Preparation

Delivery

• Great eye contact across our entire class and good volume appropriate to the size of our classroom (both of which help show confidence and enthusiasm) 🤗 (=10)

• GREAT/Good volume for the size of our classroom (which helps show confidence and enthusiasm) 🤗: when YOU sound interested in your topic, that motivates audience interest as well 😉) (=10)

• X, you spoke more softly than expected of presenters in the US context—next time, pretend you’re speaking to someone in the back of the classroom who is VERY interested in what you’re saying but is a little deaf 😉 (=10)

• Good eye contact across our entire class 🤗

• X, although clearly you knew your content/although this got better later, at first/for the second half of your presentation/although you did look out at the room (vs. only at your slides or at the floor/ceiling)/occasionally you made good eye contact with your audience, you read from your slides/looked at your notes quite a bit/me a LOT during your presentation/ you made eye contact as far as I could tell only with me during your presentation, making eye contact with your audience only occasionally/and when you did make eye contact, you made eye contact mostly with X's vs. Y's side of our classroom (and sometimes/often even stared at the floor! 🤭). To improve next time you present, MINIMIZE READING FROM YOUR SLIDES/NOTES as much as possible/remember that although admittedly your teacher IS the person grading you, they are NOT your only audience member 😉. Instead, mentally break your presentation room into thirds at the beginning and intentionally look from one third to another to assess audience understanding. (If you feel too nervous to look audience members directly in the eye, look at their foreheads instead. They won’t notice the difference and will feel good that (they think! 😉) you’ve made eye contact with them. Make sense? (=9)

• X, you read from your slides basically your entire presentation, making close to zero eye contact with your audience 😭. To improve next time you present, MINIMIZE READING FROM YOUR SLIDES/NOTES as much as possible. Instead, mentally break your presentation room into thirds at the beginning of your presentation and intentionally look from one third to another to assess audience understanding. (If you feel too nervous to look audience members directly in the eye, look at their foreheads instead—they won’t notice the difference and will feel good that (they think! 😉) you’ve made eye contact with them. Make sense? (=7)

• Good/Generally good supporting gestures 😍

  • Good use of clarifying gestures (e.g., pointing to the relevant part of your slide, pointing out what's on the x-axis and y-axis, showing the same number of fingers as you’re saying, moving your hand from up to down, etc.)

  • Mostly good supporting gestures, but try to avoid meaningless gestures like brushing your hair back 😉

    • I can see you were occasionally trying to use good gestures, but next time you present, focus on REDUCING YOUR NUMBER OF GESTURES by USING ONLY GESTURES THAT CLEARLY SUPPORT/EMPHASIZE YOUR POINT (e.g., avoid holding your hands behind your back/putting your hands in your pocket unless that action SUPPORTS what you're saying and avoid distracting your audience by brushing your hair back 😉). Make sense?

    • Generally good supporting gestures, but in the future, I recommend videorecording yourself when you practice your presentation and reviewing your video to verify that you’re not wringing your hands/rocking back and forth or using other body language/meaningless gestures that communicate to your audience that you lack confidence, since they won’t know from that if you’re just nervous about PRESENTING or not confident about your IDEAS. Make sense? (See https://youtu.be/Yh9B6mHqvug?si=zmBy3-RPDH95X2k9 for more info 😉) [Monica, need to confirm this video addresses ALL meaningless gestures!|

• Be careful not to stand in front of your slides blocking audience members' ability to read them 😉

• X it was clear from your tone of voice that you care about your topic, but you used almost zero supporting gestures 🤭 (See this helpful video about how presenters can use gestures and body language to keep their audience engaged: https://youtu.be/Yh9B6mHqvug?si=2fbwCLAj1N6YPnng)

• Also, maybe because you were nervous, you spoke a little more quickly than is ideal for helping an audience unfamiliar with your content to follow your presentation, so whenever you practice presentations, practice speaking 10% more slowly than for normal conversation. Make sense? 

• You are clearly passionate about your topic (and have a great sense of humor) 🤩

• X, you tend to default to fairly flat (monotone) English intonation (i.e., your intonation range tends to be quite narrow), suggesting to listeners that (1) you think your topic is boring (so characteristically triggering them to feel bored also: “If YOU don’t think your topic is interesting, why should we?”)—check out this excellent video on "How to sound interesting in English" at https://youtu.be/m35l59tMwk8?si=JJ-NlLcJVONMqFXY

• GREAT job not allowing X's late arrival to interrupt your focus. Impressive!!! 🤩

• Great job gracefully handling your audience being slow to start asking questions during Q&A 😍

Visual Design

• BEAUTIFUL supporting slides overall and OUTSTANDING reference list slide!!! 😍

• GREAT match of slide background to your topic 🤗

• Good use of the clicker 🤗

• If "a picture is worth a thousand words" 😉, what supporting images can you use to attract audience interest and clearly communicate your point? (=9)

  • X, it was sometimes hard to understand how some of your slides supported your points 🤔

• Pay attention to carefully copyediting your PPT (re: misspelling of "transparency" as "transperancy" on "Empower civil society" slide 😉) (=10)

  • Pay attention to carefully copyediting your PPT (cf. misspelling of "improvement" on two of your slides, making your slides look prepared in a hurry, which can reduce audience trust in what you say—make sense?) (=9)

• Too much text on thesis statement slide—check out this video showing how this impacts listener understanding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwpi1Lm6dFo&t=153s (=9)

  • In addition, your "eFuel-Today" slide was pretty complicated and included unreadably tiny text—check out this video showing how this impacts listener understanding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwpi1Lm6dFo&t=153s (=9)

  • Remember to use PPT’s “appear” animation to guide your audience about what they should read when so instead of your PPT COMPETING with what you’re saying, it SUPPORTS what you’re saying (Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwpi1Lm6dFo&t=153s to learn how this impacts audience understanding 😭😭😭)  (=9)

• Mostly good slides except a few for no apparent reason included parallel bullet points displayed using different font sizes 🤔

• Your PPT would have been stronger if it had included a conclusion slide (cf. our ESL 112 Example Research Paper Presentation at https://canvas.illinois.edu/courses/44566/files/12512247?module_item_id=3360995) 😉 (=9)

Formatting & Structure

• = 4/5 minutes, 30 seconds (=10)

• Presentation ran longer than 6 minutes 🤭—Work on time management by (1) practicing ahead of time so you KNOW how long your presentation is likely to take and/or (2) planning ahead of time WHAT to cut if needed—make sense? (=8)

• Presentation ran shorter than 4 minutes 😭—next time you present, practice ahead of time so you know how long your presentation is likely to take and plan additional content/examples you can (1) cut if time is running short or (2) usefully (!) add if you finish with extra time left at the end. Make sense? (=7)

Clarity of Language

• Very clear pronunciation 🤩 (=5)

• Overall, clear pronunciation, but practice accurately pronouncing the following first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts (e.g., https://youglish.com/pronounce/deforestation/english/us?) every day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you: "university"—"accept" (which SHOULD be pronounced like "aksept" but was instead pronounced as "assept" 🤭)—"polluted" (sounded like "puted" 🤭)—"replace" (pronounced without "l")—the "aw" in "laws"— the first "i" in "eliminate"—"algorithm" vs. "algorithmic"—"academic" (mispronounced 3 times 🤭)(=4)

  • Overall, clear pronunciation, but practice accurately pronouncing the word "contamination" first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts (e.g., https://youglish.com/pronounce/deforestation/english/us?) every day until its standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you (=4 if repeated keyword)

  • Overall, clear pronunciation, but practice accurately distinguishing the words "pool" vs. "pull" first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts (e.g., https://youglish.com/pronounce/pool/english/us?) every day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you (See also https://youtu.be/c9V4JqRhPdo?si=WbgyZScLFFWyM4YB)

• X, sometimes your speech was choppy/broken vs. smooth/fluent because you spoke in very short thought groups (sometimes even just one word!), i.e., you sometimes paused in the MIDDLE of a grammatical phrase instead of BETWEEN phrases, damaging listeners’ ability to build cumulative understanding of your ideas! (cf. "You don't need to . . .move it. . . manually"). Remember fluency is NEARLY ALWAYS more helpful than perfect grammar for facilitating listener understanding 😉. Practice developing spontaneous spoken fluency using the exercise at https://www.excelinenglish.org/speaking/fluency/432

• Also, you accidentally mispronounced "13" so it sounded like "30". Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NebSxrf5B9E and/or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXIz_2nad7s to learn the REAL difference in how Americans pronounce “-teen” vs. “-ty” numbers (It's almost certainly NOT what you think! 😉)

Listener Participation

• EXCELLENT answers to audience questions! 😍

• X, remember our "ESL 112 Oral Presentation Prompt & Rubric" states that "To receive full credit for the “Listener Participation” category of this assignment, over our three presentation days you must ask your classmates at least TWO thoughtful questions relevant to their presentations"? I'm therefore afraid that because you didn't ask ANY questions to your classmates about their presentations, I can't give you any credit under this category 😭

  • X, remember our "ESL 112 Oral Presentation Prompt & Rubric" states that "To receive full credit for the “Listener Participation” category of this assignment, over our three presentation days you must ask your classmates at least TWO thoughtful questions relevant to their presentations"? I'm therefore afraid that because you asked only one question to your classmates about their presentations, I can only give you half credit under this category 😭 (=3)

• Continue to work on improving your English listening (so you can understand even in high-stress situations such as when presenting!), since you apparently struggled to understand not only Amy's (Xingyi's) but also Samik's question (=4)

• X, it's VERY important you answer audience questions respectfully and politely, because if you don't EVERYONE in the room will get the (mistaken, I assume!) impression that you are a DISRESPECTFUL/RUDE PERSON 😳—make sense?  (=3)

• Hmmmm. . . .according to our assignment guidelines, your Microteaching #1 lesson should be on a field-specific topic for the course (1) you are currently teaching or (2) plan to teach in the future. I'd be happy to change your grade for this criterion if you can explain to me how your (very interesting!) lesson (definitely very well-matched to your classmates' needs and therefore likely interests!) does indeed meet this assignment requirement, but right now, I'm confused how your lesson relates at all to teaching your field of computer science 🤔 (=13)

• OUTSTANDING reflection!!! 😍 (And I'm glad you enjoy teaching—based on my observation of you this semester, I am VERY confident you can succeed at making math fun for students!!!)

• Excellent reflection! 😍 (Definitely it is possible that math instructors may look more often at the screen compared to instructors in other fields because no one can remember entire equations and it's important to avoid copying wrong variables—but since eye contact IS very important for connecting with students and checking if they understand, I think you're right that this is still something you should work on. In fact, because when teaching math you MUST look at the screen so often, probably it is particularly important for you vs. other instructors to avoid looking at the screen at any UNNECESSARY time—make sense? 🤔) 

• Good reflection! 🤗

• Very thoughtfully analyzed—outstanding!

• You forgot in your transcription to indicate pauses with (/) or to include filler sounds 😉

• Your responses to our reflection questions could have been further developed (e.g., answering ALL questions asked and providing specific examples to explain WHY you provided the answer you did 😉)

• Where is your required self-reflection? ☹️

• Still TBD 😉

• X, you are very clearly a born teacher and, as mentioned during our meetings, I hope very much that wherever your career takes you, your work always includes some form of teaching (so the world does not lose out on the benefit of your obvious gift!!!) 

Introduction (Contextualization + Hook):

• Great job beginning with a warm-up question showing how your topic relates to everyday life: “How many of you like to eat cereal for breakfast?” (+ PERSONAL response to raised hands “I love breakfast cereal, too”)

  • GREAT warm-up question that was highly motivating, triggering conversation and even laughter 🤩

  • Great job using an introductory show of hands to trigger audience interest in your topic 😍

  • How can you contextualize FOR THESE SPECIFIC LISTENERS WHY today’s topic is important? (Check out WIRED’s “5 Levels Video Series” for ideas 🤗) 

• Good use of an interactive polling technology to check where students are starting from in terms of knowledge and to engage students/arouse interest

• Great introduction to arouse our curiosity

  • GREAT job motivating student curiosity by X and then asking the rhetorical question "Y" 😍 

• Great introduction (including lesson agenda/outline of your presentation)

  • Will listeners find your lesson/presentation easier to follow if you provide them a big-picture “roadmap” to WHAT you’re going to talk about (e.g., outline/agenda) before going into the details? 

• Great introduction/contextualization of yourself and your course

  • Contextual info was long 

Tailoring communication to audience

• Great planning in light of your audience

• Great job choosing a math topic your classmates will understand AND enjoy—wow!!!

  • Unfortunately, because apparently most classmates lacked even basic familiarity with your topic, they apparently also lacked confidence that they could ask intelligent questions related to it, so they were hesitant to ask anything at all—if at all possible, in your final microteaching it would be helpful if you could teach a topic within your field that is more accessible for a general audience—make sense? 

  • X, why did you choose the topic of introducing a course syllabus, given this topic is basically guaranteed boring your classmates? Make a habit of (1) identifying exactly HOW the content you’re presenting can benefit your audience (whether classmates, conference attendees, or whomever) and (2) MAKING sure you’re presenting that content as clearly/interestingly as possible in order to help your audience truly learn/benefit from it—make sense? 

• GREAT job setting up your topic with a (locally relevant) computational problem (i.e., “How do we find the shortest route between Chicago and NYC?”)

• OUTSTANDING job connecting the content of your presentation to your SPECIFIC audience—wow!!! (“China is one of the largest donors but not represented because it’s not an OECD country” + “Interestingly, India is a major recipient because has a huge economy” + “Sub-Saharan Africa”

• GREAT job speaking to students in a way that helps them SEE themselves as future construction managers—wow!!! (“We are construction managers”)

• “As YOU can see”

• Good job helping your audience connect to you as a PERSON (vs. as merely an INFORMATION channel)—"my country, X"

• Good job making your presentation interesting, e.g., by joking that you’ve specially made the die to land in your favor

• I’m certain your students enjoy you as a teacher! 😉 

• GREAT job explaining WHY what you’re teaching today matters (throughout EVERY part of your explanation, e.g., “XX”)

• GREAT job connecting lesson/graph to what students already know (e.g., home as our “start state”)

• Interesting anecdote re: why sudden increase in GPU prices

• Good easy-to-understand explanations

• Good job pointing out common warning signs that our calculation is likely wrong

• What technical terms will THESE LISTENERS need you to define the first time you use them to help them follow what you’re saying/avoid them feeling lost? (Check out WIRED’s “5 Levels Video Series” for how you can tailor your definitions to be easily understandable to SPECIFIC audiences 😉) (I’m not sure, but given your target audience, on the FIRST day of class, would you need first to review the definition of “function” before describing the specifics of a RECURSIVE/FACTORIAL function?—but good job reviewing the definition of “factorial”) 

• How can you teach your content at a level THESE SPECIFIC LISTENERS will find (1) interesting and (2) clear and easy to learn from? (Check out WIRED’s “5 Levels Video Series” for ideas 🤗)

• Make a habit of (1) identifying exactly HOW the content you’re presenting can benefit your audience (whether classmates, conference attendees, or whomever) and (2) MAKING sure you’re presenting that content as clearly/interestingly as possible in order to help your audience truly learn/benefit from it—make sense? (If you focus your attention on communicating your content as best as you can to help your audience, you’ll have much less time to worry about whether or not you’re “qualified enough” or whether or not you’re the “best person” to present your content/do your job or other confidence-destroying thoughts! In reality, it very, very, very rarely matters whether you’re the best person to be doing a job or not, because in fact, you’re the only person available to share information your students/audience need. . . .that is, if you don’t share this information with your students/audience, they’re likely never to get it! So focus your attention on figuring out and practicing how to present the valuable information you offer as clearly/interestingly as you can figure out how to do it, in order to help your audience truly learn it. Make sense?)

