This is a summary of the first half dozen or so classes with Alex, since I didn’t keep track digitally during this time.

Intro to Alex: Class One

For everything that Alex has taught us so far about phonology, he has even more inspired thinking about new teaching ideas. I’m late in catching this up since we’ve had his class for three or so weeks now, but I’ll try to recall the particularly memorable bits thus far.

On a curricular level he’s been teaching us phonetics as they apply to teaching, showing us a new system of phonetic transcription that’s much simpler than the IPA, including just the distinctions that are essential for TESL. He began by showing us vowel sounds and dipthongs. The next class he moved onto consonants and more dipthongs, and the stuff about position of the tongue and use (or lack thereof) of vocal chords in producing the sounds. How dull is that, right?

But no. I think his class is my favorite. He is engaging and funny and a spontaneous, clever way. We jump up frequently for interactive exercises. He mixes media, from music to stuff we or he writes on the blackboard.

Lesson Plan

He handed out and reviewed a syllabus, summarizing rather than reading it verbatim. He wrote key points for the day on the board — phonetically. It was Rosh Hashana so he handed around apple slices and honey for dipping. He told us the entire class would be about content and process.

He announced he would have three starts to the class, and he did.

In the first, he explained the class agenda. He sat throughout this section. He had each of us call out a sequential number which he said we’d use for the semester, and he’d divide people up in different groups that way. I appreciated this traditional beginning because it gave me a clear expectation of how the class was designed, and what would be when. He said we will have tests, but to lower our affective filter he called them “reviews,” whose purpose is to synthesize and consolidate knowledge. He’s setting it up so that we can scope out the test ahead of time, and then do additional work if necessary before the test.

He said that what we will do in class is discover, explore and understand.

For the second segment he stood up. At first he showed us a PowerPoint called “It’s All About Me” (little does he know how wrong he is!). It was very funny, and a great idea for when I go on my internship. The activity led to us knowing him a bit as a human, and broke the ice in its humor and spirit of conviviality. He show pix of him in the 1970s, his kids, where he grew up, funny quotes he pulled from student evaluations of him (very unflattering in a funny way).

Next he put on a Jackson Browne song, first handing out the lyrics and a lis tof three prompts. Then he asked each of us which line or phrase stood out the most for us. It’s a short song, but people had widely varying answers, which never ceases to amaze me in these classes: how differently we respond to the same, small, concrete bit of information. “I picked “And the millions of lovers… I want to live in the world, not behind some wall. I want to live in the world, where I will hear if another voice should call.” That’s a ‘self & others’ sort of issue.

I guess he picked that song because it was rich in themes to identify with, and pertained directly to our international work — thus setting the tone of for the class that we’re not here to learn phonology, etc., only, but to move into the bigger world with these new tools. It tied us to our common purpose in being in this program.

He also told us his own favorite lyric and why. He acknowledged that before every class he still gets nervous — but that he’s realized he doesn’t have to be perfect. Sometimes, he said, he even shares his perceived “failures” with his students.

It was all a very leveling exercise that built my affection for him and lowered my affective filter, and built community by our mutual laughter.

The third start: He had each student take two index cards. On one we wrote a concern or worry we had bout our participation in the class. On the second we listed a strength we thought we could contribute. With no names necessary, we posted these on the bulletin board for all to see. I wrote that I was worried I won’t be prepared for my internship after this, and that I brought to the class a sense of humor. The range of responses was typically broad and unexpected.

Concepts

• Test, teach, test
• Present, practice, use
• Task-based lessons (popular now)
• Vowel phonetics
• Importance of I, Thou, We construct
• Social justice, peer scaffolding, teacher training are his foci
• Chunks: repertoires of little steps that work as one (e.g. setting a pre-reading task). Important for new teachers to acquire and build on. But they can be limiting for experienced teachers
• Thread: Middle section of a lesson. Introduce something but not for long. Then let it percolate and pick it up later (other days or times). E.g. “learn.”
• “Play the believing game”
• Stimulus (e.g. a poem) vs. moves (what you do with it). Stimulus: Anything that can hold a student’s interest. Move: a way of working with the stimulus (only partially): analysis (studying it), personalization (tying it to students’ lives), alteration and transfer (make new things with it or make it their own), creation (use stimulus as springboard for next activity)
• Generalizable procedures: with one text, expand on it: expand, reduce, transfer, match. Select and rank, compare/contrast, reconstruct, reformulate, interpret, create, analyze, work on project

Before closing he assigned us a partner with whom we were to work on transcribing the vowels in the Shel Silverstein poem about the Zebra.

