Second Class

I had thought I'd done a pretty good job of studying. It had been 2 weeks since class 1, so my fervor for study wasn't quite as intense close to the class time. I studied as I ate right before class. I had also studied the colors.  I hadn't studied the greetings and food words, though. It just seemed like an impossible list of meaningless words.  That made me realize the importance of context for teaching vocabulary. Yet, my Arabic vocabulary is really too limited to do much with these words.

I had an aha! moment the first 30 minutes of class when I wasn't making eye contact with the teacher and was embarrassed that I hadn't studied more. I hadn't even looked at my notes, but had focused on the handouts, particularly the alphabet. Beginning to read words was more interesting to me that trying to memorize greetings, etc. The teacher kept saying, "I told you about this. I taught you this." I was pretty ashamed.

Now I realize how overwhelming these vocab lists can be.  One thing I think I am doing right as a teacher is giving pictures of the words.  That reduces the need for direct translation from L1 to L2. The funny thing is that my students' vocab list for this week is jobs, and my list in Arabic is jobs.

Once I got over my embarrassment, I was pretty happy with the learning process. I had the opportunity to show off what I'd learned--the colors and letters--and to begin to put words together.

In order to remember some of the grammar we learned, I really need to make some charts of words that are related. I want/Give me, etc. She told us about them, but I had trouble remembering which was which. 

What did I learn? In the language classroom, it's all about small accomplishments. Studying is important. Studying what the teacher wants you to study, not just what you want to study, will make a difference in your class performance. Maybe there is a reason the teacher wants you to study X. Being able to connect words is almost as important as learning the words because it creates a more satisfying, meaningful learning experience.

Also, I couldn't sleep last night because I started to think about my classes, teaching vocabulary, and teaching reading. Reading--I need to give the students sentences from the story and have them put them in order. My students who are struggling like to look for the answers, but they don't like to read. Sentence strips will force them to read. Key words so they can try summarizing--like a colleague of mine taught us at in-service. They must do more with the stories. Vocabulary-- Is there some way I can get students to do more with these words during class without spending too much class time on them? I base the vocab lessons off of my co-teacher's book topics, but I  don't know if they have the opportunities to use them enough.