• Be careful not to use the phrase "As we all know" (used twice) unless you are very confident everyone really DOES know to avoid shaming those who don't know. Make sense? (After all, one of the students' questions made clear that not everyone DID know that in all the examples entropy is higher than zero—though you did handle this question gracefully!)

Real-life examples

• GREAT job connecting your topic to our daily lives (i.e., a potential cancer diagnosis) but also expressing hope this is a situation we’ll never have to deal with (thereby showing you want your students' good) OR “I’m sure you all have heard about natural immunization by now”

• GREAT job connecting your lesson to real life (i.e., today is last class so flight plans for winter break?)

• FANTASTIC use of instructional analogies to facilitate learning 🤗 (I found your comparison of the chair to RAM and X to long-term memory VERY helpful in clarifying their difference) 

• Great job using real student example of X saying that the equality sign matches the logic required while also avoiding shaming him by mentioning in front of the whole class what you had told him individually that, in fact, technically it's not correct syntax 😍 

• Great job using your mobile phone as a visual aid to SHOW (vs. merely TELL) students what you’re talking about

  • Excellent use of an object lesson to demonstrate this piece of art really is very simple (since you and a student recreated it in less than 60 seconds!) 🤗

Conclusion

• Great conclusion!

• Good concluding summary of your lesson

• Great use of the "exit ticket" strategy: "Chat for 3 minutes and write down one point to summarize this lecture" 

• Great structuring of your lesson to let students know IMMEDIATELY where you’ll be going in today’s presentation but would have been even better if had closed with a concluding review of today’s key points—make sense? 

• Hmmmm. . . .“Thank you for coming” is a common way to end a presentation, but it’s an unusual way to end a class—make sense? 

Team teaching

• Great job introducing in a joking manner WHY you and X had opted to teach his field of art vs. your field of economics 😂 

• Great job introducing topic to SHOW that this is YOUR lesson, not just X's 😍

• You two did a GREAT job of dividing between yourselves the different aspects of teaching your lesson! (e.g., X) 

• Great job BOTH interrupting X's teaching to point out the answer on the screen was wrong in order to minimize student confusion, yet also avoiding implying he was to blame for the error—wow!!! 😍 

  • When your coteacher has provided instructions for an activity, try to PRIVATELY suggest while students are working on something whatever changes you recommend so ideally THEY can revise their instructions (vs. making them lose face by YOU publicly CONTRADICTING their instructions—make sense? 😉) (e.g., X)

  • When team teaching, PRIVATELY discuss with your coteacher any timing/plan changes you recommend BEFORE you publicly announce these changes to students (e.g., while students are working on something else). Then it will be clear to students that you two really are teaching as a team—make sense? (cf. X) 

  • Be careful when co-teaching/co-presenting not to immediately echo or clarify what your co-teacher/co-presenter has just said to avoid implying they have communicated unclearly (unless you see CLEAR evidence the audience is confused, of course! 😉) 

• GREAT job immediately moving for the harder transportation problem to support the group of students that had struggled before with the earlier problem (especially wise since X had interacted with this group earlier but sometimes a different teacher explaining the same information in a different way enables a "light bulb moment" where suddenly students understand)

• Well-organized, easy-to-follow lesson/presentation with smooth transitions

• Consider joining one of the Champaign-Urbana Toastmasters' clubs to continue building the presentation/teaching/leadership skills required by your dream job

Visual aids

• Practice lecture in actual location ahead of time if possible (e.g., to verify all technology is working)

• If "a picture is worth a thousand words" 😉, what supporting images can you use (e.g., from Storyblocks) to attract student interest and best support their learning? 

• OUTSTANDING PPT design to facilitate student learning—students were REALLY interacting during the quiz!!! 😍

• GREAT use of appropriate animations! 😍

  • Using PPT's "appear" animation especially to break up complex slide content into smaller chunks can make a big difference in helping students follow your explanation (e.g., animating each element of each formula to appear AS YOU DISCUSS IT) 🤔  (cf., It was a little confusing when your lesson introduction question "Why do these processes happen?" didn't match that PPT slide's header question "Can these processes spontaneously be reversed?" Also, PPT's "appear" animation would have helped listeners follow the logic of your probability slide when transitioning from discussion of the two dots to four balls—make sense?)(Check out this video showing how appropriate/inappropriate use of PPT animation impacts brain processing 🤗) 

  • Remember to use PPT’s “appear” and fade animations to guide your audience about what they should read when so instead of your PPT COMPETING with what you’re saying, it SUPPORTS what you’re saying (Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwpi1Lm6dFo&t=153s to learn how this impacts audience understanding 😭😭😭)

  • Remember to use PPT’s “appear” animation to guide your audience about what they should read when so instead of your PPT COMPETING with what you’re saying, it SUPPORTS what you’re saying (Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwpi1Lm6dFo&t=153s to learn how this impacts audience understanding 😭😭😭)

• Great use of the clicker 🤗

• Maybe put each example on a new slide? (or in a table with 4 rows?)

• If appropriate according to the norms of your field, including more color on your slides could help attract audience interest 

• FAR more text on your slides than your audience could read while at the same time listening to you , especially without use of PowerPoint’s “appear” animation to guide your audience on WHAT to read WHEN 😭 (Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwpi1Lm6dFo&t=153s to learn how this impacts audience understanding 😭😭😭) (=9 if too much text only on 1 slide, =8 if consistently too much text, =7 if too much text + no use of animations)

• Too much text on your "Context" slide than your audience could read while at the same time listening to you 😭

• Some of the words on your "X" slide were too small for me to read from the back of our (not very big!) classroom 😕

• Inconsistent capitalization on the first content slide of your PowerPoint (making your slide look thrown together in a hurry, which can reduce audience trust in what you say—make sense?)

• Pay attention to carefully copyediting your PPT (cf. misspelling of "statistics" as "statics" on probability slide, making your slides look prepared in a hurry, which can reduce audience trust in what you say—make sense?) OR Students would have been able to accomplish the "difficult math problem" task more quickly if that slide had ORIGINALLY included the correct answer, right? 😝) (=9 for 2+ errors)

  • Students would have been able to accomplish the "difficult math problem" task more quickly if that slide had ORIGINALLY included the correct answer, right? 😝 

• GREAT color-coding of key words to draw your audience's attention to your key points! 😍

  • Generally, you had great contrast between your font color and slide background color, but for your title slide, it was very difficult to read your name in red on a black background from the back of the room (Learn how the accessibility of your PPT color contrasts at https://www.dvc.edu/faculty-staff/online-accessibility/accessibility-goal-of-the-week/april-26-powerpoint-checking-color-contrast.html) (Monica, need to check if this is the best resource to link for this!!!

• (Consider turning down the lights if needed to make your PowerPoint easy for the audience to read)

• Good use of the chalkboard to build and support students’ understanding of your content 🙂

• Great job WRITING on the whiteboard (vs. just speaking) how many molecules are in the air to help your students immediately grasp this large and complex number 😍

• Great job using video to SHOW (vs. merely TELL) students what you’re talking about

• Good use of video to help us learn in DIFFERENT ways    

• EXCELLENT choice of videos not only to make your lesson interesting but also to demonstrate what you were teaching—wow!!!

• Great explanatory pics of XXX

• GREAT supporting images in PPT to help us understand what you’re teaching

• GREAT swings pic (but would have been helpful if you had also included a pic of books on a table—make sense?)

Volume

• Great eye contact across our entire class and good volume appropriate to the size of our classroom (both of which help show confidence and enthusiasm) 🤗

• GREAT/Good volume for the size of our classroom (which helps show confidence and enthusiasm) 🤗: when YOU sound interested in your topic, that motivates audience interest as well 😉)

• X, you tend to speak more softly than students expect of their teachers in the US context (e.g., you spoke the names of possible software that can be used very quickly and softly, even though these different pieces of software were highly likely to be unfamiliar to your students) 

• X, you tend to speak much more softly than students expect of their teachers in the US context/you spoke so quietly that I’m afraid at many points I found it difficult to catch what you were saying. This could lead to student behavior problems because American students tend to associate soft speech with lack of confidence—and to assume lack of CONFIDENCE is because of lack of COMPETENCE. That is, American students are likely to think “If she doesn’t believe she’s qualified to teach, why should I think so!?! Such students may also wonder “Is she not confident because she doesn’t know her field or because she doesn’t know how to teach? — and because they don’t know the answer to that question, they tend not to trust even the content you’re teaching! (FYI: This can severely impact American student politeness toward you because in U.S. culture — unlike many Asian cultures — respect is viewed as something that must be earned and most definitely not something given merely because you happen to have a particular job position. Thus, if students think based on your apparent lack of confidence that you yourself don’t believe you’re competent enough in your field to teach them, they will feel angry that they’re in/paying for your class. . . .and they will probably not hide these feelings! ☹  Therefore, work hard to “fake it till you make it” in terms appearing confident by practicing CONSISTENTLY speaking appropriately loudly for the American context using Fluency Buildup or 4/3/2 in a large classroom (Pretend you’re speaking to someone in the back of the classroom who is VERY interested in what you’re saying but is a little deaf ☺)

• X, your volume tended to drop at the end of phrases (perhaps because you were nervous or because you’re using a less than optimal breathing technique, so you ran out of breath at the end of phrases?) This could lead to student behavior problems because American students tend to associate soft speech with lack of confidence—and to assume lack of CONFIDENCE is because of lack of COMPETENCE. That is, American students are likely to think “If he doesn’t believe he’s qualified to teach, why should I think so!?! Such students may also wonder “Is he not confident because he doesn’t know his field or because he doesn’t know how to teach? — and because they don’t know the answer to that question, they can tend not to trust even the content you’re teaching! (FYI: This can severely impact American student politeness toward you because in U.S. culture — unlike many Asian cultures — respect is viewed as something that must be earned and most definitely not something given merely because you happen to have a particular job position. Thus, if students think based on your apparent lack of confidence that you yourself don’t believe you’re competent enough in your field to teach them, they will feel angry that they’re in/paying for your class. . . .and they will probably not hide these feelings! ☹  Therefore, in addition to practicing based on the enunciation videos mentioned earlier, work hard to “fake it till you make it” in terms appearing confident by practicing CONSISTENTLY speaking appropriately loudly for the American context using Fluency Buildup or 4/3/2 in a large classroom (Pretend you’re speaking to someone in the back of the classroom who is VERY interested in what you’re saying but is a little deaf ☺  

• X, you spoke more softly than expected of presenters in the US context—next time, pretend you’re speaking to someone in the back of the classroom who is VERY interested in what you’re saying but is a little deaf 😉

Eye contact

• X, your eye contact in this video is AMAZING!!! Often, eye contact in the video format is much harder than in F2F/live speaking because it’s not natural to make eye contact with a videocamera—I’m SO impressed!!!

• GREAT eye contact across our entire class!

• Good eye contact and good volume appropriate to the size of our classroom (both of which help show confidence and enthusiasm) 

• You did a good job of looking at us as much as you could (given how much you had to navigate the computer)

• Good eye contact (and this time NOT mostly with me as the teacher but instead with everyone in the class—MUCH better!!!)

• X, you did MUCH better at making eye contact with the camera (which admittedly is an unnatural so very hard task!) at the end of your video than at the beginning, but at the beginning you made VERY little eye contact with the camera. Be sure to work on this because colleagues and clients/customers can interpret lack of eye contact as indicating lack of confidence—and then possibly wonder if you lack CONFIDENCE because, in fact, you lack COMPETENCE?!? 😬 Make sense? (=5)

• At the beginning, you looked a lot at the floor/computer vs. your audience but this improved later

• X, although clearly you knew your content/although this got better later, at first/for the second half of your presentation/occasionally you made good eye contact with your audience, you read from your slides/looked at your notes quite a bit/me a LOT during your presentation, making eye contact with your audience only occasionally/and when you did make eye contact, you made eye contact mostly with X's vs. Y's side of our classroom (and sometimes/often even stared at the floor! 🤭). To improve next time you present, MINIMIZE READING FROM YOUR SLIDES/NOTES as much as possible/remember that although admittedly your teacher IS the person grading you, they are NOT your only audience member 😉. Instead, mentally break your presentation room into thirds at the beginning of your presentation and intentionally look from one third to another to assess audience understanding. (If you feel too nervous to look audience members directly in the eye, look at their foreheads instead—they won’t notice the difference and will feel good that (they think! 😉) you’ve made eye contact with them. Make sense? (=9)

• X, you looked mostly at your slides vs. your audience. This could hurt you during conference presentations or interviews, etc., because Americans tend to associate lack of eye contact with lack of confidence—and to assume lack of CONFIDENCE is because of lack of COMPETENCE. That is, Americans are likely to think “If he doesn’t believe he’s qualified to _____, why should I think so!?! Therefore, work hard to “fake it till you make it” by mentally breaking conference rooms/classrooms into thirds at the beginning of your presentation/lesson and intentionally look from one third to another to check if your audience is following the ideas you're sharing. (If you feel too nervous to look your audience directly in the eye, look at their foreheads instead—they won’t notice the difference and will feel good that (they think! 😉) you’ve made eye contact with them—make sense?

• You looked mostly at your computer/slides vs. your audience. To improve your eye contact, mentally break our classroom into thirds at the beginning of your lesson and intentionally look from one third to another to assess student' understanding. (If you feel too nervous to look your students directly in the eye, look at their foreheads instead—they won’t notice the difference and will feel good that (they think! 😉) you’ve made eye contact with them—make sense?

• You looked a LOT at your slides, notes, computer, the floor (or ceiling), and at me vs. your audience, substantially reducing your apparent confidence/enthusiasm (Although admittedly I am the person grading you, I'm not your only student/not the only member of your audience😉) To improve your eye contact, mentally break our classroom into thirds at the beginning of your lesson and intentionally look from one third to another to assess student understanding. (If you feel too nervous to look your students directly in the eye, look at their foreheads instead—they won’t notice the difference and will feel good that (they think! 😉) you’ve made eye contact with them—make sense?

• You made basically zero eye contact with your audience 😭

• X, you read from your slides basically your entire presentation, making close to zero eye contact with your audience 😭. To improve next time you present, MINIMIZE READING FROM YOUR SLIDES/NOTES as much as possible. Instead, mentally break your presentation room into thirds at the beginning of your presentation and intentionally look from one third to another to assess audience understanding. (If you feel too nervous to look audience members directly in the eye, look at their foreheads instead—they won’t notice the difference and will feel good that (they think! 😉) you’ve made eye contact with them. Make sense? 

• Although admittedly I AM the person grading you, I was not your only student for this lesson, right? You did better at some times than others about this—and DEFINITELY your eye contact was better than some of your classmates 😉—but I still recommend working on maintaining comparable eye contact across ALL your students.  Make sense? 

• (Also, if someone asks a question, be sure when you answer to make eye contact primarily with them vs. other audience members 😉) 

  • Made eye contact with me (as the teacher grading you?) vs. student who asked a question

• X, although if you look at the back wall IMMEDIATELY above your students’ heads, they will generally feel you are making eye contact, if you look any higher on the wall, they will easily recognize you’re NOT making eye contact—make sense? (Another alternative that can appear more convincingly as eye contact is looking at your audience members’ foreheads)

• (Also, avoid wearing a baseball cap while presenting, as this makes it hard for audience members to see your eyes 😉)

Facial expressions/gestures:

• GREAT supporting gestures—wow!!!

