CP #1 First Meeting - Stephanie

Serher is from the Republic of Turkey.  She came to the US a year ago and first lived in Los Angeles, where she took some English classes.  She started FSU this August as a graduate student.

Serher actually choose me as her conversation partner.  She had overheard Jordan and I speaking basic Turkish in the breakroom.  Well, actually, Jordan was speaking basic Turkish and I was more resembled a deer in headlights as I tried to comprehend what he was saying and then formulate a reply.  But I digress. Serher, once she recovered from her surprise, she followed me to my TEFL II classroom, where she introduced herself and we exchanged phone numbers.  She told me she had wanted a native speaker to talk too and was so surprised to have overheard that I had been to Turkey several times. 

At our first CP meeting, we talked quite a bit about Istanbul and Turkey.  Eventually, I had to ask her why she wanted a CP since her English was so good.  She sheepishly admitted that she didn't think it was good at all.  Furthermore, she revealed that she couldn't pronounce "w" words (water, what, where, why, and so) at all. I told her this was normal as there is no "W" in the Turkish alphabet.

While listening to her attempt to speak w words, it became clear to me what was happening: she was stumbling so badly over the first letter (w) that it was like she gave up on the rest of the word and it just fizzled out into an pile of mush.  To get her past this problem, I taught her to say the parts of the word backwards.  No, not literally "Sdrawkcab", just the individual sounds.  :) For example, 'water', I wrote '-er' on paper.  As predicted, she easily got this.  So I added a 't' to make '-ter'.  Again, perfect.  Then I wrote 'ah' and again, it was perfect. Then I made her say '-ter' and 'ah' several times in different orders.  Next, I added a 'w' in front of the 'ah' to make 'wah'.  I had her say 'ah' 4 times in row before I added the w.  Perfect.  From her, she said 'ter'  and 'wah' several more times in random orders, then finally "wahter".  I crossed a line through the 'h' and still, she could say it.  Finally, I rewrote the word as 'water'.  She was so shocked when she said this word perfectly.  We did the same series of steps, more or less, for a handful of other 'w' words.  After 20 minutes of this, she began saying the words the first time, without having to trick her brain.  After 25 minutes, I could no longer stump her with words containing w's from a magazine.  She kept the 'training sheets' and promised to review them each day for the next week.