Pronunciation exercise

My language partner Roa’a was waiting for me when I got to the library, and we went to the group study room which I booked online. I realized I had difficulty differentiating my language partner’ pronunciation of /l/ and /r/, and I guess this is a common problem of  people from Middle East, since I have friends who are also from the same area with my language partner, their pronunciation sounds a little stiff, not as soft as native speakers. Thus I read some parts of the chapter Consonant System in our textbook Teaching Pronunciation again, and prepared some materials about the pronunciation of the two sounds for her.  I made her read a list of vocabularies with these sounds, such as laugh, lake, mall, palace, flight, milk, melt, rock, red, fries, correct, carrot, ferry, and several sentences with these words, such as “My plane arrived late.” “The taxi took the wrong road and we had to walk five long blocks carrying a heavy load.” She said she would notice the differences when she was reading this list, but she wouldn’t pay so much attention of these two sounds when she talks in daily life. And my reminding is a good way for her to have a standard pronunciation of /l/ and /r/.

Then we went on with our pronunciation program packet. I felt the dictation part of this meeting was not easy, because there were some scientific vocabularies which were not often seen in daily communication. She seemed to get them very well, with only a little confusion about a few words, and even if she couldn’t get the meaning of some words, she would take a guess and write the correct words by my pronunciation.

Later when we were doing the phrase level practice, she was a little confused about how to identify the thought group. I explained to her from my point of view, that just as the guidance said, prepositional phrases are one type of thought group, thus if we could recognize the preposition in a sentence, it would help us to identify the thought group in it. She got it and then completed this part smoothly.

When we came to the last part recorded practice, she realized that she hadn’t taken pictures as preparation, so she offered to take a picture of the group study room with me in the picture. As she described, I helped with some specific details. I felt this time she was more at ease and more willing to talk with me. Thus I thought it was a good chance to talk more with her and get to know more about her. When I told her that some of my classmates’ language partners’ oral English was poor, but I spoke highly of her English speaking, she told me that maybe it was because she had spent two years in Texas where her husband got his master degree. And she said they were sponsored by their government, but if she couldn’t pass TOEFL and get admitted by PSU, the government would stop the sponsorship of her, so she had lots of pressure. I encouraged her that she should take it easy because from what I see, her English is good especially her oral English, compared with other IECP students. Then I got a surprising message that there was no speaking part in TOEFL which she would take three months later. I responded that the most difficult part for me in TOEFL was speaking, and all of my friends who had also taken TOEFL had experienced the speaking part. So I was totally confused what kind of English examination she would take. She explained to me that there was TOEFL, TOEFL iBT, and what she would take is TOEFL in which the grammar part is most difficult for her. Then the reason why she didn’t seem care about the pronunciation project was clear now. We also talked a little about her husband and children, and I offered that we could hang out as a way to practice our oral English, then she asked me what kind of movies I liked and maybe we could go to watch movie together someday.