TP#5 -- Stephanie

Our last tutoring session was shorter than our normal  1- 1:30 sessions because the two ladies were leaving to go out of town for Thanksgiving break.  It was Tuesday after all,  and they were leaving within a few hours.  (I also didn't want to be too late to my TEFL II class.) Hamad was attending some sort of conference and was not at school that day.

We skipped timed speaking practice with the cell phone recorders--nobody had the patience or attention span to handle that anyway.  Besides, the break room was abuzz with other students and constant outside interruptions -- "Do you want to attend a CIES TEFL class now???".  And both ladies really wanted to play some serious Taboo in order to settle some old scores between them.   It started out just the 3 of us, but before long, everyone in the room was playing along with us.  It was almost too much to keep up with at times, but the public audience was a nice way to gauge their English amid outside distractions.  Today, Banshe was better at giving clues, but Linxshi was almost too distracted to give good guesses.  One card that I will never forget is "egg".  Banshe asked Linxshi "where are chickens from", but Linxshi heard "where are you from" and blurted out "China!!".  The entire room roared with laughter.  She enjoyed the humor of the situation, but since the error was so public, Linxshi became much more focused on the game, causing her initial choppy speech patterns to smooth out into something much more fluid. It was also interesting to see her English get the point that she could be speaking in the game and simultaneously interrupt herself to tell off-color English remarks to her observing friends.  Then she'd return to the game exactly where her last sentence left off.  This was a remarkable improvement to her public speaking ability from when we first met.

In total, they each played about 15-20 cards, then we spent time reviewing the errors that I had written down while they were speaking.  Most of the errors this time were rather minor.  I showed them how to rephrase awkward phrases or pointed out a few issues with plural subjects paired with a singular verb and vice versa.  After all this, I had them spend several minutes telling me in detail, what they planed to do over the holidays.  I would parrot back their errors until they self-corrected themselves or I'd give a much more involved explanation if they couldn't figure it out on their own.  Anyway, I've noticed that this detailed speaking is a good activity to do following Taboo.  Taboo causes them to speak very quickly, to access and recall stored information.  However, I want them to notice that more involved speaking, for example describing a multi-day vacation, requires them to slow down a notch or two and shift their focus to accurate, clear pronunciation and to use more complex, complete grammar patterns.  What's interesting is that I am noticing their vocabulary is larger after they have played Taboo.  I believe it is because of all the practice they've had accessing and recalling under pressure what they already knew but weren't consciously aware of.  (If that even makes sense??) Hmmmm.   Oh well, I didn't get to do that last timed speaking with them, but I did get to watch them play a loud, fast and furious English game without embarrassment in front of their friends, which to me, says a lot about how much more confident and comfortable they are with speaking English.  Or maybe it just says they aren't as afraid of making mistakes anymore.  :)