The teacher, spoke no English to us throughout the entire class (except for the fifteen minutes of methodology reflection at the end). When we walked in, he handed each of us a card with our names written in Turkish. As he pointed out later, this signaled to us that we’re working with a very different language, with an alphabet not our own.

We sat in a semicircle as he began speaking, pointing to himself and others as he moved around. He was dynamic and energetic, with face alive, so that I wanted to look at him, to watch for expressions and other cues.

Since language classes often begin with basic greetings, I inferred that those were the first interactions he was teaching us. His body language was also a cue. He selected people from the classroom to have an exchange with him. When he chose first a woman and then a man, and said slightly different things for each, I inferred that there was gender distinction in the greeting as well.

We repeated the words over and over, first as a group and then in pairs. I liked the pair work because it didn’t make me feel like I was put on the spot as I would have been in front of the whole group. Even though I somewhat know my classmates, I still freeze up when asked a question about something I don’t know. Because I had the expectation, after a few rounds of word-practice, that he wouldn’t be calling on me, I relaxed.

Actually, he did call on me once to come up in front of the classroom. I was amazed that he knew all our names, particularly since he had never met us! And that meant a lot to me. It made me feel more included: a recognized part of the whole.

I watched and listened to other students peripherally as I did my own pair work, and heard that many if not most of the others were remembering better than I. I would’ve dwelled on that more if he had allowed us down-time. But at quite a quick pace he was off to another phrase, and then numbers, and then the alphabet, each time followed with pair work, so I didn’t have time to obsess. Had we been in threes or more, I would have had more “quiet” time, and more time to feel bad about myself.

Subject matter: Greetings, numbers and letters

Nature of input: Language data: conversational and functional essentials

Affect/Emotion: See above

Production: See above. Also: my main errors are in forgetting! I listen very hard for pronunciation, and twice called him over so I could repeat a word for him to understand its emphasis or phonetics, and that aspect I think I did passably. But my memory: minutes (or even seconds) after saying something, I’d forget it. I noticed that I best retained the first two or three numbers he taught us, but had a difficult if not impossible time recalling the rest without looking at my notes. I perform much better in private than public.

Strategies: I listened carefully, and watched him first. For one sound he kept pointing at his mouth to be sure we were watching him. He made it a big round “o.” It was great, because it was not only helpful in understanding pronunciation, but it was also entertaining, lively. And I also wrote down everything phonetically because I’ve come to realize that my memory and my facility with language aren’t what they used to be.

Style: I am very shy and insecure. I’ve come to expect myself to fail in memory, which probably makes matters worse. This time I tried to rely less on what I’d written than I usually do, and he encouraged that by his pace and movement, but in the end I went back to the written word.

Fellow Learners: My partner was supportive and encouraging. The rest of the group seemed like they were having fun. In general there was a light air in the group.

Corrective Feedback: The professor was realistic in his corrective feedback. When I asked for a repeat of certain pronunciation, he and I said the word back and forth a few times, and then he said “okay” (in Turkish) and moved on, though certainly what I was saying was not yet okay.

After class I went over my notes and rewrote the parts I could understand, creating a vocab list using my own unique phonetic spelling rather than the proper Turkish. While I was taking a shower the next day I found the Turkish “one, two, three” going through my head: Beeerrr, eeekeee, oooootch. But then I got stuck. I got creative. “Mess, humvee, yeti…” I don’t know why only the first three stuck in my head. Is it because I heard them first when my slate was blank, or because he lingered a little longer on these (or did he?), or … ?