Ted Hong - TP9

Today I met with Butsawan and Rose and we reviewed some of the exercises we had learned previously. I sent them an email regarding most of what we've covered in our sessions, even noting the problem points. I hadn't found solutions to all of them, as they're still on my list.

Before fully completing the exercises, I wanted to try an exercise with Rose which involved saying a long list of sentences in one breath. I found flaws in my approach as I figured I could take a bunch of sentences and just use that as something to read. I came up with and gathered a bunch of random sentences, none that were supposed to be coherent to one another nor... be coherent in any sense.

I can eat. I can dance. I leave nothing to happenstance. I can win. I can lose. If I do, I drink booze. Trick or treat, smell my feet. Give me something good to eat. If you don’t, I don’t care; I’ll pull down your underwear. Yankee doodle went to town, riding on a pony. Row, row, row your boat - gently down a stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily; life is but a dream.

This ended up causing a bit of problems as they were now attuned to pausing at each period of a sentence. Punctuation became a problem. I should just make a list of words for her to say in one breath. Words that are easier for her to pronounce just to start off.

I wanted to do another script reading, but it wasn't as convenient as reading it upon a projector. Making handouts would have been another option... but I didn't have the resources to do so. On top of that, if I load a DVD into my computer to view scenes, my laptop would overheat and more or less crash. It's an old baby and she's on her last legs. So we resorted to breaking down pronunciations of words.

We spent a great deal of time with the GKDTBP exercise and realized that Rose could also use some more practice with "V" sounds and the subtle "K" sounds (rather than "KUH!"). I referred to the GMU Accents Database and looked at the comments underneath the passages to identify what the drawbacks were for her. Did not understand some of the lingo but I did my best to guess (voiceless velar fricative... being one).

Butsawan's accent is slight so it's not really so much a problem. However, her case is that she doesn't project enough so the way she speaks is very quiet. I advised that practicing to speak loudly will help set her in a better way of pronouncing things as they're "gross facial exercises". Just doing that in practice, when she is required to speak at a normal register, things should be a little easier. The same goes for Rose.

She's very concerned about being incorrect or misunderstood. Which reminded me of the next session that I wanted to focus on: improvisation. I've brought it up in the last two times we've met up so I've been slowly warming them up to the idea. I figured it would be a good way to have them create different pathways to explain. I did a little practice run and asked her to tell me about McDonald's/Fast food without saying those words.

Before we concluded our session, we traded skype information, and I was also asked about being their tutor for next session but I don't know how things will be post TEFL class so I told them I'd get back to them on that.