Ray built on what we started yesterday, using identical techniques as far as I could tell: introducing new words and phrases, pantomiming them, calling on us in the circle, anmd then breaking us into pairs to try them. I felt he was moving very fast. In our pair work, since we were covering more ground than yesterday without reviewing much first, I felt I was always trying to catch up. My partner and I would get through half a round or one round in the assigned activity, and then get swept into the next set of words before we felt settled in what came before.
He added an activity during which people milled around the center of the room and changed partners, practicing the dialog over and over, each time with someone new. Some people really seemed to get it fast, without using a memory crutch. My reliance in paper really discouraged me. The international students seemed to keep up better than some of the others. The other person my age and I seemed the slowest to grasp new words and to understand the charade that Ray was doing to explain them.
I liked the pair work still, since it gave a safe environment to practice, and because my partner helped me (and I hope I sometimes helped her) to figure out what had just happened and what we were supposed to practice. I burst out laughing a bunch of times at the absurdity of what I was trying to do. I kept bursting into Spanish and even Greek and Nepali phrases, and I don’t even know the latter two.
The milling around was nice because I found it harder today to sit than yesterday. It got us to know new people and hear different ways that people interpreted the words we were saying.
I found myself bored today, possibly because I’ve already practically given up, and feel so far behind. I needed more time to review.
Even though I typed out my new words last night, I didn’t have time to review them before class today, so I was more in the dark than I wanted to be. So by the end of today I felt even more in the hole.
I don’t get the sense that the teacher is paying attention to our individual progress. He remains a very pleasant and warm presence: dynamic and engaging, giving help when someone calls him over without being overly demanding of perfection. But I don’t know if he’s aware of our separate levels of accomplishment or comfort (or lack thereof). As long as we keep learning as a big group, I’m afraid I’ll fall more behind.
Tonight I again wrote out the words that I heard today, and again I did it phonetically. He’s trying to teach us on the blackboard the phonemic system of the language and that confuses me. I just want to get the sound of the language in my ears. The spelling (as in English) only confuses me further. I want to get sounds and meanings write before I tackle the written system, which has no relation to my own.
I noticed that when I taught Madhu Maya, she would always do the same: write the Nepali phonology for the words (and sometimes wrong). The Chinese woman next to me was also doing that, in Chinese characters.