• GREAT supporting gestures and facial expressions!!! (Your teaching style is interactive and friendly, suggesting you actually CARE about your students—which undoubtedly increases how confident/comfortable they'll feel about being able to learn from you!!! 😍) 

• Good use of clarifying gestures (e.g., pointing to the relevant part of your slide, showing the same number of fingers as you’re saying, moving your hand from up to down, etc.)

• X, generally good eye contact (even though making eye contact via video is unnatural and therefore hard to do!), but your face/voice/gestures didn’t sound like you were INTERESTED in your topic—which can make your audience bored over time: “If YOU don’t think your topic is interesting, why should we?” What gestures/facial expressions could you add to support and/or emphasize your points? (=4)

• If your facial expressions/supporting gestures suggest YOU are not interested in your topic, WHY should your audience be interested? (Check out this helpful video from Accent’s Way English with Hadar)

• In the future, I recommend videorecording and reviewing to check that you’re not wringing your hands or using other body language communicating to your audience that you lack confidence since they won’t know from that if you’re just nervous about PRESENTING or not confident about your IDEAS (See https://youtu.be/Yh9B6mHqvug?si=zmBy3-RPDH95X2k9 for more info 😉)

• I can see you were occasionally trying to use good gestures, but next time you present, focus on REDUCING YOUR NUMBER OF GESTURES by USING ONLY GESTURES THAT CLEARLY SUPPORT/EMPHASIZE YOUR POINT (e.g., avoid holding your hands behind your back/putting your hands in your pocket unless that action actually SUPPORTS what you're saying and avoid distracting your audience by brushing your hair out of the way😉). Make sense?

• Good job using gestures since this can help show enthusiasm, but because some of your gestures seemed not to match what you were saying, maybe videorecord yourself to make sure you’re not OVERdoing it

• Good supportive gestures (but FYI: in the American context, listeners will have NO idea what your nodding from side to side [vs. front to back] means, so only AFTER you’ve developed more spoken fluency, this may be something you want to use video to work on reducing)

• At first your hands were in your pockets and throughout you rocked back and forth while presenting, which made you look nervous 😉

Time management

• PERFECT control of the time—wow!!!

• Good time management (stayed within the time limit)

• Good time management: “We’ll look at this IF we have time later”

• Presentation ran longer than 6 minutes 🤭—Work on time management by (1) practicing ahead of time so you KNOW how long your presentation is likely to take and/or (2) planning ahead of time WHAT to cut if needed—make sense? 

• Work on time management by practicing ahead of time so you know how long your presentation is likely to take so you can add additional content/examples, if needed, to fill the assigned timeslot—make sense?

• If you don’t have time to practice your presentation ahead of time, what additional content/examples/practice can you (1) cut if time is running short or (2) usefully (!) add if you finish with extra time left at the end? 

Handling the unexpected

• GREAT job being able to adjust as needed on the spot when it looked at first like X would be absent 😮

• Good job being able to adjust on the spot to having forgotten to print GPU pros & cons 

  • Great job humanizing yourself as teacher by honestly admitting where your lesson could have been strengthened: "It's totally okay if you didn't get the transportation problem—it's our fault for including it"

  • GREAT job gracefully handling X pointing out the answer on the "Difficult math problem" slide is wrong (even later joking about it, demonstrating you're able to handle mistakes without losing your confidence—outstanding!!!) 

• GREAT job handling not being able to directly navigate to the Ramen Ratings page

• Very good handling of uncertainty regarding how to raise the screen to access the chalkboard

• Great job not allowing student’s phone going off to interrupt your focus/teaching

• GREAT job handling the disappointment of not having time for the last game 😥 

• Good job handling gracefully the lesson being more difficult for your students than you'd anticipated (i.e., joking that "I realize this lesson was a little too difficult for 30 minutes, so now we have a more difficult problem for you") 

  • AMAZING job gracefully handling the unexpected situation that, like ChatGPT, most students did not immediately recognize "I love this fucking difficult exam so much" as sarcastic (I don't think I could have recovered from this unexpected situation as effectively as you did without shaming students for giving the wrong answer. WOW!!!—though X DID recognize this was actually a negative comment, so maybe you could have had her explain how she recognized this to teach the others?) 

ASKING questions

• Great use of questions to keep students engaged—wow!!! (e.g., "X" + asking at "reversibility" slide if students have any questions)

• Good job checking we understand the technical term “bridge”

• Great job asking for student response by asking whether or not “80” should be included

• Great job asking for example of an “upper bound”

• Good job asking questions to the audience regarding previous classes taken/how to solve block chain problem

• Great request for additional ideas 

• Good use of comprehension check “Does this make sense?”

• GREAT comprehension check: “Any questions so far?”

• GREAT job motivating audience curiosity by asking a question "What does 35% mean?" as well as just through your clear concern about your topic

• GREAT job motivating student curiosity by explaining sentiment analysis is relatively easy because it's a binary task and then asking the rhetorical question "But can ChatGPT do multilevel classification? Let's see. . . ." 😍 

  • GREAT job starting your presentation with a question, but try also to involve your audience THROUGHOUT your presentation/lesson via (1) comprehension checks to verify we’re successfully following what you’ve taught so far and (2) other questions that motivate students to interact with you and/or one another about your content—make sense?

• OUTSTANDING teaching strategy of asking US to give the “train < plane” equation on the basis of your “man < train” step

• What questions can you ask to help listeners actively engage (vs. passively absorb) what you are teaching/presenting so they can (1) recognize gaps in their understanding and (2) best remember your content?

  • Check out WIRED’s “5 Levels Video Series” for ideas 🤗 (for additional ideas, check out the University of Minnesota's "Common Questions for International TAs" and the University of Michigan's "Verbal Stratagems") 

• Good job ASKING questions while teaching, but be careful also to provide enough wait time to encourage students to actually RESPOND. (Also, feel free to call on students whom you know—or suspect—know the answer, e.g., because you overheard them or someone else in their small discussion group say the answer)—make sense?

• Good job asking for questions at the end, but try also to involve your audience earlier via (1) comprehension checks to verify we’re successfully following what you’ve taught so far and (2) other questions that motivate students to interact with you and/or one another about your content—make sense? 

• Why didn’t you ask if students had questions about what you presented?

• Your slides ask at the end "Any questionS?" but your lesson plan asks "Any question_?" Because teachers commonly use this phrase to invite student questions, it's important to get right (or you might accidentally constantly remind your students you still need to work on English grammar! 😳) Based on the YouGlish examples' context linked above, which phrasing is preferred? Can you figure out grammatically WHY by Googling or using ChatGPT or. . . .? 😉) 

  • Practice realistic teaching scenarios where you first ask “Any questions?” and only then ask “Any OTHER questions?” 😉—make sense? 

  • Although it is correct to ask the first time “Any questions?,” after that the correct form is “Any MORE questions?” or “Any ADDITIONAL questions?”—make sense? (Otherwise, it will sound to your students that you don’t consider the first student question a REAL question 😉) 

• Great handling of no one volunteering a question

• Unfortunately, because apparently most classmates lacked even basic familiarity with your topic, they apparently also lacked confidence that they could ask intelligent questions related to it, so they were hesitant to ask anything at all—if at all possible, in your final microteaching it would be helpful if you could teach a topic within your field that is more accessible for a general audience—make sense? 

ANSWERING questions

• Great job predicting a probable student question 

• Great responses to audience questions 🤩 

• Great response to almost-accurate answer: “Very close”

• Great idiomatic response to students' progress: "So far so good" 

• Great job after Edwin described his group's proposed piece of artwork OBVIOUSLY SINCERELY complimenting it 😍: "Oh, cool—I like this one!"

• GREAT concise answer to X's question asking how ChatGPT can perform so well in other fields yet be SO bad at basic math: "Counting is the building block of math" 

• Probably slight overuse of the positive response “Cool”—try to identify other similarly positive responses (e.g., “Great,” “Exactly,” “Right,” "Correct," and “Excellent”—for additional ideas, check out the University of Minnesota's "Common Questions for International TAs" and the University of Michigan's "Verbal Stratagems")

• To avoid students thinking you consider questions to be an unwanted interruption, try to find a way to connect your answer to any question to the next part of your lesson—make sense? 

• When answering questions, don’t merely answer “No” but also explain WHY not to help students truly understand—make sense?

• Rather than simply responding “I don’t know” to X’s question about what REALLY is the shortest route from Chicago to NYC, it would have been better to use the opportunity of her question to review key elements taught: “I don’t know, but Google does and now we know HOW Google knows. Google will look at the next available node, then the next available node, then the next available node until the shortest route to NYC has been identified”. . . .so let’s see what Google says—make sense?

  • Rather than simply responding “I don’t know” to student questions, how might also indicating you'll look this up and get back to the class about it be a better answer? 

• Not a big deal, but filler "um" when trying to figure out answer to X's question—may want to try predicting likely student questions?

Other teacher-student interaction

• Great job introducing yourself at the beginning of your presentation (but for an audience unfamiliar with Bangla names, be sure to pronounce your name more slowly/clearly to ensure we catch it—make sense?)

• Very interesting topic that motivated interaction IMMEDIATELY (even without you having to ask for it!)

• Great job maintaining interaction with your audience 

  • Very impressive multitasking when prompting ChatGPT while at the same time explaining what you were doing—wow!!! 😮 

• Carefully plan your INSTRUCTIONS for learning activities so you're confident students will understand what you want them to do—then give students enough time to think through your instructions and get started following them before you decide whether you need to add additional clarification 😉—make sense? (cf. X)

• Good job circulating while students worked to check on different groups as needed and/or answer questions

  • Good job circulating while students work but be careful not to move too quickly or students will assume based on your fast movement that you are aiming to go somewhere specific so they shouldn't interrupt you to ask a question 🤭

• Great job checking in on (especially quieter group's!) progress: "How's it going over here?" and "How are you doing?" 😍 

  • GREAT job setting up your class to maximize learning without shaming students who have less background—EXCELLENT!!! (Specifically, good job checking in right away on your weaker student X's table, enabling him to admit he didn't understand, thereby providing opportunity for Y to teach him 😍) 

  • Excellent noticing when X was getting frustrated and immediately going to teach her one-on-one how ChatGPT can be trained to correctly answer the math problem 

  • Student groups probably would have been helped if you had checked on their progress earlier by asking questions such as "Are you in?" or "How's it going?" or "How far have you gotten so far?" (Make sense? 🤔)

  • Student groups probably would have been helped if you had circulated from group to group more to check on their progress 😉

• Great job encouraging students that they're on the right track: "You're almost there" 

  • Great job providing feedback that is encouraging but not dishonest: "X, you got that part right" 🤗 

• "I want to listen to people talking"—GREAT comment, but you sounded stressed that things weren't going quite as you had planned, which can reduce students' confidence and make them blame your "incompetence" for why you're putting them under pressure —make sense? 😉)

• Great job directly calling on X, demonstrating you care enough as a teacher about ALL your students' learning and about fostering a fully engaged classroom learning environment that, as much as you control, you won't let students just opt out of learning in favor of playing on their phones, etc.—students remained fully engaged and involved throughout your lesson 😍 

• Not completely smooth in handling the transition to each group actually presenting their artwork (I think because you weren't yet confident all the groups were ready to present), but after this, you did a GREAT job of guiding this part of your lesson 

Student-student interaction

• Your and X's lesson motivated OUTSTANDING student-student interaction—wow!!!

• Overall, great lesson that pulled all your students into participating, including motivating conflicting (so especially interesting! 😉) responses and lots of laughter 😍 

• Speaking is well paced and fluent, with appropriately-chunked thought groups, minimal fillers/repairs/repetitions, and use of connected speech; and phrase stress/rhythm and intonation are used accurately 🤗 

• Although you did have a few disfluencies (we all do!) due to stuttering, this happened only rarely. You have clearly worked hard and have succeeded at becoming a skilled presenter! 

Teaching/Presentation Fluency

• Practice developing spontaneous spoken fluency using the 4/3/2 exercise (or if 4/3/2 is too difficult at first, work on breaking the self-interruption habit using the Fluency Buildup exercise):

  • Use Fluency Buildup or 4/3/2 to practice beginning your lesson/presentation with:

    • One of the many ways of saying “Let’s get started”

    • An attention-getting story, statement, question, etc. that helps students see why today’s topic matters/how today’s lesson connects to real life and/or that there’s a gap in the information covered by previous lessons

    • Introducing/outlining today’s topic(s)

  • Use 4/3/2 to practice introducing any background information that your students/audience need to benefit most from your lesson/presentation

  • Ue 4/3/2 to practice explaining your topic via interesting examples (especially real-life examples from your own life or everyday student/human experiences!)

    • Use 4/3/2 to practice giving clear INSTRUCTIONS for learning activities (so you're confident students will understand what you want them to do!) 

  • Brainstorm potentially “tricky” parts of your lesson/presentation (or a list of concepts in your field/textbook that you know undergrads tend to struggle with) and use Fluency Buildup or 4/3/2 to practice explaining these concepts in a 1) easy-to-understand and 2) interesting way

  • Brainstorm potential questions you think students are likely to ask about your lesson and use 4/3/2 to practice answering those questions in a way students are likely to find 1) easy to understand and 2) interesting

  • Practice answering "Common Questions for International TAs" available from the University of Minnesota

  • Practice role plays of teaching-related situations or everyday situations (ideally with focus on US conversational norms specifically) 

Conversational Fluency

• Use 4/3/2 to work on developing your ability to use more complex language in unprepared talk at least once per week:

• • in questions people may ask to get to know you

  • to questions requiring the use of background knowledge, perhaps using current events resources such as videos/transcripts from the YouTube channels of news outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Reuters, etc.

  • in role plays of teaching-related situations or everyday situations (ideally with focus on US conversational norms specifically)

Overly short/nonlogical thought groups

• Mostly your fluency and pronunciation are good, but often/sometimes/occasionally your speech was choppy/broken vs. smooth/fluent because you spoke in very short thought groups (sometimes even just one word!), i.e., you sometimes paused in the MIDDLE of a grammatical phrase instead of BETWEEN phrases, damaging listeners’ ability to build cumulative understanding of your ideas! (cf. "You don't need to . . .move it. . . manually"). Remember fluency is NEARLY ALWAYS more helpful than perfect grammar for facilitating listener understanding 😉. To help you work on this, I have added and highlighted in green on your 15-minutes-per-day homework doc at URL recommended activities you can use to continue growing your fluency as well as to work on improving your pronunciation of the following words: "recreate" and "Tokyo" 🤗 

  • Day 1ff: Watch San Diego Voice and Accent’s "3 rules to using thought groups in English,” practicing each of its recommended techniques for building fluency. 

  • Day 4ff: Practice breaking up phrases ONLY at thought group boundaries within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until standard English thought grouping becomes automatic for you. (Also, check out the activities Fluency Buildup and/or Shadowing for additional focused practice on breaking up phrases ONLY at thought group boundaries.)

  • Day 7ff: To help yourself grow in fluency by lengthening your thought groups/increasing how long you talk before pausing, practice the 4/3/2 activity (This activity can be VERY powerful for building fluency as you'll see if you regularly record your first 4-minute talk on a topic and compare it to your 2-minute version or if you compare your first 2-minute talk to another 2-minute talk a week or two later! 😉) 

• “to. . .many developing countries” (= broken noun phrase)

• “it will. . . .oscillate” (= broken verb phrase)

• MUCH better fluency than before, but keep working on lengthening your thought groups/increasing the amount of time between your pauses

False starts

• Mostly your fluency and pronunciation are good, but sometimes you started to say something and then ended up restarting or repeating it ("You can think. . .think of"). This can damage listeners’ focus and therefore their ability to build cumulative understanding of your ideas—remember fluency is NEARLY ALWAYS more helpful than perfect grammar for facilitating listener understanding 😉. To help you work on this, I have added and highlighted in green on your 15-minutes-per-day homework doc at URL recommended activities you can use to continue growing your fluency as well as to work on improving your pronunciation of the following words: "world" (sounded like "word") and "nonlinear" (sounded like "nonninear") 🤗

• Accent’s Way English with Hadar: “Master your fluency, stay motivated, and get inspired” video playlist” and/or “Becoming Fluent in English—Strategies, Techniques, Mindset” video playlist” and/or “Boost your communication skills and confidence in English” video playlist”

• You sometimes seemed unwilling to start communication or keep it going— you often failed to complete your sentences and/or finish expressing your ideas, which makes it hard for listeners to follow your explanation/understand your point. You also sometimes started to say something and then ended up restarting or repeating it.

