For my first class observation, I sat in on a level-two grammar class. I was incredibly nervous for some reason, but the
teacher was very comforting and incorporated me into a lot of the activities to
help me feel welcome. The students were practicing the simple past tense by
describing a video they saw last class that was directed by an FSU film school
alumn. First, the students described it to me as best they could, then the
teacher showed the video again. I clarified what I did not get from the students’
explanation and we went over some essential vocab words, focusing on irregular
past-tense conjugations. The students had a pretty good grasp of irregular past
tense in isolation. When given the infinitive of a verb, they could give the
irregular conjugation, but using the word in a sentence was a little more challenging.
They had a more receptive command of irregular verbs than productive, but that
receptive command was helping them when it came to the class exercises. I could
tell that using the verbs in a sentence was much more effective in creating a
productive command than just writing the words on a board.
My third conversation partner meeting was with Josue, my conversation partner from Paris, France. He suggested that we go to a restaurant for this meeting, and recommended the Colombian restaurant on Tennessee St. called "Super Perros". I had never been to this restaurant before, so it was interesting to not only converse with someone from outside of my culture but also at a cultural restaurant with an atmosphere and menu different than what I am used to. Most of the menu was in Spanish, so we were able to bond over trying to figure out what the menu was saying, and ended up sharing a lot of laughs over it. During our meeting, we caught up on how he was doing at CIES, what he's involved in in Tallahasee, and discussed deeper topics such as the current political affairs going on in France. This led to a grander discussion about American politics, and it turned out we had similar views. It was interesting to connect our ideas across border lines, realizing we all want the ...
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