If you’ve ever taught adult ESL students whose first language is Arabic, you already know what’s coming. The b and p sounds. They sound harmless enough. But in practice? Oh gosh. *heavy sigh* And no, it’s not because your students aren’t trying hard enough. This happens because of how Arabic sound systems are structured and […]
Look, we all know why we teach Short I and Long E sounds. Nobody wants their students accidentally talking about going to the “b*tch” when they mean “beach.” I’ve watched students’ faces turn bright red when they realize what they just said. It’s either painful for their classmates or provokes irrepressible laughter, which isn’t helpful.
My long vowel activities were a labor of love for my students. When I first taught a “true beginner” class, it was full of Saudi students. This was a class not shy about speaking, having fun, or making mistakes. Some of them were also pretty vocal about not wanting to continue making the same mistakes
The TH sounds are brutal for so many of our students. You’ve drilled the mouth position a hundred times, modeled it until your tongue has your teeth marks as permanent indentations, and still half the class is saying “sink” instead of “think.” The voiced TH and the unvoiced TH are two of the most difficult
“Bet.” I said it clearly. The students hunched over their papers, writing what they heard. “Pat.” More writing. A few confused glances around the room. “Bit. Pot. Bat.” By the fifth word, the most vocal students in my class were openly checking their neighbors’ papers. These were the same students who complained weekly about their
I’ll never forget the day I realized I was having a real conversation with Shimin. No paper, no pencil, no charades. Just two people talking, and I could understand what he was saying. If you’d asked me three months earlier whether that would ever happen, I honestly wouldn’t have known what to tell you. Pronunciation
“Socks.” That’s what the presentation showed. A nice, innocent picture of socks. “SEKS!” my new Saudi student yelled out, loud and enthusiastic, so proud he knew this word. The classroom went silent. Then his friends started whispering to him in Arabic. His face went from proud to confused to absolutely mortified in about three seconds
I’ll never forget the day one of my Saudi students accused a classmate of “sheating” off of them. Except it wasn’t just the sh/ch mix-up…the vowels were also a mess, so what I heard was closer to “shitting.” Did I immediately demonstrate what a blush looks like? Yes. Yes, darn it, I did. This wasn’t
“And then,” my professor paused dramatically, “the Muslims were playing in the streets! Everywhere! They were playing in the streets all over the country!” Everyone paused their notetaking in confusion. Did they miss something? Why were the Muslims playing right after the tragedy? Well, they weren’t, and I was left trying to whisper to my
I’ll never forget watching Ahmed confidently grab a marker when I handed out the first listening labyrinth of the term. “You want a pencil?” I asked. “No pencil,” he said, waving me off. “I know this.” Three minutes later, his paper was a disaster of crossed-out lines, scribbled corrections, and increasingly frantic marker strokes as