  • Accent’s Way English with Hadar “Master your fluency, stay motivated, and get inspired” video playlist and/or “Becoming Fluent in English—Strategies, Techniques, Mindset” video playlist and/or “Boost your communication skills and confidence in English” video playlist

Fillers

• Your thought grouping has improved, but you still used MANY fillers (e.g., "uh, uh") and your pronunciation of the "-qu-" (pronounciation = "kw") in the technical term "equilibrium" was not fluent

• Your thought grouping has improved, but work on minimizing the use of fillers (e.g., "uh" or “um”) 

Speech rate

• Good pace! (= speech rate)

• A little slow in pace, but okay (≈ pace near the slow end of normal range)

• You tended to speak quite slowly

• You spoke VERY quickly

• X, your pace of speaking is sometimes a little fast (maybe because you were nervous?), which in combination with differences between Indian and American English pronunciation can make Indian English very difficult for American English listeners to understand. Probably the easiest way for you to avoid this problem is by intentionally slowing down whenever you present in the American context (though there are also a few words whose pronunciation you may want to check and work on first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day: “religion,” “mythology,” “literatures,” “influenced,” “analysis,” “academic,” and “concisely”)

• Your peer feedback—and so your self-evaluation—indicated that you spoke too fast/didn’t pause enough between phrases and therefore that you should slow down the speed of your teaching. I didn’t notice this as being a problem so think it is likely the cumulative effect of students’ [1] listening to a less familiar accent and [2] pronunciation errors occasionally making keywords difficult to understand. I therefore do not think you need to focus on slowing down your speed but rather on improving your pronunciation in relation to the errors noted above. 

Linking/Connected Speech

To work on including invisible /y/ and invisible /w/ pronounced WITHIN words: Watch each of the following videos about when English words insert “invisible /y/” and “invisible /w/," practicing each mentioned word/phrase first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until pronouncing invisible /y/ and/or /w/ becomes automatic for you (Monica: Need to evaluate if the below are the BEST videos in the BEST teaching order)

• • Day 1: Clear English Corner’s “Common Mispronounced Words: The Invisible Y Secret”

  • Day 2: Accent’s Way English with Hadar’s video to “Practice words with the illusive “Y” sound”

  • Day 3: Clear English Corner’s “How to pronounce IOUS and EOUS suffix”

  • Day 4: Clear English Corner’s “How to pronounce 'chaos'”

  • Day 5: Accent’s Way English with Hadar “How to pronounce ‘eventually” and ‘actually’” 

  • Day 6 (optional): Watch this Clear English Corner video on "Hidden sounds in English words"

    • “evaluates” (should be pronounced as “eval-you-waits” 😉) 

    • “contextualize” mispronounced without “invisible /w/" but should be pronounced as “contextu-walize”

    • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7X3nudDFcc

To work on including invisible /y/ and invisible /w/, etc., pronounced BETWEEN words: Watch each of the following videos on how “invisible /y/” and “invisible /w/” insertion (=vowel-to-vowel linking), plus certain consonant adjustments, can help with fluency by smoothing the flow of speech, practicing each mentioned word/phrase first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until linking via invisible /y/ and /w/, etc., becomes automatic for you

• • Day 1: San Diego Voice and Accent’s video on “Vowel-to-Vowel Linking in American English”

  • Day 2ff: Pronunciation Snippets’ “Fluency Help” video playlist 

Miscellaneous

• You tended to use simple vocabulary and grammar structures vs. more sophisticated vocabulary/grammar (FYI: Usually, this is not because a student doesn't know how to construct more complex English sentences — it's just that they can't do it at the speed of talking. . . .i.e., they need to work on growing their English fluency)

• Practice the following first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

  • “equilibrium” (pronounced accurately but not fluently 😉) 

• Practice the word stress of the following individual and compound words, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you:  

• “X” was sometimes incorrectly stressed as Y” (perhaps due to following the “i+vowel”-controlled word stress of  the word “Z”?), but other times was pronounced correctly 

• At first, you accidentally pronounced the word “OUTline” with the wrong stress of “outLINE” several times, but toward the end of your video, you reliably pronounced this word correctly—great! 😊

• á é í ó ú ý 

Default

• “méchanism” was incorrectly stressed as “mechánism” (perhaps due to following the “-ic”-controlled word stress of the related word “mechánic” but should instead follow default 1st-syllable stress)

i + vowel / u + vowel / e + vowel

• “corruption”—Practice all familiar words containing the "i + vowel" word ending "-ion,” first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you. (To avoid confusing your brain with exceptions, make a list of those you encounter—e.g.,“television”—to start practicing only AFTER your default becomes standard “i + vowel” word stress—make sense?)

• “facTOrial” sounded once like “factoriAL” and once like “factorAL” (deleting the /i/ in “i(y)al”) but was correct in the phrase “factorial function”—Practice all familiar words containing the "i + vowel" word ending "-rial,” first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

• “authoritarianism” —Practice all familiar words containing the "i + vowel" word ending "-ianism,” first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

• “recipient”—Practice all familiar words containing the "i + vowel" word ending "-ient,” first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

-ic

• “ecoNOmic” was incorrectly stressed as “eCOnomic” (perhaps due to following the “long-word-ending-in-"-y" word stress pattern of the related word “eCOnomy”?)

-ate/-ite

• “COMplicated” was incorrectly stressed as "compliCAted” (perhaps due to following the “i+vowel”-controlled word stress of the related word “compliCAtion”?)

Day 1: Compare in YouGlish the difference in word stress between (1) “i+vowel”-controlled words ending in “-ation” vs. (2) verbs ending in “-ate” vs. (3) adjectives/nouns ending in “-ate." How is the word stress of the “i+vowel”-controlled words different from that of words ending in the stress-controlling suffix “-ate”? How is the pronunciation of verbs ending in “-ate” different from that of adjectives/nouns ending in “-ate”?

Day 2: Practice correctly stressing at least 10 verbs ending in the stress-controlling suffix “-ate” per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

Day 3ff: After you can RELIABLY CORRECTLY stress verbs ending in “-ate,” practice correctly stressing at least 10 adjectives/nouns ending in the stress-controlling suffix “-ate” per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

long word ending in "-y" (except "-ary" and "-ory")

• “hístory” was incorrectly stressed as “históry” (perhaps due to following the “-ic”-controlled word stress of the related word “históric”?)

• "índustry" was at first incorrectly stressed as “indústry” (perhaps due to treating the initial “in-”-as a stress-repelling prefix?) but later stressed correctly 

Less common stress-controlling suffixes:

• "IMplement" misstressed as "impleMENT" (perhaps due to accidentally misapplying the stress magnet suffix "-mental"?) 

• “paRAmeter” was incorrectly stressed as “paraMEter” (perhaps due to following the “-ic”-controlled word stress of the related word “paraMEtric”?): Practice correctly stressing at least 10 familiar words ending in the stress-controlling suffix “-meter," first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you. (To avoid confusing your brain with exceptions, make a list of those you encounter—e.g.,“centimeter”—to start practicing only AFTER your default becomes standard “-meter” word stress—make sense?)

• “techNIQUE” was incorrectly stressed as “TECHnique” (perhaps due to following the English default of 1st-syllable stress, but unfortunately the word “technique” instead follows the relatively rare stress-controlling-suffix-“-ique" word stress pattern): Search in YouGlish all familiar words ending in the stress-controlling suffix “-ique,” practicing each individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

• “travérse” was incorrectly stressed as “tráverse” (perhaps due to following the English default of 1st-syllable stress, but unfortunately “traverse” instead follows the very rare “2-syllables-ending-in-the stress-controlling-“-verse” word stress pattern): Search in YouGlish all familiar "2-syllable words including the stress-controlling word ending “-verse,” practicing each individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

• "analysis": Notice that related words in English are sometimes stressed differently from one another by comparing https://youglish.com/pronounce/analysis/english/us? to https://youglish.com/pronounce/analyze/english/us? to https://youglish.com/pronounce/analytics/english/us?/https://youglish.com/pronounce/analytical/english/us? 😭)

Stress-repelling prefixes:

• “reQUEST” was incorrectly stressed as “REquest”

• “comPEtitor” was incorrectly stressed as “COMpetor” (so deleting the -it- syllable also) 

Exceptions:

• “IMprovise” was incorrectly stressed as “improVISE”

• "PROgramming language" was incorrectly stressed as "proGRAMming language"

• “CONcept” was incorrectly stressed as "conCEPT” (perhaps due to following the “i+vowel”-controlled word stress of the related word “conCEPtion”?)

Compound stress

• At first, you accidentally pronounced the word “OUTline” with the wrong stress of “outLINE” several times, but toward the end of your video, you reliably pronounced this word correctly—great! 😊

Noun vs. verb stress

• Probably because it is an exception to the “stress-repelling prefix” English word stress pattern, “naturally PREsent” was incorrectly stressed as “naturally preSENT”

• Probably based on the more common noun/adjective word stress of "PERfect," you accidentally mispronounced/misstressed the verb form"perFECT" (that admittedly is spelled exactly the same way!). Practice correctly stressing the verb "perFECT" first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until its standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you. 

“-teen” vs. “-ty”

• “-teen” vs. “-ty” numbers: Watch this video on how to pronounce the "-teen" vs. "-ty" numbers, then watch this video, and then practice pronouncing at least 10 new “-teen” vs. “-ty” numbers per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you: (Monica: Need to evaluate if the above are the BEST available teaching videos in the BEST order)

  • ‘50s was incorrectly stressed to sound like ‘15s”

Destressing needed

• "entropy" ("o" in this word is not stressed so should be pronounced as the unstressed central vowel /ə/

• Good phrase stress and intonation

• X, you tend not to mark the key word in phrases via clear phrase stress. Practice standard English phrase stress (along with emphasis/contrast stress, as needed 😉) via the following practice activities

  • Day 1ff: Analyze2Imitate: Thought Grouping, Phrase Stress, and Intonation

  • Day 8ff: Shadowing 

• “Color + noun” phrases: Practice the word stress of “color + noun” phrases within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

  • “RED LIberalism” misstressed using compound noun stress (i.e., as “RED liberalism”)

• Mostly your pronunciation is accurate, but I have added and highlighted in green on your 15-minutes-per-day homework doc at URL my recommended homework for improving your pronunciation of "ironic" (sounded like "i-ran-tic") and your phrase stress in "machine learning" and "in-context learning" (should be "machine LEARNing" and "in-context LEARNing," not maCHINE learning" or "IN-context learning")

  • "machine learning" and "in-context learning" were incorrectly stressed as” maCHINE learning" and "IN-context learning" 

Contrast/emphasis stress

• MUCH more interesting than before, including GREAT application of emphasis stress: “We WANT the generated data to be real”—wow!!!

• Great emphasis stress on key words to help X follow your answer to his question

Intonation range:

• Good phrase stress and intonation

• Great use of an appropriately wide intonation range, which is very helpful for keeping students INTERESTED—I’m very encouraged by this because from our classroom interactions this semester I have been concerned that your tendency to default to fairly flat English intonation will suggest to listeners that you’re either bored with THEM (which, as you might imagine, listeners don’t generally respond well to!) or your topic (creating in listeners the question “If YOU don’t think your topic is interesting, why should we?”) 

• X, you tend to default to fairly flat (monotone) English intonation (i.e., your intonation range tends to be quite narrow), suggesting to listeners that (1) you think your topic is boring (so characteristically triggering them to feel bored also: “If YOU don’t think your topic is interesting, why should we?”) or (2) you think talking to THEM is a boring waste of your time (which, of course, also tends to trigger negative listener reactions! 😉) Therefore, practice increasing your intonation range via the following practice activities:

  • Day 1: Learn the impact on listeners of varied vs. monotone intonation via Accent’s Way English with Hadar’s video on “How to sound interesting in English: Varied pitch vs. monotone intonation”

  • Day 2ff: Analyze2Imitate: Thought Grouping, Phrase Stress, and Intonation

  • Day 8ff: Shadowing 

• X, generally good eye contact (even though making eye contact via video is unnatural and therefore hard to do!), but your face/voice/gestures didn’t sound like you were INTERESTED in your topic—which can make your audience bored over time: “If YOU don’t think your topic is interesting, why should we?” What gestures/facial expressions could you add to support and/or emphasize your points? (=4)

Falling intonation:

• • Uptalk: You often end phrases with rising intonation. Although for some meanings (e.g., to mark yes/no questions; to ask for confirmation/approval; or to let listeners know that even though you've paused, you're not finished speaking yet), uptalk is useful, if overused it can reduce your apparent CONFIDENCE (and therefore listeners' trust in your COMPETENCE). It also hurts listeners because rising intonation signals in standard North American, British, and Australian English that the speaker hasn’t yet finished communicating his/her idea (or that they’re asking a “yes/no” question). Falling intonation, in contrast, signals to English-speaking listeners that a speaker has finished communicating a point, so the listener can now draw a conclusion about it. As a result, native English-speaking brains tend to add any phrase ending in rising intonation to their “currently processing queue” and to wait to complete processing of that phrase until another falling intonation signals that the speaker has completed his/her point. Continuous rising intonations, therefore, cause the average English-speaking listener brain to end up holding A LOT in queue, with the result that the listener gets tired (and therefore frustrated!) quickly. In addition, English-speaking listeners’ failure to complete processing of each of your points as you make them (because they don’t realize when you’ve finished each point) hurts their ability to follow the logic/chronology of what you’re saying—make sense? 

    • • Check out this helpful video from Lauren Sergy about how to address the overuse of uptalk.

      • Practice following the intonation of the "Common Questions for International TAs" questions modeled on the University of Minnesota’s “Center for Learning and Teaching” site

      • Brainstorm potential questions you think students are likely to ask about your lesson, classifying them into “Yes/No” questions vs.”Wh-” questions and then create a deck of Anki flashcards for each category. Each Anki-scheduled review day, pretend you’re really asking each question being reviewed (afterward checking to see whether you fluently applied the correct intonation). Once you are consistently applying the appropriate intonation to the questions in each Anki deck studied separately, merge the decks to see if you can continue fluently applying the appropriate (rising or falling) intonation.

