Jules CO-2

I got to observe Marilyn Sohan's speaking class last Wednesday afternoon. The class started right after lunch, so it seemed like everyone was a little bit groggy and there was a five or ten minute delay before the lesson actually began. During this free time I actually enlisted another tutoring partner, as Stéphane isn't so interested in tutoring until he finds out how he did on the TOEFL.

After dealing with some technical difficulties, Marilyn wrote down the day's agenda, along with some vocabulary terms. We began by reviewing the speech acts from the previous class, which consisted of some recorded conversations followed by comprehension questions. The students had handed in their answers during the previous class, and we gave the recordings a second listen before going over the answers. Marilyn asked the class as a whole what they had thought the answers were, rather than calling on individuals. This was feasible since there were only four students present-- I probably wouldn't want to hear the cacophony of a much larger class. On the whiteboard, Ms. Sohan listed some terms from the recording that might have posed problems for the students, such as heart-to-heart, fed up, and free-loading. The last question had involved a man complaining about his roommate never paying for the groceries. Marilyn utilized this to spark a discussion on how the students might deal with this situation. I really enjoyed the topic because it seemed like something that most people could relate to and maybe share a similar experience. It also provided a perfect segue into the next item on the agenda-- idioms.

During my research into the TOEFL exam I was initially quite surprised how much focus they put on idiomatic expressions. However, I've been noticing with my conversation partners that English is rife with these silly little phrases. Ms. Sohan passed out a worksheet containing ten phrases that used idioms. The idioms were typed in boldface, and each question was followed by three choices for the definition of the expression. One example was:

"I don't like my boss. I want to tell him to take a hike."

a) walk around a park

b) go jogging

c) leave

She gave the students about fifteen minutes to complete the worksheet, then we went over it as a class. One of the things I noticed about Marilyn's teaching style was that she always asked the students to explain why they thought an answer was what it was. I think this tactic is preferable to just telling the students when they are right, because it drives home the reason the answer is what it is. I really enjoyed observing how to conduct a speaking class and will definitely use some of her strategies in my own tutoring sessions.