Subject Matter

I thought we were going to do clocks today but we didn’t. We began, as always, with the “dictation” (it doesn’t really seem like a formal dictation. He just says a word and we start to write it as he writes on the board. That’s something I do regardless of whether or not he calls it ‘dictation.’ I call it taking notes.

So anyhow, we reviewed the “today,” “yesterday” and “tomorrow” stuff, and then moved back to the restaurant dialog for which he’d given us handouts yesterday shortly before the end of class.

He wrote some things up on the board that were different than what he had on our sheet, and though I was sitting between two people who are of average or better aptitude in this particular class, they weren’t able to define its meaning either. He did some physical stuff, waving his arms and pointing and stuff, but I continued to have no idea what it meant. Yet it was instrumental to what we did today. I never did figure it out, until the English review at the end of class.

He called a group of three up to the table, as he has before, and played the waiter and they the customers. This group consisted of some of the best “producers/performers” in the class, yet even they — while understanding way more than I was — seemed a bit confused, while Ray seemed to be getting frustrated. Even his star pupils couldn’t grasp his meaning.

We did restaurant stuff pretty much the whole class.

Nature of Input

Presentation proceeded directly to production with the restaurant material. He had handouts with the scripted dialog on it for reference, and then, in his role as waiter (lively and fun to watch) he went impromptu. The blackboard and handouts, along with his gestures and speech, comprised the majority of the class. At the end he focused on some group repetition of the words we’d been (mis)pronouncing all morning. I liked that part. I like the phonology and I like the anonymity when I’m feeling lost.

Today he reverted to speaking almost entirely in Turkish and, to my surprise, I liked that. As always, I was filled with some dread when I walked in, but even though I had no idea what he meant most of the time, I got so involved with the mental gymnastics of trying to figure out what he was saying — again, it’s sort of like a game of charades — that the time passed quickly.

At one point he was helping us figure out the meanings of words on his “menu” he’d given us. That word that had stumped us earlier was still stumping me, and a few others. He said something about calamari and he looked my way because he knows of my Greek connection, and started asking me who-knows-what. I tried really hard to understand, and felt put-on-the-spot. He would say something and I would guess at its meaning and then scratch through my papers quickly to try to figure out the appropriate word. But I was so far off-base that my “appropriate words” were irritating to him. He was clearly frustrated and as he wheeled off to another student for (hopefully) the right answer, I felt like shite — like he’d noticed me, thought I could answer the question, and then I’d not only been too stupid to answer but had failed him.

Later, when that same term came up, I thought he was going to stamp his foot in exasperation. Many of us were still not getting it.

Affect/Emotion

As above.

Production

We got into groups of three again on two occasions, to do restaurant role-plays. It was fun. I do like the triad learning, or “peer scaffolding,” as it was described in yesterday’s SLA reading. The pressure is off, but not the intensity of my efforts.

Strategies

As always: writing frenetically three things: the phonetic spelling, the Turkish spelling and the meaning. I’m usually not caught up by the time he moves on to the next thing.

I’ve deleted the last three categories from this post because I think they’re all covered above.

One last note: at the end of class Ray acknowledged his frustration. It wasn’t in my imagination. “What could I have done differently to convey that meaning?” But none of us had an answer.

The cultural lesson at the end — about waiters rarely if ever being women in Turkey (though that’s changing) and that it is a lifelong career for people, often continued by generations of sons.