David_TP#4

            Normally we have been going over vocabulary in these sessions, but today we decided to go off topic for a day, and work on some basic pronunciation. We were having a lot of trouble with long and short vowels. I actually printed out some of the slides for our class that dealt with this, and showed it to them. I made it a little simpler for their level, but it seemed to help. I also printed out a list of words that had long and short vowels in them, but looked very close in spelling (ie, mad and made.) I had about 30 of these, and we started reading through them and working out the sounds. At each letter, I would explain the rule that was being used, and say the word out loud so they could hear. After the first 5 or so words, I stopped reading them, and had them do it. I still pointed out the spelling rule that applied, but I didn't work out the sound. Then about 5 words further down, I stopped everything, and just started error correction them as they did it all. At first it was a little rocky, but then they started getting the hang of it, and remembering some of the rules that came up more often. I was really pleased to see some self correcting starting to happen. If a word was said wrong, before moving on the person would either correct himself, or someone else would step in and voice their opinion.
               I had also brought some sentences written out with some of these words in them, and had them start reading. At first they rushed it, but after I wild them to relax and ease up, they remembered the basic rules they had just learned, and applied them to some of the harder words. I error corrected them when it came to making a mistake on a long or short vowel, but other than that, I didn't make a big deal of some of the other pronunciation errors…. For now. I told them to make note of some of these words they see in their everyday life out of class, and that we would do a review when we met again before moving on.