He also said that, rather than do “norms” all at once on the first class, he’d bring a new one in each week and also ask us for one new each wee. His first: say anything you want but say it only once, say it briefly and stay on topic. From the group he got “punctuality.”

LALP Class 2

He began as before, with music. He picked Joan Armatrading because her speech had linguistic features, as well as deeper themes, that he wanted us to notice.

He reminded us that he’ll be doing two levels of teaching: content and process. The process is as prominent to me as the content, and very inspiring. I want to steal from him all the time.

His staring point was giving a framework for the day’s lesson: what inspired it, the concept on which it is based. It may not be content. It may be a calming lesson. “How do I get the students to be focused,” is his question. That’s the organizing principle for the first part of all his lessons. He may use breathing, music, singing a quiet song, group dynamics exercise, norm-building, a poem that we build on, an exam.

Concepts & Content

• Meeting the material
• Focus on sounds, not letters
• Sequence
• Phoneme
• Allophone
• Dipthong

Then we went into great detail about the vowel dipthongs, through some of which I was very confused. But with peer scaffolding I think we all got to some level of understanding.

Some other key things to note. The dipthong vowels are “conditional allophones”: I think. There are two kinds of allophones: sociolinguistic (regional accent) and conditioned/positional (where it is in the word). IPA has a different symbol for every allophone but thank goodness we don’t. That is, regional accents are different allophones for the same phoneme/letter.

In class he worked with us extensively on reviewing our homework and carrying it further to more hands-on practice with transliteration of vowel phonemes, often in pairs.

R-less dialects in English: in Boston, N, South, GB. Before consonant or at end of word. Are often seen as indicative of social class, often with pejorative views. NY & Boston, except in lower classes, are losing some of that phonetic distinction these days: sound change in process. In those cases, R has an allophone which is ZERO. These distinctions are between reduced and are now more class-based than region-based. Called “Sound change in progress”: changes come from influences from outside.

I like hearing people here talking like me: correspond, orange, horrible. No other “iceboxes,” though. They look at me as though I were mad, or prehistoric.

Alex asked one student, “Where did you fail to grow up?”

Book to look into: Teaching Outside the Box (LuAnne Johnson)

As an interactive piece of the day Alex introduced the “community blackboard: an exercise in validation, democracy and social justice. The BB is not just the domain of the teacher. He sees the classroom as a microcosm of the real world, of the way you want the world to be, not just for teaching a subject. It needs to reinforce your core values of nonviolence, respect. He put up focusing questions on the board for us to consider after a particular exercise: What did I get? [thinking] What did I feel? [emotion] What bells did it ring? [personal experience] What didn’t I get [legitimizing questions].

Even a picture or visual source is a adequate prompt. Often used in HS. Students rarely put up questions they don’t want to talk about, so you can fee someone secure, though careful, in following up with them.

Show (“w” is the glide, or unstable vowel) vs. chaud
Fee = a glide (y sound at end)

Foe in English v Faux in French: the letter has shorter sound. These are different allophones for a phoneme. Regional accents are likewise different allophones for the same phoneme. Allophones are the same phoneme pronounced different ways.

Introduced concept of “Community Blackboard,” a democratizing, equalizing tool. He writes question like the following, for feedback in response to a prompt: the posing of a basic question. What did I get (rational intelligence), What did I feel (emotional intelligence), What bells did it ring (personal connections), What didn’t I get (legitimizing questions). For any text (including picture, visual prompt, etc.) he uses this technique. Students rarely put up comments/questions they’re not willing to answer. It was during this exercise that I thought he was grilling Lauren too extensively, beyond her boundaries. He said he can read boundaries but I don’t know. But that turned out to be irrelevant, because the objective is for the students to pick out something written on the board by their peers and follow up with each other as a community activity, rather than led by the teacher.

Lesson Three

He began with Leonard Cohen, written (as always) phonetically, along with the rest of our phonetic agenda on the BB.

He talked about some tricky phonetic constructions. The “r” is a troublemaker after a vowel. Poor can be puwr or pur. Core can be kowr or k-epsilong-r.

