Will Stone CO1

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I volunteered for Olga Garmash’s Speaking class. As soon as I walked into her classroom, Olga informed me that two students would be presenting oral reports about a sport or physical activity of their choosing. One of the students who was giving a presentation, arrived early and was asking questions. Olga was speaking very clearly and did her best to answer his questions but the rest of the class was slowly shuffling in. She started class by introducing the presentations, which were the only remaining presentations of the class, and followed by announcing that if time permitted, they would begin a new lesson. During this time students were talking in English amongst themselves. I noticed some common errors in arrangement and phrasing from time to time, but for the most part it seemed that every student had solid speaking skills.

I did not catch the student’s name, but the first presentation was given by a Saudi Arabian man in his mid to late twenties (I guess?). The subject of his presentation was mountain climbing, an activity which he prefaced his presentation by stating he was quite familiar with. His power point was neatly arranged, starting by laying out the different facets of mountain climbing he would address, including types of mountains, equipment needed for climbing, and some important facts about mountain climbing. Overall his speaking was very clear and understandable with the exception of several conjunction errors and awkward phrasings. At a few points in his presentation he even went as far as to explain by drawing an illustration on the board, which I noticed helped students immensely in understanding different uses of a word, like folded in the context of a folded mountain. The speaker’s knowledge and enthusiasm was apparent from the beginning of his presentation. At the end, during the question and answer section, he revealed that he had been on two separate guided expeditions up Everest, making it as far as five thousand feet above sea level.

The second speaker, Abood, was significantly less enthused by the subject of his presentation, tennis. He started by explaining a rough history and breakdown of the rules, but later admitted that he didn’t particularly care for the sport. In that respect, his presentation was a bit lackluster in that many aspects of tennis were not explained particularly well and the class had numerous questions that were a little difficult for Abood to explain. His speaking was about on the same level as the speaker before him, having some trouble with conjunctions, phrasings and transitions between thoughts.

The second presentation ran a bit long on time, so Olga did not have enough time to introduce a entirely new lesson, but she did provide general feedback for the entirety of the class presentations focusing on two common errors. The first was simply a confusion between ‘it means’ and ‘it’s mean’ or ‘ that depends’ and ‘ that’s depend,’ which she had the class practice out loud. The second frequent error concerned questions and auxiliary verbs, though she did not elaborate as much due to class ending. Before the students left, she passed out a packet of information to familiarize students with tomorrow’s lesson. Overall I was impressed with how quickly the class passed and how effortlessly student-oriented the lesson was, which seemed fairly effective as there were several moments of audible comprehension during both student presentations as well as during the questioning portions of each presentation.