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Post by loganc on Feb 16, 2016 20:04:37 GMT -5
This concept reminded me of when I'm working with my student for TSL, Samuel. Samuel's first language is Korean and we are working on his written English and to do so I have him practice his sentences out loud to make sure that they would make sense when written. I have found that he is highly proficient in English when it is spoken but when he write in English he has a much harder time. For example, in written English he has a hard time differentiating between the "ch" and "sh" sounds but when he is speaking he is correct. Has anyone else experienced this?
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Post by kaylynj on Feb 17, 2016 14:14:13 GMT -5
I had this same struggle with my student from TSL last semester. The student didn't talk very often because he was very shy, but when he did communicate he spoke pretty well and didn't have a problem with pronunciation. William only struggled when writing certain words because they would not sound like he spoke them. He would try to write a word how he was saying it instead of how it was correctly spelled. It was difficult to help him with this because I was unsure what I could do to help him not get confused, especially because I worked with him in a history class.
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Post by andryahr on Feb 17, 2016 15:55:47 GMT -5
My struggle with my TSL students (last semester and this semester) hasn't been as much phonological awareness as it's been comprehension. With both students they have been able to read and sound out words but at the end when I ask them what they have read, they often couldn't tell me. I believe it's out of focusing too hard on the phonological component that they forget to pay attention to what the words are saying. Comprehension and reading in between the lines is, what I believe, one of the most important literacies in English so I have tried to focus on this with them. I have found that it's been better and they have gotten more out of it when I ask them what is going on as we read. This gives them time to look back if necessary and take it slowly. Then by the end of it they have usually had a better idea of what is going on.
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Post by angelawithee on Feb 17, 2016 17:12:26 GMT -5
Last semester my student Henry expressed the same difficulty with "sh" and "ch", Henry is currently in kindergarten however and has only briefly been introduced to the sounds. To help him understand the "sh" and "ch" difference better I told Henry that "sh" makes the "shhhh" sound, and made the motion of quieting him, after practicing a few times Henry seemed to understand the concept really well.
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Post by sarahaubreyr on Feb 17, 2016 18:24:36 GMT -5
My TSL student definitely struggles with what Logan and Kaylyn mentioned. He is Spanish and he struggles with certain words because the sound does not necessarily match how it is written or it is silent. I find it difficult to help him because he gets easily frustrated when he is not understanding something. So I find myself struggling to find ways to help him without him getting frustrated and giving up.
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Post by lexxy95 on Feb 17, 2016 18:53:36 GMT -5
This will always be a difficult concept for ELLs. I briefly worked with an adult learner last semester. He had to be in his later 20s, early 30s, and he was Korean, and he had a REALLY hard time with this concept. Children are trained on this concept at a very young age so it's hard to break them from what they've accustomed to. I found a bunch of activities online that are suppose to help students with this issue (allegedly), but I don't really understand how they do this. Some of the activities include flashcards and reciting rhyming poems aloud. SO I guess just speaking more is supposed to help...Yes? I don't know. My ELL last semester actually spoke perfect English.. So I haven't deal with this issue much first hand yet!
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Post by kaylawebb on Feb 18, 2016 10:24:22 GMT -5
My student does not have very much phonological awareness at all. ELL teachers should really try to focus on that so they get better practice and learn it better. It is not enough that they know the words, they also need to be able to say them and know what they mean. Hopefully, they practice at home and at school. It is really hard for them to say words properly, especially if they are really young. My student is really making progress and coming around to the different sounds the letters make.
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Post by alexandrajohnson on Feb 27, 2016 17:19:34 GMT -5
I tutored a student from Korea this past fall semester. He was 8 years old and proficient in English except in reading comprehension. I would either read something to him or he would read something silently to himself, etc and then I would ask him some questions about the passage. I realized after a few shots at this that even though he speaks English fluently he has serious trouble actually understanding what e was reading. So then I would stop him a few times during a passage to ask questions instead of just at the end and the same thing happened. We made progress by the end of the semester and I hope he has continued to improve!
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Post by katelyn on Mar 2, 2016 18:21:51 GMT -5
I tutored an 11 year-old girl last semester. Her family moved from Korea five months before I started tutoring her, and although she had learned some English in Korea, she had a very thick accent and did not understand the majority of what I said to her. Her phonological awareness was beginner. I noticed that she had a lot of difficulty distinguishing between /l/ and /r/, which is a common confusion for Korean speakers learning English. She couldn't pronounce /th/, because it doesn't exist in in Korean. I gave her mini-lessons in phonemes that she struggled with, but I didn't notice a huge change in her pronunciation in the time I tutored her.
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