Fair: feyr or fEr
Fear: fiyr or fir.

On this day he followed up on a previous discussion about fudge. International students didn’t know what it was, so he began the class by passing some around. (Actually, it was chocolate, but it was a nice idea.)

Mary v. Merry: we can’t always even make the distinction. Differentiate between tense and lax pairs. Tense-lax contrast if neutralized before “r.”

In this class he went into great detail about voiced/voicelss, position of tongue, and nature of sound (stop, fricative, etc.) We need to know this.

An affricate is a stop plus a fricative

We’ll also need to know nasal, liquid and glide.

the “tt” flap:

• before stress = attain
• after stress = lettuce
• before “no” = button (bu?n]

This was a pretty complex lesson. To break it up he had us break into two teams and write up the zebra poem in its full phonology, not just the vowels. It was an extra challenge because we had finite time and now established system of organization. I look over and said, “let’s each take two lines.”

Class Four

Began with a song by Andy Pelacia (Barifuna speaker from Belize)

Glides are semi vowels
Sociolinguistic allopones are regional

Speech sounds have three distinctive features:

Place of articulation (where’s the tongue)
Manner of articulation (how much air escapes)
Voicing

We need to memorize the table on page 26.

• A stop is a full closure of the mouth: “p,” “b.” Fast, momentary.
• A fricative is a partial closure: “th,” “s.” The test: you can keep saying it as long as you want.
• Affricate: stop plus fricative: ch, j

We also should know the other three, just for fun (nasal, liquid, glide)

We need to know the above, along with the position of tongue in the mouth — high, medium, low, and:

• Bilabial
• Labio-dental (or interdental)
• Dental
• Alveoral
• Palatal
• Velal
• Glottal

And all of these are either voiced or unvoiced.

• “tt”: before stress they’re “t’s”: attain
• after stress they’re flaps or glottal stops: lettuce, bitter
• before “n” they’re as above: button.

These are only in North American English. The “ts” are called “intervocalic.”

Glides = semivowels

Written language often presents a block to pronunciation in English

t & d, k & g, p and b: difference is in aspiration in initial positiom.

People speaking French LOOK different when they speak. If you focus on looking them them, you’ll sound more like them.

Another hard allophone is the L at the end of a word (hall). Some Lx2 can’t hear it so you tell them it’s a variation on “l” but just said differently, and that can help them.

Class 5

A sound takes on the characteristics of those next to it, for ease of production. “with bad”: the “th” takes on characteristics of the “b” so their both voiced. Phenomenon is called “assimilation.” Contiguous sounds are produced similarly, with the same voicing.

“Times”: the “m” is voiced so the “s” is too.

We don’t have lax vowels at the end of words, which is why a word like “happy” is a dipthong or glide.

“With some”: th and s are both unvoiced here.

In this class he divided us into two groups, one that wrote a poem up on the board that we hadn’t transcribed before, giving us a time limit in which we were to decide tasks and get the whole thing done. In the other group, they simply transcribed a poem they’d already done. The dynamics between the two groups were vastly different. Alex marveled at it. I don’t know if it was because the tasks were different — our involved more thinking, delegating and rushing — or because of the nature of the team. He left the room and when he came back he laughed, seeing how different was the behavior of the two groups.

Sixth Class

The Haiku

He’d asked us for an earlier assignment to look up a few salient facts about haikus. Most of us ended up with similar ones (thanks to Wikipedia) but I was still surprised at some of the variety.

Alex told us that our initial buddy system was now out the window. He’d set that up just to give us a feeling of security, and to get us comfy with the concept. In face, Chritine and I worked on only one assignment together. I was glad to have her as a partner, and my expectation that she was for the long-term no doubt influence (increased) my efforts when we worked.

At any rate, those groupings went out the window, as we formed new buddy systems. Sometimes it’s the person next to us, sometimes he preselects people (as he did for our upcoming presentation next week).

He talked again about vehicle (or stimulus) and moves. In this case the stimulus was the haiku, and the moves were everything he ended up doing with it.

First he broke us into groups, asking us to pick from our respective notes four characteristics of a haiku. We collaborated and wrote our stuff on a big sheet of newsprint. Three in our group understood and collaborated on the assignment. One kept going off in her own direction.

Then he showed us a haiku written by a student in Senegal.

