Notes

Some things to find out:
Language and the brain.
Teachers and t.a.s that will let me film or at least observe their class.

Language Field Notes-

Beloit College: English frequently spoken in the class. The teacher does not reprimand students for speaking English. Conversations don’t usually occur in the L2, but rather only drilling instead. I have personally had more success with immersion, but it was also a lot more painful.

CLS: Immersions style program. English is not encouraged; actually it is frowned upon.

Today I plan to reserve a camera and begin to approach some select teachers about filming language classes.

Also Reading:
Fieldwork Reading and Writing Research-Bonnie Stone Suntein and Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater Bedford/St.Martin : Boston 2002
Introducing Foreign Language Acquisition-Muriel Saville Troike Cambridge:Cambridge 2006




Help yourself field notes. Nathan J. Edwards.
Four tutors were there. One student, Christian appeared. She needed help with Algebra 2, though none of the tutors knew how to do it. Mary knew some math, and so she told Christian that she would take a look at the book. She fiddled around with it for a while, but still could not figure out the formulas. The student stayed for another 35 minutes trying to figure it out; she said that she would ultimately get help from her teacher again the next morning. Before Christian left, Mary asked her to come back Wednesday after the test and to also bring the formulas. Had I decided to interact more, I wonder if I could have worked with the student successfully. Though I didn’t know Math, but I felt that I had some experience drawing information out of people. Or helping them to put it all together through questioning.

I work for the tutoring program, though I decided to sort of hang back on my first day to develop a sense of what goes on. Of the five people that were in the room, not counting myself, only two interacted with the student. Mary looked at her homework, occasionally checked in with her progress, and so on. The supervisor seemed to have a personal relationship with the student, and as a matter of fact she offered to take her home after the session. I recall meeting the supervisor upon her first semester at Beloit, which couldn’t have been more than a semester of two ago. We talked about transportation for students. Apparently no busses run to and from either the middle or high schools; only available for the elementary schools. City busses stop running at about 6:00pm. This has been effective for the last 2-3 years. Students find it difficult to find rides home in order to stay after school and get help, which they need.

Nathan came in late, after everyone had left. He had been in a meeting. He seemed very grateful that I was volunteering for the position. He gave me a ew procedural notes and thanked me, a bunch more times. He said that he was very grateful to have someone with prior experience helping out. Mary seemed to really care, the other tutors seemed very aloof; I could see why he was happy.