speak. Americans typically speak all in one breath per sentence. Vietnamese speaking involves breath stopping. For example, when Americans say "Vietnam", we say it in a linear fashion so to speak. The Vietnamese say it in two breaths, "Viet Nam". ...This may also stem from the fact that Vietnam is actually two words. Though some part of me already knew this, my mind was still blown.

I emailed the stuff we worked on to them for them to practice at home and we're going to go from there.

In these exercises, I got a better idea of what troubles they had that lie ahead and I'm preparing another lesson plan for the next tutoring session. I'm going to find a script of some sort and have them act out/read lines to each other. On top of that, it'll allow them to loosen up, but also strengthen their presentation. Butsawan said she wanted to practice speaking to an audience because she has to do presentation of doctoral studies.

"Good form, Peter. Yes, good form."
- Captain Hook