Is there a place
Where I can get my share
From the loving day

It always surprises me, when Alex invites our comments, how much we vary. I often expect we’ll say the same things. He asked us for reactions in one of four categories, in his “community blackboard” model except we spoke instead of wrote: how did it make us feel, what did we think about, what would we like to ask the author, and a fourth that I can’t remember. I found the poem very sad and expected others had, too. That wasn’t the case. Some wondered if the “place” was physical. Some found it optimistic.

After rejoining the group and discussing our findings, he gave each group (same groups) a haiku written by a formal international student. It was written phonetically. We were to translate it, write it in English, and illustrate it as a group. We had about 15 minutes. Once again, the group dynamic was strange, with three people collaborating and the fourth going off in her own direction. The three tried to accommodate her (maybe because she is an international student and we thought there might be a language or culture barrier) but at one point I exchanged glances with one of my compadres as if to say, “What the hell?” The fourth person never seemed to notice her own breaking out of the group norms. She seemed in her own world.

The transcription part was straightforward. A person who hadn’t written on the first “poster” took the pen and did the writing. In an attempt to be inclusive, we discussed what we might draw to illustrate the poem. The poem was about feeling alone at the ocean. All kinds of ideas flew around, from (what I thought) was the corny to (what I thought) was the inane, and lots between. We ended up taking turns adding elements to the picture. The more we added — that is, once we’d broken through the initial affective barrier to committing our visual ideas to paper — the more free we felt to add more. The person who had been “out of it” started to get enthusiastic about drawing. The two others encouraged her (“Oh, you draw well! Draw more.”) so she seemed to get more involved as she added human figures to the picture. After a while, as we each added elements, the illustration started to get hectic. David said cheerfully, “Remember, it’s supposed to be minimalist!” When we kept at it, he turned the paper over to stop us — in a spirit of fun and humor, yet it was also effective.

The products of these we hung on the wall. Then we circulated to look at the work of the other three groups. Everyone approached the illustration facet differently. In one group, each person did a drawing on his/her own separate piece of paper and then tacked it to the “poster.”

Finally, Alex gave us a brief guided meditation: we are surrounded by our loved ones (which brought me to tears). They are all asleep. We get up and go outside and start walking to our favorite place. I ended up in West Virginia. Hput on some music and instructed us to write our own Haiku. By that time, he had communicated to us nonverbally — through experience — that anyone can write a haiku. He’d showed us haikus of people writing in non-native languages, people from a variety of backgrounds. By that time I was hoping he was going to ask us to write our own haiku. I was primed and ready. In fact, I’d just told Sarah who was sitting next to me that we should email each other an original haiku over the weekend.

Some of us went outside to write, others stayed put. I lay on my stomach on the hard floor for a while. I needed to be in a physical position that broke me out of the student identity in order to try to be creative. He told us to write the poem on a nice piece of paper (which he supplied) since we were going to keep it. I found that to be a powerful motivator: this wasn’t just a fleeting exercise. This would be personal history.

This is what I wrote:

Deep, wooded hollow,
Scattered stones from the old hearth —
Just ghosts live there now.

I gotta wrap up here. Here are some final notes from the last class…

He talked about instructional sequences (aka lesson plan formats) using our haiku exercise as an example.

1. Vehicle (stimulus) — in this case the haiku — plus moves (what we do with it).

The reason he used a variety of moves was to make sure that all learning styles were included. The sequence is a critical thing to consider. He was intentionally building us toward a sense of confidence so we could write a poem without anxiety.

It’s important to have a multiplicity of purpose: each lesson working on many levels. You can have multiple and disparate goals. He began with independent research, then moved to brief lecture bits interspersed with group activities and concluding with a solo activity (writing the poem).

2. Threads

Often we teach vertically, going ever deeper. Threads are horizontal, crossing time across classes. Threads are a good idea for these two situations:

a) Sequence: When mastery of first elements are essential for comprehension of later ones, or when cognitive demands are high.

b) Mastery: When a certain skill needs to be repeated many times for fluency, e.g. how he’s taught us the art of transcription.

3. Concept —> Problems (knowledge —> application)

I didn’t take notes about what he meant by this. But I guess it’s about teaching a skill and then getting students to use it. Again, the haiku is an example.

4. Autonomous/discovery verification (individual or group)

5. Jigsaw