Finished with my conversation class. They’re so cute and tiny. Not all of them, but they’re young, and energetic. One student, Young, didn’t show up today- well, if he doesn’t show up, then he gets no attendance points. Several students did not do their homework so I reminded the class that they are graded on the homework and it is part of their final grade.
That scared a few.
Oh well. We did an example telephone conversation at the beginning of class. I was going to originally cover two chapters, but then I had the students read the Request and Offer dialogue out loud. It covered important things, like “tips”, and I noticed many people rushed through the words and took unnatural pauses, and emphasized the wrong words. So I taught them, with chalk and use of the flat line, how to emphasize “oh my god” correctly (you don’t say that phrase flat, guys). We talked about tips, I asked how we could tell about a request or an offer through script (could you, would you, can you, if you don’t mind, I can, I would, etc.)
Then we talked about pauses, and I made them pause and raise their voice for a question. We talked about how to make the word “cat” a question (raising your voice), and we talked about how different inflections mean different things. I used the sentence “I didn’t steal the cookie this morning”, and how by stressing a different word, the sentence has a different meaning. It was a lot of fun. Especially the pauses, they really make someone sound native or not native, I think.
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