      • Analyze2Imitate: Thought Grouping, Phrase Stress, and Intonation

      • Shadowing

  • Although rising intonation IS used in English for yes/no questions, falling intonation is used for “wh-“ questions (i.e., questions beginning with “who,” “what,” “where,” “when,” “why,” or “how”)

    • Practice following the intonation of the "Common Questions for International TAs" questions modeled on the University of Minnesota’s “Center for Learning and Teaching” site

    • Brainstorm potential ”Wh-” questions you think students are likely to ask about your lesson, creating spaced repetition flashcards for each (perhaps by downloading the free Anki app + free Aglish add-on and importing my sample Anki + YouGlish flashcard deck)

Rising intonation:

• X, if you apply the intonation pattern English uses to inform listeners you are giving them a list, they will find it easier to process the list information (e.g., your list including "mobile phone, Google map")

Vibration in the throat?

unvibrated /?/ mispronounced as vibrated /?/:

• “classic” (mispronounced as “glassic”) 

• “assume” mispronounced as “azume”

• “tonic” sounded like “donic” (Remember in English you should feel a puff of air out of your mouth when you pronounce “t”at the beginning of words and stressed syllables)

vibrated /?/ mispronounced as unvibrated /?/:

• /b/ mispronounced as /p/: To ensure you pronounce a clear /b/ vs. /p/, check that your throat IS vibrating as you pronounce /b/ before you move to pronouncing the rest of the word

• /ʒ/ in “edge”: Watch this video on how to pronounce /d͡ʒ/ and then practice pronouncing at least 10 new words containing /d͡ʒ/ per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

• "majority" (sounded like "maturity" because its "-j-" sounded like the unvibrated "ch" in "church," not like the vibrated "j" sound—make sense?)

FINAL CONSONANT DEVOICING

/t/ at the end of words/syllables mispronounced as /d/— Is this a HYPERcorrection?— “Coe (2001) explains that since in Spanish word-final plosives are rare, Spanish speakers tend to use /t/ for final /d/ (e.g. /sæt/ instead of / sæd. . .)”: Practice pronouncing at least 25 new words ending in /t/ per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you, ideally videorecording yourself in order to check you have indeed pronounced the final sound as “-t”

•  “holding a bat” mispronounced as “holding a bad”

/g/ at the end of words/syllables mispronounced as /k/— Is this a HYPERcorrection?— “Coe (2001) explains that since in Spanish word-final plosives are rare, Spanish speakers tend to use /t/ for final /d/ (e.g. /sæt/ instead of / sæd. . .)”:  

• “a bag” mispronounced as “a back”

• “loCK” mispronounced as “loG”

WHERE this consonant is pronounced

/f/ mispronounced as /p/ (FYI: Have submitted request 12/04/22 to San Diego Voice and Accent for a “visual test” video about this common substitution):

Day 1ff: Watch this Accent's Way English with Hadar video on how to pronounce English /p/ vs. /f/, practicing each word from her p/f minimal pairs list, first individually and then, possibly videorecording yourself in order to check that you’ve indeed pronounced the correct sound for each word, within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

Day 2: Follow Tools for Clear Speech instructions on how to practice RELIABLY distinguishing English /p/ vs. /f/

• “profit” mispronounced as something close to “propit” 

/p/ mispronounced as /f/ (Are these instances of HYPERcorrection?) (FYI: Have submitted request 12/04/22 to San Diego Voice and Accent for a “visual test” video about this common substitution):

Day 1ff: Watch this Accent's Way English with Hadar video on how to pronounce English /p/ vs. /f/, practicing each word from her p/f minimal pairs list, first individually and then (possibly videorecording yourself in order to check that you’ve indeed pronounced the correct sound) within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

Day 2: Follow Tools for Clear Speech instructions on how to practice RELIABLY distinguishing English /p/ vs. /f/

• “people” (PD)

• “opinion” (PD)    

• “empathize” mispronounced as “emphasize”

/b/ mispronounced as /v/: If you think this is a common mistake for you, watch each of the following videos, practicing each mentioned word first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you: (Are these instances of HYPERcorrection?) (FYI: Have submitted request 12/04/22 to San Diego Voice and Accent for a “visual test” video about this common substitution) (Monica: Need to evaluate if these are the BEST available teaching videos in the BEST order)

Day 1ff: Watch this Clear English Corner video on how to pronounce English /b/ vs. /v/ (focusing on Spanish) 

Day 2ff: Watch this Accent's Way English with Hadar video on how to pronounce English /b/ vs. /v/ (focusing on Korean), practicing each word from her b/v minimal pairs list, first individually and then, possibly videorecording yourself in order to check you’ve indeed pronounced the correct sound for each word, within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

Day 3: Follow Tools for Clear Speech instructions on how to practice RELIABLY distinguishing English /b/ vs. /v/

• “verbal” mispronounced as “vervo” (PD)

/v/ mispronounced as /b/: If you think this is a common mistake for you, watch each of the following videos, practicing each mentioned word first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you: (FYI: Have submitted request 12/04/22 to San Diego Voice and Accent for a “visual test” video about this common substitution) (Monica: Need to evaluate if these are the BEST available teaching videos in the BEST order) 

Day 1ff: Watch this Clear English Corner video on how to pronounce English /v/ vs. /b/ (focusing on Spanish) 

Day 2ff: Watch this Accent's Way English with Hadar video on how to pronounce English /v/ vs. /b/ (focusing on Korean), practicing each word from her b/v minimal pairs list, first individually and then, possibly videorecording yourself in order to check you’ve indeed pronounced the correct sound for each word, within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

Day 3: Follow Tools for Clear Speech instructions on how to practice RELIABLY distinguishing English /v/ vs. /b/

• “value” mispronounced as “balue”

/ŋ/ pronounced as /n/: If this is something you want to work on, watch one of the following videos per day and then practice pronouncing at least 10 familiar words containing the"-ng" sound per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you  (Monica: Still need to find and add training taking respectful account of AAVE + need to evaluate if the below are the BEST available teaching videos in the BEST order)

Day 1: San Diego Voice and Accent’s “How to Pronounce the N /n/ and NG /ŋ/ consonants”

Day 2: Sounds American’s “Thin or Thing? Sin or Sing? American English Pronunciation”

Day 3: “Clear English Corner’s “American Accent Tutorial: How to Pronounce NG” 

• "wrong" sounded like "run"

"lisped" /s/ or /z/ mispronunciations: I've done some research and although I’m not specifically trained as a speech pathologist, there is enough overlap between my training and theirs that I think there is a good chance I may be able to help address your  “st”/lisp concerns 🤗  I would like to do a more systematic check in order to hopefully be able to diagnose exactly WHY the “st” consonant cluster is difficult for you. I also would like to learn more about whether this occurs only in English or also in your native language[s] 🤗) ¶ Please do be encouraged by this speech-language therapy quotation (that supports my analysis of the strengths/weaknesses of your Microteaching #1!😉): “Lisping, as an isolated speech characteristic, does not usually reduce the person's intelligibility unduly.  Most people can easily understand what the person with a lisp is saying.” (Notice the “easily”!!!) See also Voice Science’s “Can you fix your lisp as an adult?” for additional info about how having a lisp basically NEVER affects how easy you are to understand  🤗 ¶ Please check out the following (also added to your 15-Minutes-per-Day Assignment Options Google Doc 😉):

• Expressable’s “The 4 Different Types of Lisps and How to Correct Them”

• Voice Science’s “Bust a lisp in less than 5 minutes” 

• How “st” is physically pronounced (including recommended steps for systematically improving your “st” pronunciation, except PLEASE skip the “tongue twister” step—I don’t know why they recommend it!!! 😖 Tongue twisters are specifically created in order to confuse the tongue of people who DON’T ordinarily have trouble pronouncing particular sounds so they suddenly DO have trouble pronouncing them. As a result, for someone who ALREADY has trouble pronouncing particular sounds, tongue twisters are likely to totally unnecessarily just add more frustration!!! 😠)

• Recommended practice words including “st”

/ʒ/ mispronounced as /z/ but should instead sound like a vibrated "sh" (Monica: Need to evaluate if the below is BEST teaching order): 

Day 1: Watch and practice distinguishing /ʒ/ vs. /z/ using this video clip from Accent's Way English with Hadar and video clip from Sounds American

Day 2: Watch and practice distinguishing /ʒ/ vs. /z/ using this Clear English Corner video

Day 3: Watch and practice distinguishing /ʒ/ vs. /z/ using the entirety of Day 1’s Sounds American video

Day 4: Watch and practice pronouncing “usual” and “usually” using this San Diego Voice and Accent video

Day 5ff: Practice pronouncing at least 10 new words containing /ʒ/ per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

• "recursion”

unvibrated /θ/ pronounced as /s/: If this is something you want to work on, pay attention to pronouncing “th” with your tongue—even if just barely—BETWEEN vs. BEHIND your teeth in at least 10 new words containing the (unvibrated) “th” per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

• “think” mispronounced as “sink”

• “three” mispronounced as “sree” (PD)

• “path” mispronounced as “pass”

• “length” mispronounced as “lengks”

• Work on your pronunciation of the following words by paying attention to pronouncing “th” with your tongue—even if just barely—BETWEEN vs. BEHIND your teeth in at least 10 new words containing the (unvibrated) “th” per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you: “math”/“Macbeth” (sounded like “mass”/“Macbess”)

• “second” mispronounced as “thecond” (probably an instance of hypercorrection?) 

vibrated /ð/ pronounced as /z/: If this is something you want to work on, pay attention to pronouncing “th” with your tongue—even if just barely—BETWEEN vs. BEHIND your teeth in at least 10 new words containing the vibrated “th"per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

• “that” mispronounced as “zat” (PD)

• “smooth” mispronounced as “smooz” (x2)

• “smoothing” mispronounced as “smoozing”

• “smoother” mispronounced as “smoozer”

unvibrated /θ/ pronounced as /t/: If this is something you want to work on, pay attention to pronouncing “th” with your tongue—even if just barely—BETWEEN vs. BEHIND your teeth in at least 10 new words containing the (unvibrated) “th” per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

• “thousand” mispronounced as “tousand”

vibrated /ð/ pronounced as /d/: Although this pronunciation matches African-American English (AAE), it does not match mainstream American English (MAE). If you would like to work on adding the MAE pronunciation to your pronunciation repertoire, pay attention to pronouncing “th” with your tongue—even if just barely—BETWEEN vs. BEHIND your teeth in at least 10 new words containing the vibrated “th" per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until this pronunciation becomes automatic for you: 

• “then” pronounced as “den”

• “they” pronounced as “day” 

HOW this consonant is pronounced

/l/ mispronounced as /n/ (and in a few cases /n/ sounded like /l/—likely an instance of HYPERcorrection?—i.e., “nonnegative” mispronounced as “nonlegative”): 

Day 1: Watch and practice distinguishing /l/ vs. /n/ using this Pronunciation Snippets video

Day 2: Review and practice as needed distinguishing /l/ vs. /n/ using the Pronunciation Snippets video + watch and practice distinguishing /l/ vs. /n/ using this ESL Garage video (except not the tongue twister part)

Day 3: Review and practice as needed distinguishing /l/ vs. /n/ using the Pronunciation Snippets video and ESL Garage video; read and practice distinguishing /l/ vs. /n/ (and /d/) using this “Phonetic N-L-ysis (Or, You’ll Want to Hold Your Nose for This One” blog post (Please let me know if you find this additional information helpful or not—I know this post includes LOTS of technical pronunciation terms!)

Day 4ff: Practice pronouncing at least 10 new words beginning with /l/ per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

Day 10ff: After you can reliably pronounce words BEGINNING with /l/, practice 10 new 2-syllable (or more—just modify the URL) words containing the spelling "-ll-"  as well as 10 new 2-syllable (or more—just modify the URL) words containing the spelling "-nn-" per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

• “like” mispronounced as “nike” (but “clean” was good!)

• “snow load” sometimes mispronounced as “snow node” (but other times okay—and because the /n/ is “snow” was located so near to the /l/ in “load,” this is admittedly a particularly challenging environment for accurate pronunciation of /l/!)

  • “nonlinear” mispronounced as “nonninear”  

/d/ mispronounced as /n/ (and in a few cases /d/ sounded like /l/—likely an instance of HYPERcorrection?—i.e., “any” sounded like “ady”): 

• “introduce” mispronounced as “intronuce” 

/l/ mispronounced as (halfway) /r/  (Monica: Need to evaluate if the below is BEST teaching order):

Day 1ff: Watch this Accent's Way English with Hadar video on how to RELIABLY distinguish English /l/ vs. /r/, practicing each word from her l/r minimal pairs list, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you, checking for each word that your tongue has NOT touched the top of your mouth to accidentally pronounce /r/ like /l/

Day 2ff: Watch this Sounds American video on how to pronounce English /l/ vs. /r/, then practice pronouncing at least 10 new words beginning with /l/ per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you, checking for each word that your tongue has indeed TOUCHED the top of your mouth to pronounce /l/

Day 3: Watch this Sounds American video on how to pronounce English words containing BOTH /l/ vs. /r/, then practice pronouncing at least 10 new words containing BOTH /l/ and /r/ per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you, checking for each word that your tongue has NOT touched the top of your mouth  to accidentally pronounce /r/ like /l/

• “laboratory" mispronounced as "raboratory"

/r/ mispronounced as (halfway) /l/  (Monica: Need to evaluate if the below is BEST teaching order):

Day 1ff: Watch this Accent's Way English with Hadar video on how to RELIABLY distinguish English /l/ vs. /r/, practicing each word from her l/r minimal pairs list, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you, checking for each word that your tongue has NOT touched the top of your mouth to accidentally pronounce /r/ like /l/

Day 2ff: Watch this Sounds American video on how to pronounce English /l/ vs. /r/, then practice pronouncing at least 10 new words beginning with /r/ per day, first individually  and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you, checking for each word that your tongue has NOT touched the top of your mouth to accidentally pronounce /r/ like /l/

Day 3: Watch this Sounds American video on how to pronounce English words containing BOTH /l/ vs. /r/, then practice pronouncing at least 10 new words containing BOTH /l/ and /r/ per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you, checking for each word that your tongue has NOT touched the top of your mouth to accidentally pronounce /r/ like /l/

• “related to” mispronounced as “lelated to” (x2) (PD)

• "reality" mispronounced as something close to "leality"

/ʒ/ mispronounced as (halfway) /r/: 

• “usually” sounded like “urally” (probably due to the closest Chinese sound being the first consonant in the Chinese word 人/ rén)—Watch this video and this video on how to pronounce the word “usually” and then practice pronouncing “usually”  first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until its standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you (Monica: Need to evaluate if these are the BEST available teaching videos in the BEST order)

/ʒ/ mispronounced as /y/: 

• • “visualization” mispronounced as “viyualization”

/dʒ/ mispronounced as /y/: 

• • “9 years” (mispronounced as “9 jeers”—like your microteaching’s “New York” mispronounced as “New Jork”)

    • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSVnbTkKHz0 (?)

vibrated /ð/ mispronounced as /l/: If this is something you want to work on, pay attention to pronouncing “th” with your tongue—even if just barely—BETWEEN vs. BEHIND your teeth in at least 10 new words containing the vibrated “th" per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

• “that” mispronounced as “lat”

vibrated /ð/ mispronounced as /n/: Practice pronouncing “then” slowly as “theeeeeeeen,” paying attention to (1) verifying you feel NO air under your nose until you pronounce “n” in at least 10 new words containing the vibrated “th"per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

• “then” mispronounced as “nen”

/v/ mispronounced as /w/ (and vice versa): Watch each of the following videos, practicing each mentioned word first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you  (Monica: Need to evaluate if the below is the BEST teaching order)

Day 1: Pronunciation Snippets' video on how to pronounce /v/ so it doesn't sound like /w/

Day 2: Accent's Way English with Hadar video on how to pronounce the /v/ and /w/ (and how NOT to confuse them when speaking)

Day 3: Clear English Corner's video on the /w/ vs. /v/ sounds

Day 4: Practice pronouncing at least 10 new words containing /v/  per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

• “video” mispronounced as “wideo”

• "provide" mispronounced as "prowide"

intervocalic flap "t": Pronouncing a true "t" instead of the (uniquely American!) flap "t" that occurs ONLY between two vowels will (by itself 😉) NOT cause listeners to understand you—it simply marks you as not having an AMERICAN English accent. However, if you don't have anything more important left to work on and you WANT to learn how to pronounce the American flap "t," watch each of the following videos, practicing each mentioned word first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you  (Monica: Need to evaluate if the below is the BEST teaching order)

Day 1: San Diego Voice and Accent’s “All About the Flap /ɾ/ (aka Flap T)”

Day 2: Clear English Corner's video on the American "flap T" sound

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK9gl_CD09M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpN-X2PzdAk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpMkJDTnSPI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op10ke3_jhE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFqRf03sAzw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hoARxeemns

Day 3: Monica: Need to check if there are other good videos about this

glottal stop:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkWR1x3rVLk

Deletions

Deleting /w/ (Monica: Need to evaluate if the below are the BEST available teaching videos in the BEST order):

Day 1ff: Watch this San Diego Voice and Accent video on how to pronounce English /w/ (and /y/), then practice pronouncing at least 10 new words beginning with /w/ per day (and, after you can reliably pronounce words BEGINNING with /w/, then words containing /w/ more generally), first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you, checking yourself each time that you have not accidentally started your intended /w/ with a glottal stop

Day 2: Watch this Sounds American video on how to pronounce English /w/

Day 3 (optional): Watch this Clear English Corner video on "Hidden sounds in English words"

• “wouldn’t” mispronounced as “_ouldn’t” (x2) (PD)

/ɫ/ at the end of words/syllables commonly mispronounced as /w/ (or /r/): Watch this video on how to pronounce dark /ɫ/ and then practice pronouncing at least 10 new words ending in /ɫ/ per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you. After you feel generally competent at distinguishing /l/ vs. /n/ vs. /d/ AND ending /ɫ/ vs. /w/, practice pronouncing at least 10 new words containing /l/ (at the beginning, middle, AND end of words and syllables) per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

• Wow!!! Fantastic pronunciation of even difficult words like “interval”and “equal”!

