On January 16, 2019, I completed my third classroom observation by observing Mr. Rio's Speaking 2 class. The students were working on a peer introduction project, so they were writing down information about their partner to later do a PowerPoint about them. For almost all of them, this would be the first time they present in front of anybody in English, so I imagine it can be daunting. I assume that most had already spoken to their partner the class before, because most just wrote for the class and only a couple of students asked each other a few things. The teacher put some light American pop-music in the background and walked around the classroom to see if any student needed help. This class was not as talkative as the other two classes, despite being the speaking class, but I understand because it is level 2 so they don't have the same confidence or proficiency as the students from the more advanced classes. Mr. Rios put on the board an example of a presentation outline, for example the intro, which includes the hook, intro sentence, and agenda with three points. They also have to include a body with the transitions, points, and details, and a conclusion. In different countries, presentation expectations may differ, so presenting the students with an outline of what is expected is a good way to introduce them to the American academic world and even business world, because presentation expectations are similar. For the second part of class, we went downstairs to the computer lab, and the students worked on their PowerPoints. Observing this class made me realize that speaking classes can incorporate the other facets of teaching English, because sometimes students do need to write and read out loud in order to make a speech.
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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