• “well” mispronounced as “wew” (x2) (PD)

• “wall” mispronounced as “war” (following neither British nor American pronunciation)

• “tool” mispronounced as “too_”

• “people” mispronounced as “pee-poe” (PD)

• “styles” mispronounced as “sty-oes” (PD)

• “political” mispronounced as “politico” (PD)

• “paintball” mispronounced as “paint + baa + ee”

• “until” mispronounced as “untee-ow”

• “solvent” mispronounced as “saw-vent” 

• “alpha” mispronounced sometimes as “owpha” and other times as “arpha” (x2) (PD)

• “imperial” mispronounced as “im-PEE-row” (but should sound like “im-PEE-ree-ull,” i.e., as 4 syllables, not 3)

• “world” mispronounced as “wood”—Watch the following videos on how to pronounce the particularly challenging English words of “world” and "girl," then practice pronouncing the word “world” 10 times, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you (Monica: Need to evaluate if the below are the BEST available teaching videos in the BEST order): 

  • Accent’s Way English with Hadar: How to Pronounce Were, Word, World

  • Accent’s Way English with Hadar: “How to pronounce WORLD (so it doesn’t sound like ‘word’)

  • Clear English Corner’s “How to say Girl and World”

  • Accent’s Way English with Hadar: “How to say GIRL with an American accent”

Deleting final consonants:

• You FREQUENTLY delete final consonants (and sometimes even entire syllables), which unfortunately in English carry a LOT of the meaning (including grammatical meaning)—fixing this should therefore be your #1 pronunciation goal. Practice the following first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you, being careful NOT to delete the final syllable/consonant(s)

  • “digit” mispronounced as “digi_” (specifically “digi-” + /ʔ/)

  •  “leftward” sounded like “left” + “were” (with the final “d” deleted)

• You sometimes delete consonants located at the end of English words and syllables and/or substitute a nasalized vowel (e.g., ã, ẽ, ĩ, õ, ũ, ỹ, or r̃).

Day 1ff: Practice the following first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you, being sure to check for each word that you are clearly pronouncing ALL of its ending consonants—make sense?

• 1. • “mind” mispronounced as “mĩ_”

     • “inside” (mispronounced as “insĩ__”) 

Day 2ff: Practice clearly pronouncing the final consonants of at least 10 familiar words per day from the following lists, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you, checking each time that you are clearly pronouncing ALL the ending consonant sounds, including /n/, /m/, or /ŋ/, NOT just nasalizing the preceding vowel—make sense?

• 1. • Words/syllables ending in just "-at" or "-et" or "-it" or "-ot" or "-ut" (e.g., from your presentation—"let" and "out")

     • Words/syllables ending in "-nd" (e.g., from your presentation—"around")

     • Words/syllables ending in "-nt" (e.g., from your presentation—"want" and "point")

     • Words/syllables ending in "-ne" or "-n" (e.g., from your presentation—"online" and "anyone")       

Day 3ff: Use the practice activity “Analyze2Imitate: Final Consonants” to work on building habits of automatically pronouncing (most!) consonants spelled at the end of words ☺

Nonstandard consonant cluster reduction: Although these pronunciations match African-American English (AAE), they do not match mainstream American English (MAE). If you would like to work on adding the MAE pronunciations to your pronunciation repertoire, pay attention to pronouncing (most!) consonants spelled at the end of words (Monica, is this the best video for teaching the "rule of three"? Also, develop comment that MAE also exhibits metathesis in words like "iron" and increasingly "introduce" and "interduce"):

• “/g/ + /z/” simplified to “/z/”

  • “example” sounded like “e-zample” (but standard English pronounces it as “egg-zample)—also in PD x2)

  • “experience” sounded like “e-spe-ri-ence” (but standard English pronounces it as “ek-sperience”) (PD)

• “/k/ + /s/” simplified to “/s/”

  • “accept” sounded like “a-sept” (but should sound like “ak-sept”) (PD)

  • “maximum” sounded like “mazimum” (but should sound like “maksimum”)

• “/k/ + /ʃ/” simplified to “/ʃ/”

  • “reaction” sounded like “re-ya-shen” (but should sound like “re-yak-shen”)

  • “actually” sounded like “a-shually” (but should sound like “ak-shually”) (PD)

• “/tʃ/” simplified to “/ʃ/”

  • “check” sounded like “sheck” (PD)

  • “matching” sounded like “mashing” (PD)

  • “research” sounded like “researsh” (x2 in PD)

• “fact” sounded like “fat”

• Overall, you were VERY clear, but check your pronunciation of “strengths” (Just FYI: This word is complicated even for native English speakers to pronounce! However, if you review native English speaker pronunciations of  “strengths” in YouGlish, you’ll see the native speaker strategy for making “strengths” easier to pronounce is pronouncing it as the 1-syllable “strengks,” NEVER as the 2-syllables “strength-es”)

• Accent's Way English with Hadar's video on how to pronounce "clothes"

• Accent's Way English with Hadar's video on how to pronounce "months"

Metathesis

• “ask” sounded like “aks”—Although this pronunciation matches African-American English (AAE), it does not match mainstream American English (MAE). If you would like to work on adding the MAE pronunciation to your pronunciation repertoire, pay attention to pronouncing the ending consonants in the order they are spelled, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until this pronunciation becomes automatic for you

• “asked” sounded like “akst” (but should sound like “ast”)—Although this pronunciation matches African-American English (AAE), it does not match mainstream American English (MAE). If you would like to work on adding the MAE pronunciation to your pronunciation repertoire, pay attention to pronouncing the “-sked” ending following the ”rule of three,” first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until this pronunciation becomes automatic for you 

Spelling-Based Segmental Errors

• "Illinois" (Notice the "s" is silent so should NOT be pronounced 😉)

• "experience" ("x" once pronounced correctly as "ks" but another time mispronounced as /s/)

• “closest” mispronounced as "clozest," presumedly following the verb pronunciation of “close” vs. the adjective pronunciations of “close”/ “closer”/“closest”

• "qu-" mispronounced as /k/ (but in most English words should instead sound like /kw/) (Monica: Still need to evaluate if the below are the BEST available teaching videos in the BEST order):

  • Day 1: Watch and practice pronouncing "qu" in English using this video from Tarle Speech

  • Day 2: Watch and practice pronouncing "qu" in English using this video from Accent's Way English with Hadar

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaKehPt5tU4

    • “quantities” mispronounced as “kaunt” + "-ities"

• /ʒ/ in “edge” mispronounced as another /d/ or /g/: Watch this video on how to pronounce /d͡ʒ/ and then practice pronouncing at least 10 new words containing /d͡ʒ/ per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

• “longer” 

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfFq6swBXTs

Monophthongs

/æ/ mispronounced as /ɛ/—Watch each of the following videos, practicing each mentioned word first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you, paying attention to pronouncing the “a” as in “Navisworks” with your mouth WIDE open (as for the /æ/ in “bat”) vs. only SLIGHTLY open (as for the /ɛ/ in “bet”) (Monica: Need to evaluate if the below are the BEST available teaching videos in the BEST order)

Day 1: Watch this Accent's Way with Hadar video on how to pronounce /æ/ vs. /ɛ/

Day 2: Watch this San Diego Voice and Accent video on how to pronounce /æ/ vs. /ɛ/

Day 3: Watch this Sounds American video on how to pronounce /æ/ vs. /ɛ/

Day 4: Watch and practice how to pronounce /æ/ using this second San Diego Voice and Accent video

Day 5: Watch and practice how to pronounce /æ/ using this Clear English Corner video

Day 6ff: Practice pronouncing at least 5 new /æ/ vs. /ɛ/ minimal pairs (Monica: Need to evaluate if this is the BEST minimal pairs list to share) per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

• “Navisworks” mispronounced as “Nevisworks” (so mispronounced as following "net")

/ɛ/ mispronounced as /æ/—Watch each of the following videos, practicing each mentioned word first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you, paying attention to pronouncing the “e” in “best” with your mouth only SLIGHTLY open (as for the /ɛ/ in “bet”) vs. WIDE open (as for the /æ/ in “bat”) (Monica: Need to evaluate if the below are the BEST available teaching videos in the BEST order)

Day 1: Watch this Accent's Way with Hadar video on how to pronounce /ɛ/ vs. /æ/

Day 2: Watch this San Diego Voice and Accent video on how to pronounce /ɛ/ vs. /æ/

Day 3: Watch this Sounds American video on how to pronounce /ɛ/ vs. /æ/

Day 4: Watch and practice how to pronounce /ɛ/ using this first San Diego Voice and Accent video

Day 5ff: Practice pronouncing at least 5 new /ɛ/ vs. /æ/ minimal pairs (Monica: Need to evaluate if this is the BEST minimal pairs list to share) per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

• “said” mispronounced as “sad” (PD)

• “best” mispronounced as “bast”

• “never” mispronounced as “navver” (PD)

/i/ mispronounced as /ɪ/—If you think this is a common mistake for you, watch each of the following videos, practicing each mentioned word first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you, paying attention to pronouncing /i/ with your mouth muscles TENSE (like for the letter of the alphabet “e”) vs. RELAXED 

Day 1: Watch and practice distinguishing /i/ vs. /ɪ/ using this first San Diego Voice and Accent video

Day 2: Watch and practice distinguishing /i/ vs. /ɪ/ using this second San Diego Voice and Accent video

Day 3: Watch and practice distinguishing /i/ vs. /ɪ/ using this Sounds American video

Day 4: Watch and practice distinguishing /i/ vs. /ɪ/ using this first Accent's Way with Hadar video

Day 5: Watch and practice distinguishing /i/ vs. /ɪ/ using this second Accent's Way with Hadar video

Day 6ff: Practice pronouncing at least 5 new /i/ vs. /ɪ/ minimal pairs (Monica: Need to evaluate if this is the BEST minimal pairs list to share) per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

• “between” mispronounced as “betwin” (x2) (PD)

/ɪ/ mispronounced as /i/—Watch each of the following videos, practicing each mentioned word first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you, paying attention to pronouncing /ɪ/ with your mouth muscles RELAXED vs. TENSE

Day 1: Watch and practice distinguishing /i/ vs. /ɪ/ using this first San Diego Voice and Accent video

Day 2: Watch and practice distinguishing /i/ vs. /ɪ/ using this second San Diego Voice and Accent video

Day 3: Watch and practice distinguishing /i/ vs. /ɪ/ using this Sounds American video

Day 4: Watch and practice distinguishing /i/ vs. /ɪ/ using this first Accent's Way with Hadar video

Day 5: Watch and practice distinguishing /i/ vs. /ɪ/ using this second Accent's Way with Hadar video

Day 6ff: Practice pronouncing at least 5 new /i/ vs. /ɪ/ minimal pairs (Monica: Need to evaluate if this is the BEST minimal pairs list to share) per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

• “hit” mispronounced as “heat”

• “river” mispronounced as "reever" (i.e., so like the tense /i/ in “read” but should have been pronounced with the relaxed /ɪ/ like in "rid")

/ɪ/ mispronounced as /ɛ/—Watch each of the following videos, practicing each mentioned word first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you, paying attention to ? (Monica: Need to evaluate if the below is the BEST teaching order)

Day 1: Watch and practice how to pronounce /ɪ/ using this first San Diego Voice and Accent video

Day 2: Watch and practice how to pronounce /ɛ/ using this second San Diego Voice and Accent video

Day 3: Watch and practice distinguishing /ɪ/ vs. /ɛ/ using this Sounds American video

Day 4: Watch and practice how to pronounce /ɪ/ using this Clear English Corner video

Day 5ff: Practice pronouncing at least 5 new /ɪ/ vs. /ɛ/ minimal pairs per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

/ɑ/ mispronounced as /ʌ/ : Watch each of the following videos, practicing each mentioned word first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

Day 1: Watch and practice distinguishing /ʌ/ vs. /ɑ/ using this first San Diego Voice and Accent video

Day 2: Watch and practice distinguishing /ʌ/ vs. /ɑ/ using this first San Diego Voice and Accent video

Day 3: Watch and practice distinguishing /ʌ/ vs. /ɑ/ using this second San Diego Voice and Accent video

• “box” mispronounced as “bux”  (If you think this is a common mistake for you, practice pronouncing at least 10 new words ending in /ox/ and words ending in /ocks/ per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

/ʌ/ mispronounced as /ɑ/: Watch each of the following videos, practicing each mentioned word first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

Day 1: Watch and practice distinguishing /ʌ/ vs. /ɑ/ using this Sounds American video

Day 2: Watch and practice distinguishing /ʌ/ vs. /ɑ/ using this first San Diego Voice and Accent video

Day 3: Watch and practice distinguishing /ʌ/ vs. /ɑ/ using this second San Diego Voice and Accent video

• “stuck” mispronounced as “stock” (x2) (PD)

• the “u-” in “studies” mispronounced as the “o-” in “stop”

• “hundred” mispronounced as “handred” (so /ʌ/  in “cut” sounded instead like /æ/ in cat)

/ʊ/ mispronounced as /u/ : Watch each of the following videos, practicing each mentioned word first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you (Monica: Need to evaluate if the below are the BEST available teaching videos in the BEST order—have only searched VERY briefly)

Day 1: Watch and practice distinguishing /ʊ/ vs. /u/ using this first Accent's Way with Hadar video

Day 2: Watch and practice distinguishing /ʊ/ vs. /u/ using this second Accent's Way with Hadar video (/ʊ/ as in the spelling "o" in "woman")

Day 3: Watch and practice distinguishing /ʊ/ vs. /u/ using this third Accent's Way with Hadar video

• “wood” mispronounced as “wooed”

Diphthongs

/ɑi/ diphthong mispronounced as /ɑ/ monophthong: Watch each of the following videos, practicing each mentioned word first individually (being careful to pronounce the /i/ part of the diphthong long enough to check that you have indeed pronounced it), and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you (again pronouncing the /i/ part of the diphthong long enough to check that you have indeed pronounced it) (Monica: Need to evaluate if the below are the BEST videos in the BEST teaching order)

Day 1: San Diego Voice and Accent's video on how to pronounce the /ai/ diphthong vs. /ɑ/

Day 2: Sounds American's video on how to pronounce the /ɑi/ diphthong vs. /ɑ/

Day 3ff: Practice pronouncing at least 10 new words containing the diphthong /ai/ per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

• “pipeline” mispronounced as “popline” 

/ei/ diphthong mispronounced as /ɛ/ monophthong: Watch each of the following videos, practicing each mentioned word first individually (being careful to pronounce the /i/ part of the diphthong long enough to check that you have indeed pronounced it), and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you (again pronouncing the /i/ part of the diphthong long enough to check that you have indeed pronounced it) (Monica: Need to evaluate if the below is the BEST teaching order)

Day 1: San Diego Voice and Accent's video on how to pronounce the /ei/ diphthong vs. /ɛ/,

Day 2: Sounds American's video on how to pronounce the /ei/ diphthong vs. /ɛ/

Day 3: English with Kristina's video on how to pronounce the /ei/ diphthong vs. /ɛ/

Day 4: English with Kristina's minimal pairs practice video for /ei/ vs. /ɛ/

Day 5ff: Practice pronouncing at least 5 new /ei/ vs. /ɛ/ minimal pairs per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

Day 10ff: Practice pronouncing at least 10 new words containing the diphthong /ei/ per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

• “later” mispronounced as “letter” (x2) (PD)

• “way” mispronounced like just the “we-“ in “west”

•  “while” (so your /ei/ diphthong sounded instead like just /e/)

Other diphthongs: 

aʊ: If you think this is a common mistake for you, watch each of the following videos, practicing each mentioned word first individually (being careful to pronounce the second part of the diphthong long enough to check that you have indeed pronounced it correctly) and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you (again pronouncing the second part of the diphthong long enough to check that you have indeed pronounced it correctly)(Monica: Need to evaluate if the below are the BEST videos in the BEST teaching order)

Day 1: San Diego Voice and Accent's video on how to pronounce the English /aʊ/ diphthong

Day 2: Sounds American's video on how to pronounce English the /aʊ/ diphthong

Day 3ff: Practice pronouncing at least 10 new words containing the /aʊ/ diphthong per day, first individually and then within 5 YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

/oʊ/: If you think this is a common mistake for you, watch each of the following videos, practicing each mentioned word first individually (being careful to pronounce the second part of the diphthong long enough to check that you have indeed pronounced it correctly) and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you (again pronouncing the second part of the diphthong long enough to check that you have indeed pronounced it correctly)(Monica: Need to evaluate if the below are the BEST videos in the BEST teaching order)

Day 1: Clear English Corner's video on how to pronounce the English /oʊ/ diphthong

Day 2: Clear English Corner's video on how to pronounce "don't" and "won't" and "phone"

Day 3: Accent's Way English with Hadar's on how to pronounce "hotel" in English

Day 4:Accent's Way English with Hadar's on how to pronounce "focus" in English

Day 5:San Diego Voice and Accent's video on how to pronounce the /oʊ/ diphthong

Day 6: Sounds American's video on how to pronounce the /oʊ/ diphthong

Day 7ff: Practice pronouncing at least 10 new words containing the /oʊ/ diphthong per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

/ɔɪ/:If you think this is a common mistake for you, watch each of the following videos, practicing each mentioned word first individually (being careful to pronounce the second part of the diphthong long enough to check that you have indeed pronounced it correctly) and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you (again pronouncing the second part of the diphthong long enough to check that you have indeed pronounced it correctly)(Monica: Need to evaluate if the below are the BEST videos in the BEST teaching order)

Day 1: San Diego Voice and Accent's video on how to pronounce the English /ɔɪ/ diphthong

Day 2: Sounds American's video on how to pronounce the /ɔɪ/ diphthong

Day 3ff: Practice pronouncing at least 10 new words containing the /ɔɪ/ diphthong per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

Vowel Syncope

• “electronically” (as you’ll see if you check YouGlish, English speakers basically always delete the “a” in words ending in “-ically” so that the pronunciation ends up sounding like just “-ickly” )

• “generally” mispronounced (specifically, metathesized, so with the order of two sounds switched) as “jer-nally”—though you’re correct to delete pronunciation of the middle “-e-“ as described in these videos:

  • San Diego Voice and Accent’s “Vowel Syncope (a.k.a. ‘Words you’re saying wrong’)”

  • San Diego Voice and Accent’s “Do NOT say these vowels” 

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQadOrVqyHc

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y1CM0Mtmps

Nonstandard Vowel Deletion

Deleting /r/—Although British English often does not pronounce /r/ where it is spelled, in the American context pronouncing the following r-colored vowels without a clear /r/ can sometimes make it hard for listeners to identify the word you're saying. If you’re interested in adjusting your pronunciation to match your currently American context, practice pronouncing the following words, first individually (checking you have indeed clearly pronounced /r/) and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you (again being careful to check each time that you have indeed clearly pronounced /r/)

• // mispronounced as //—Watch each of the following videos, practicing each mentioned word first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you

  • Day 1: How you DO want to pronounced these words—

  • Day 2: How you DON’T want to pronounced these words—

• “pairwise” sounded like “pe-“ (as in "pet") + - wise” (I’m afraid I couldn’t figure out what word you were saying until I read it on your slides)

• • San Diego Voice and Accent's video introduction to R-colored vowels

  • San Diego Voice and Accent's video on how to pronounce the American English r-colored vowels /ɝ/ and /ɚ/ (as in "per" and "pepper," respectively)

  • San Diego Voice and Accent's video on how to pronounce the American English r-colored vowel /ɪr/ (as in "here")

  • San Diego Voice and Accent's video on how to pronounce the American English r-colored vowel /ɛr/ (as in "care")

  • San Diego Voice and Accent's video on how to pronounce the American English r-colored vowel /ɑr/ (as in "car")  

  • San Diego Voice and Accent's video on how to pronounce the American English r-colored vowel /ɔr/ (as in "core") 

  • San Diego Voice and Accent's video on how to pronounce the American English r-colored vowel /ʊr/ (as in "cure")

Nonstandard Vowel Insertion

Inserting /r/: Practice the following first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you, being careful to check that you have NOT inserted /r/:

• • "modern” mispronounced as “mordern” (which doesn’t match either British or American pronunciation)

  • “breakfast” mispronounced as “breakfarst"

Vowel Metathesis

• You FREQUENTLY exchange English vowels in a not clearly patterned way that listeners are therefore highly unlikely to be able to recalibrate to, which will almost certainly affect their ability to understand what you’re saying—fixing this should therefore be your #2 pronunciation goal: (1) Pay attention to CAREFULLY pronouncing whatever you say in English and (2) Practice the following first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you  (Monica: Need to evaluate if the below are the BEST available vowel teaching videos)

  • Continue working via Linguatorium to strengthen your ability to reliably identify WHICH English vowel you’re saying vs. what you SHOULD be saying

  • Watch one of the following videos per day, practicing their included words first individually and then within 10 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you)

  • San Diego Voice and Accent’s “American English Vowels” video playlist )

Spelling-Based Segmental Errors

Practice the following first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation (in spite of their potentially confusing spelling!) becomes automatic for you 

• “subjectivity” (maybe due to spelling, with the “u” mispronounced as /u/, whereas should be pronounced as /ʌ/)

• “audience” (maybe due to spelling, mispronounced as /ɑʊ/ but should be pronounced as just /ɑ/) 

• Accent's Way English with Hadar's video on how to pronounce "accept" (and "except")

• “chamber” (Spelling here is misleading because the “cham-“ in “chamber” in fact rhymes with “same,” not “Sam”)

• “bivalent” was pronounced with the “val-“ in “valley” but should have been pronounced with the /ei/ as in “vail”

• “precaution” sounded like “pre-coe-tion” (so, maybe based on spelling, the /ɑ/ in “cot” sounded like the /oʊ/ in “coat”)

• “audience” (mispronounced as /ɑʊ/ but should be pronounced as just /ɑ/)

• "unread references" mispronounced as "unREED" (but should sound like "unRED")

• “simultaneously” 

• “protocol” mispronounced as “prodigal” (so, maybe based on spelling, sounded like the /ɑ/ in “prawn” but should sound like the /oʊ/ in “prone”)—especially work on this word b/c important in your field!

• “punch” mispronounced as “poonch” (Pay attention to pronouncing the “u” in “punch” with your lips RELAXED vs. TENSELY ROUNDED) “Harry Potter” sounded like the “har-“ in “hard” but should sound instead sound like the word “hair” 

• “Harry Potter” sounded like the “har-“ in “hard” but should sound instead sound like the word “hair” 

Enunciation

• Enunciation: X, your English pronunciation is generally accurate, but because you tend to mumble (i.e., not CLEARLY articulating/enunciating individual sounds) and you tend to become quieter toward the end of phrases, what you are saying is still sometimes hard to understand. Watch each of the following related videos and then practice applying whichever of their enunciation/articulation practice technique(s) you consider most helpful:  (Monica: Need to evaluate if the below is the BEST teaching order)

Day 1: Jaeny Baik's video on how to stop mumbling

Day 2: Vocal Image's video on how to improve your articulation

Day 3: Accent's Way English with Hadar's video on three exercises to improve your pronunciation

Day 4: Patrick Muñoz's video on using a cork to develop vocal strength

Day 5: Patrick Muñoz's video on how to stop mumbling

Day 6: Psychology Theory's video on how to stop mumbling

• For your presentation, your enunciation (=careful pronunciation of each sound) was good, but for your response to X’s question, you defaulted into NOT speaking clearly, which made your answer VERY hard to understand— I think this is the #1 thing you should work on because from our classroom interactions this semester it appears that although you CAN pronounce English clearly as demonstrated by your Microteaching #2 presentation BEFORE X’s question, your default is currently to relax into NOT doing this (In other words, I think many times people struggle to understand your pronunciation NOT because you don’t know HOW to pronounce a given English word/sound, but simply because you aren’t paying enough attention to doing so—make sense?)

Syllable Deletion

• “soLUtion” mispronounced as “SUtion” (i.e, accidentally deleted the 2nd syllable, even though that’s actually the stressed syllable 🤭) 

• “variable” mispronounced as “varable” (deleting the “-i” syllable, including invisible /y/) 

• “sustainability” (mispronounced with deleted syllable as just “sustability”) 

• “guitar pro_____” (I’m afraid I can’t figure out what word you were trying to say)

Miscellaneous

• Mostly your pronunciation is accurate, but I have added and highlighted in green on your 15-minutes-per-day homework doc at URL my recommended homework for improving your pronunciation of the following words: "entropy" ("o" in this word is not stressed so should be pronounced as the unstressed central vowel /ə/); "DIFfers" (incorrectly stressed as "difFERS"); "world" (sounded like "word"); “sustainability” (mispronounced with deleted syllable as just “sustability”); “evaluates” (should be pronounced with invisible /y/ and /w/ as “eval-you-waits” 😉); "materiality" (pronounced accurately but not fluently 😉)

• X, I know your natural tendency/preference is to focus on the big picture in communication vs. details of pronunciation/grammar—and your (big-picture) English fluency and suprasegmentals (i.e., word stress, primary phrase stress, and intonation) are FANTASTIC! Unfortunately, what often makes your English pronunciation hard to understand is your pronunciation of individual sounds 😭.

• Create an account and use English Accent Coach to strengthen your ability to reliably identify which consonant/vowel you’re saying vs. the English consonant/vowel you SHOULD be saying 

  • Continue working via Linguatorium to strengthen your ability to reliably identify which consonant/vowel you’re saying vs. the English consonant/vowel you SHOULD be saying

• Review Accent’s Way English with Hadar “10 pronunciation challenges for Hindi and Urdu speakers” to assess which additional English pronunciation challenges you might face. Practice each likely problem word individually (or in minimal pairs) and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you 

• Very clear slides and pronunciation!

  • Overall, very clear slides and pronunciation, but practice accurately pronouncing the following first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts (e.g., https://youglish.com/pronounce/rheumatoid/english/us) every day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you: "rheumatoid" and "contribute" (=4 for key word in presentation OR 3+ pronunciation errors) 

• The letter “n” mispronounced as “un” but should be pronounced as “en” (See also Clear English Corner's "How to pronounce the letters of the English alphabet")

• “example” (mispronounced as something similar to “-pell” but should sound more like “-pull”)

• “X” sometimes mispronounced as “Y” (but other times okay)

• “X” mispronounced as something like “Y” (which doesn’t match either British or American pronunciation)

• “determine” (notice specifically how the admittedly unpredictable way “-mine” is pronounced 😉) 

• "vs." (accidentally mispronounced as the individual letters "v" + "s" instead of its spelled-out pronunciation "versus")

• (If you think this is a common mistake for you, watch one of the following videos per day, practicing their included words first individually and then within 10 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you) 

• (If you think this is a common mistake for you, practice pronouncing at least 10 familiar words ending with "-ution"  per day, first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you)

• https://ipa.typeit.org/

• Although you spoke with no lisp, 

• Mostly your individual word pronunciations are accurate, but practice the pronunciation of the following technical terms in your field (and other important words), first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts per day until their standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you:

  • "execute" (4 mispronunciations)

  • "components" (MUCH improved—accurate every time except once 🤩) 

  • "parallel" (syllable deleted to sound like just “peril” 🤭)

  • Yes, DEFINITELY practice accurately pronouncing the word "academic" first individually and then within 5 new YouGlish phrasal contexts (e.g., https://youglish.com/pronounce/academic/english/us?) every day until its standard pronunciation becomes automatic for you (Notice that its word stress is NOT the same as for "acAdemy" 😉—also, maybe this word is pronounced differently in Indian English vs. other dialects of English? (To find out, check out https://youglish.com/pronounce/academic/english/uk? and https://youglish.com/pronounce/academic/english/aus?

• Clearly well-organized, easy to follow, and transitioned smoothly

• Completed as assigned

• Not yet submitted/Not submitted

• Just FYI: In the US, middle school includes only grades 6–8 or 6–9. Would students at this level have learned the pressure equation you discussed? (Or did you actually mean “high school” that in the U.S. includes either grades 9–12 or 10–12?)

• Overall, good grammar 😊 

• Use the Anayze2Imitate: Grammar practice activity to work on building habits of automatically applying the English grammar rules I think you already know ☺

  • “What is the degree_ of freedom?” (x2—Are you talking about only ONE degree of freedom?) 

  • “it will soundS weird,” whereas should have been “it will SOUND weird” 

• Do the “Transcribing and correcting the grammar of a 1-minute talk you’ve recorded” activity

Phrasing

Search the following in YouGlish and/or Google Scholar (in quotation marks) to find out which is preferred phrasing for expressing your intended idea. Then practice the preferred phrasing(s) for each of the following in 5 new sentences per day until this phrasing becomes automatic for you: 

• “Today we talk about how to formulate a linear program” (vs. “Today we’re going to talk about”)

Word order

• X, I've added and highlighted in green in my recommended 15-minutes-per-day homework assignment for you a series of exercises to help you work on improving the grammaticality of your questions in English (cf., your accidentally ungrammatical "Why clock speed is important?" and asked "Any OTHER questions?" before first having asked "Any questions?" 😉)—see URL

• Work on making your use of standard English word order for questions automatic by searching the structure of each of the linked questions in YouGlish, practicing its word order in 5 new sentences per day until this phrasing becomes automatic for you (Monica: Need to evaluate if the linked resources is the BEST for building new question word order HABITS): 

  • • “Why you can buy. . . ?” vs. “Why can you buy. . .?” (Both word orders are possible, but how does their usage differ?) 

Transition words

• Accidentally mixed up “on the contrary” vs. “in contrast”

Verbs

Tense

• "was donate_"

• “this expression that we have seen”—I’m confused because, grammatically, “that we have seen” reminds readers of something discussed earlier, but in fact we DIDN’T discuss the four factorial earlier, right?

Form

• “the researcher TRYING,” whereas should have been “the researcher IS TRYING” 

• As you'll see if you check YouGlish, "shrink" is an irregular verb:  its past tense is actually "shrunk," not "shrinked"

Articles

Missing "the"

Sometimes good use of “the” but other times missing “the”:

• “the part where __ function is called again” (Are you talking about a function that BOTH YOU AND YOUR READERS ALREADY KNOW ABOUT—e.g., because you’ve already introduced it? Or are you talking about functions IN GENERAL? Do you therefore need “the” here?)  (Download pp. 50-55 of the electronic copy of the textbook Science Research Writing (by Hilary Glasman-Deal) from Parks Library — Science Research Writing contains an outstanding explanation of “the” in English — as well as of many other useful grammar and research writing points ☺)

• “So, __ factorial of a number” (X, the “of” phrase here postmodifies the noun “factorial,” making clear to readers which SPECIFIC “factorial” you’re talking about and therefore requiring the definite article “the” — See section 2b of this excellent, easy-to-understand article from the University of Toronto on figuring out when you need “the” and when you don’t)

Missing "a/an"A: This is minor (because almost never affects listeners’ understanding) but may want to consider working on RELIABLY adding “a/an” to countable nouns—make sense?

• “I’m __ second-year graduate student”

• “I’m doing __ master’s”

• “How do we calculate __ factorial?”

• “from list” (and “from big list”) vs. “from A list” and “from A big list”

Plurals

Work on RELIABLY adding “-s” to plural nouns:

• “solve simple problems” misspoken as “solve simple problem_”

• “six or seven nodes” misspoken as “seven or six node_”

Subject-Verb Agreement

• “they still behaves” whereas should have been “they still behave”

• You accidentally said “OBJECT moves together” when you were talking about TWO colliding objects and so meant “objectS move together”

• “first question DEAL_  with,” whereas should have been “first question DEALS with”  (though your slide had the correct “dealt with” or “deals with”)

Noun-Pronoun Agreement

• “this issues” (should be either “these issues" or “this issue_”—make sense?)

Feedback templates for grammar patterns/collocations:

Search the following in YouGlish and/or Google Scholar (in quotation marks) to find out which is preferred phrasing for expressing your intended idea. Then practice the preferred phrasing(s) for each of the following in 5 new sentences per day until this phrasing becomes automatic for you 

• Google (in quotation marks) “XXX” vs. “YYY" to find out which is preferred phrasing for expressing your intended idea. Then practice the preferred phrasing(s) for each of the following in 5 new sentences per day until this phrasing becomes automatic for you 

• (Previously "Use COCA to identify one standard/preferred phrasing option used by English speakers when communicating similar ideas and add to your Anki flashcards a card containing that standard/preferred phrasing. On each Anki-scheduled review day, create 2 or 3 new sentences using that phrasing in order to build the habit of automatically using standard/preferred English phrasing most of the time — make sense?")

Sentence patterns: 

• “What DOES Google do?” misspoken as “What _____ Google do?” (Practice the “What does ____ do?” sentence pattern in 5 new sentences per day for 5 days)

• “I don't EVEN have A DRIVER’S license” vs. “I EVEN have NO DRIVING license" 

• “dataset IS COME from” vs. “dataset COMES from” (in “dataset IS COME from big list”)

• “HOW is the proper way to hold” (a guitar) vs. “WHAT is the proper way to hold" (a guitar)

• “was explaining one of my students” vs. “was explaining TO one of my students”

Word ORDER: 

• “the goal of OUR TODAY’s lesson” vs. “the goal of TODAY’s lesson" vs. “the goal of OUR lesson TODAY"

Word CHOICE:

• Verb choice:  “make a confusion” vs. “make a mistake” vs. “get confused”

• Noun choice:  “in a horizontal MANNER” vs. “in a horizontal POSITION" 

• Adjective choice: “POPULAR scientist” vs. “FAMOUS scientist" (also accidentally said “perpendicular” when meaning “horizontal”)

• Preposition choice: 

  • “IN the other hand” vs. “ON the other hand”

  • “IN each string” vs. “ON each string" (Hint: Don’t just compare their total number of results—notice which result describes GUITAR strings)

  • “introduction TO” vs. “introduction OF” (Both phrasings are common—however, can you figure out why only “introduction TO” would be preferred in your context?

Word FORM:

• “ready to recordING” vs. “ready to RECORD"

• Google (in quotation marks) “later it was PROVE that not the case” vs. “later it was PROVEN that not the case” vs. “later it was PROVEN that WAS not the case” to find out which is preferred phrasing for expressing your intended idea

• “to BRIEF summarize” vs. “to BRIEFLY summarize" 

• “conflicts over political” vs. “conflicts over politics” (Both are possible, but how does their usage differ?) (PD) 

• “snow mountain” vs. “snowy mountain" 

Verbs:

• “If I’m not a. . . .” (originally “If I’m not a graduate student here”) vs. “If I weren’t a. . . .” (Both phrases in quotation marks are possible, but why is only the second correct for your sentence?) (PD)

Articles:

• “THE Newton’s third law of motion”—Google “Newton’s third law of motion” (in quotation marks) to figure out whether or not “the” should precede it (Can you figure out WHY this is the case?)

• “the COVID”—search in YouGlish to figure out when people say “the COVID” vs. just “COVID” (Based on your intended meaning, which should you have said?)

• “continue THE graduate school” vs. “continue graduate school” (PD)

Plurals:

• “all the datas” vs. “all the DATA" (said as “all the datas in one interval”)

Noun/pronoun agreement:

• “WHO scrape the data” vs. “THAT scrape the data” vs. “THAT scrapeS the data” (in “website WHO scrape_ the data”)

Miscellaneous

• GREAT/Good vocabulary (e.g., “ubiquitous”) 

• Just FYI: Only very rarely do Americans call the name of their country “America” (usually only in patriotic music or possibly when living abroad)—MUCH more common phrasing is “the U.S.” or “the United States”

• I think you meant “APPARENTLY magically,” not (ACTUALLY) “magically”—make sense?

• Optional: Accent’s Way English with Hadar “Business English Playlist” 

• • Improve your understanding of native English by watching this video about common English word pairs that reduce when pronounced 

  • Practice distinguishing "can" vs. "can't" in listening and speaking

  • Continue to work on your English listening skills, e.g., by practice listening to and answering "Common Questions for International TAs" available from the University of Minnesota, since you didn’t quite catch X’s question and when a student answered one of your questions, you apparently didn’t understand his answer (or students could think you don’t care how they respond), since your summary afterward didn’t match what he’d actually said 

  • I noticed both of you had difficulty understanding what students were saying. To resolve such listening problems without shaming the student or yourself, what about asking "Why don't you write out the steps of your proposed solution on the board for us to discuss?" 😉 

• Very clear slides and pronunciation 🤩

• You may want to avoid wearing an outdoors jacket while presenting, because it suggests you're focused on leaving, not on your presentation. Make sense? 🤔

• Clearly well-organized, easy to follow, and transitioned smoothly

• Completed as assigned

• Not yet submitted/Not submitted

• Just FYI: In the US, middle school includes only grades 6–8 or 6–9. Would students at this level have learned the pressure equation you discussed? (Or did you actually mean “high school” that in the U.S. includes either grades 9–12 or 10–12?)

Dear X,

I'm sorry not to have managed to get this info to you earlier!

(1) Please sign up on Canvas at Calendar → Find appointment → Select course → View appointments → Reserve appointment ASAP for an individual conference with me next Tuesday either in my Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics Building (LCLB) #2019 office (upstairs on the 2nd floor) or via Zoom at XXXXXXXXX. (If none of my listed available times can work for you, please let me know!)

(2) Please complete before this Sunday, January 28th, at 11:59 pm (a) reviewing your Microteaching #1 video file and (b) completing our ESL 508 Microteaching #1 Self-Evaluation available at XXXXXXXXX

Thanks! Looking forward to hopefully meeting some time on Tuesday to debrief your Microteaching #1 🤗

Monica

Here's how I will share my recommended 15-minutes-per-day homework with you 🤗

Dear X,

 Here’s the (unlisted 😉) link to your Microteaching #2 video from tonight for you to use to complete your final self-reflection assignment: YYY

Here’s the link to your beginning-of-semester Microteaching #1: XXX

Thanks! 

Monica

Subject: List of ESL 508 students/majors 

Dear X & Y,

Please find attached our list of ESL 508 students/majors. Admittedly, probably most people in our class will have no trouble with your teaching-ChatGPT-algebra task, but to maximize the chances that any students WITHOUT adequate background are in groups likely to help them LEARN (vs. just doing the work FOR them 😝), you may want to strategically organize who is included in each group based on the following information about different ESL 508 students' majors, etc.: 

---

Very much looking forward to your lesson tonight!

Monica

Re: May I observe a lab?

Dear X,

Good question—DEFINITELY  you may observe a lab if lab instruction is most likely to be your future TA responsibility!!! 🤗

Remember teaching doesn't occur only at the front of a classroom. VERY often it occurs in one-on-one and/or small group interactions with students (like what happens in a lab 😉). ANYTHING a teacher does in order to maximize student learning is teaching—even if it's just watching as students attempt an assigned task on their own and stepping in only when the teacher believes doing so will produce MORE learning than letting students figure things out on their own. Make sense?

Monica

Please submit pre-observation questions so I know what to pay attention to when I observe 😉 

Dear X,

Could you please submit your <add Canvas link>pre-teaching-observation questions</add Canvas link> so I know what to pay particular attention to when I'm scheduled to observe your teaching tomorrow? 😉

I'm very much looking forward to it—thanks!

Monica

P.S. I was observing another student in a nearby building, so I checked <add building name>Talbot</add building name>today to make sure I could locate your classroom—just to verify: your classroom/lab is XXX 103 (the X Lab), right? 🤔

Scheduling our ESL 508 post-observation meeting?

Dear X,

I very much enjoyed observing your lecture-discussion section this morning—would you have time to meet in my LCLB #2019 office (upstairs on the 2nd floor) to chat about it any time tomorrow before 3 pm? (But just FYI: I'll need to have you <update Canvas link>submit your post-observation reflection BEFORE we meet</update Canvas link>, so we can discuss this as well 😉) 

If tomorrow can't work for you, please let me know—we can figure out a different date if necessary! 🤗

Monica

Dear ESL 508 students, 

Just a reminder to read before class tomorrow Foreign to Familiar's Chapter 5 (about inclusion vs. privacy) so you're ready for our discussion this week led by X & Y—and please don't forget to bring your textbooks to class for use as needed. Thanks! 🤗

Monica

P.S. Just FYI—I don’t think I have ever met a student from anywhere who would open unknown roommates’ luggage and try on their clothes, so I think the Chinese college student story shared by the author of Foreign to Familiar is extreme. However, minus that story, I have found the author’s comments on inclusion- vs. privacy-oriented cultures to be very accurate. For example, as I recall, my elementary school teachers basically never allowed students to share with classmates the lunches our parents had packed for us. I can also remember my mom catching me as a child crying in our front yard because I was so lonely and wanted a best friend. I had a sister and two brothers and classmates, but we didn’t do much together particularly after we became teenagers. In contrast, after my friendship network changed so that it primarily included friends from hot-climate cultures, I basically NEVER felt lonely 🤗

Dear X and (especially 🤔) Y,

Because you two are scheduled to lead our "Foreign to Familiar" discussion tomorrow, it occurred to me that you might understandably NOT read my "Please read Foreign to Familiar's Chapter 5" email I just sent to our class (since you likely have already read the chapter and planned our discussion questions)! Therefore, I wanted to email you two directly the caveat about this chapter I just sent all of your classmates:

I don’t think I have ever met a student from anywhere who would open unknown roommates’ luggage and try on their clothes, so I think the Chinese college student story shared by the author of Foreign to Familiar is extreme. However, minus that story, I have found the author’s comments on inclusion- vs. privacy-oriented cultures to be very accurate. For example, as I recall, my elementary school teachers basically never allowed students to share with classmates the lunches our parents had packed for us. I can also remember my mom catching me as a child crying in our front yard because I was so lonely and wanted a best friend. I had a sister and two brothers and classmates, but we didn’t do much together particularly after we became teenagers. In contrast, after my friendship network changed so that it primarily included friends from hot-climate cultures, I basically NEVER felt lonely 🤗

I do recognize this inaccurate example is a HUGE weakness of this chapter, but hopefully you can still recognize the cultural (as well as individual) differences it describes DO sometimes impact cross-cultural interactions so you can prioritize questions you have come up with that are most likely to help our classmates recognize if THEY might be at risk of accidentally experiencing/causing misunderstanding due to different expectations of inclusion vs. privacy. 

I'm SO sorry not to have managed to share my caveat about this chapter with you both earlier!!! 😭

Monica

Dear X,

Please find below my "official" email reminder of our last two conversations about inappropriate device use during ESL 508:

• Around the 3rd week of class (I think following our 2nd "Microteaching" day), I first expressed concern you were being rude to your classmates by using your phone and/or other device when they were teaching/talking 😭

• Two weeks ago, although you and Y did an OUTSTANDING job as our first Lecture & Discussion teachers 😍, when our ESL 508 activity then changed to discussing Foreign to Familiar, you had both your tablet (admittedly maybe open to our Foreign to Familiar textbook?) and phone with you and were clearly focused on your phone vs. discussing the Foreign to Familiar questions your classmates had prepared, not even looking up from your phone at ANY point during the discussion as far as I could tell. (When we chatted about this last week, you explained you were texting your students who had urgent questions about a midterm deadline later that night, which WAS helpful for me to know!)

• Last week, when A & B called on you to answer a question during their Lecture & Discussion lesson, you appeared to "freeze," like  you hadn't been paying attention to their lesson either and had NO idea how to answer their question 😭

As I shared with you when we chatted again about this last week, I'm worried about how this appears to have become a pattern of rudeness due to your paying attention to your device(s) vs. our ESL 508 class activities—especially given how this might impact your classmates who are just beginning as teachers/discussion leaders 😭

Therefore, although based on our conversation last week, I am hopeful you WILL fully participate in our class from now on 😍, I just want to let you know what will happen if I do observe any additional instances of rudeness during our ESL 508 class due to inattention to class activities/inappropriate device use:

1. First, even if I need to interrupt class to do so, I will provide the indirect reminder "X, I think you're forgetting something" (without specifying in front of the class WHAT you're forgetting, though possibly some of your classmates might guess)

2. Second, if inattention/distraction continues, even if I have to interrupt class to do so, I will provide the direct reminder,  "X, I think you're forgetting our conversation about it being rude to do other things on a device while your classmates are leading discussion/teaching"

It is very important to me that our ESL 508 class be a place everyone feels comfortable and encouraged as they grow in their English teaching/presentation/conversation skills, so I WILL do the above if I must to foster our class being a truly supportive learning environment. Nevertheless, I REALLY do not want to do either of the above, so PLEASE don't make me!!! 😭

Monica

P.S. I just wanted to let you know I plan on doing a "midterm checkpoint" talk tonight where I'll let everyone in our class know my general plan the rest of the semester for handling inappropriate device use/lack of thoughtful participation in terms of steps 1–2 above, but I will NOT mention your name when providing this overview 🤗