Words

Session Activity- Write words digitally

Item Produced- Digital spreadsheet of all words, pronunciation, and gloss from the last 13 days.

Summary-  I took each day and made it a sheet in an excel workbook. I then typed five columns (Day, date, word as it was in transcribed, orthographic transcription, and the descriptive meaning of the word or phrase as transcribed). I then took all of these individual day sheets and copied their info into an inclusive list of all days. This list was sorted alphabetically by the orthographic column to make a rudimentary dictionary. If I want to look for a word and only have the English, I can re-sort by the meaning (gloss) Column to get this information.

Linguistic Effective-  re-reading and typing the words in a few sittings was a chance to review the words and make connections I never saw before. This review produced a list of words I had not yet asked

Linguistic Ineffective- Penmanship, pronunciation changes, and incomplete inquisition all contributed to the large patches in the vocabulary list.

Linguistic Provisional Improvements- Penmanship

Cultural Effective- None of great impact

Cultural Ineffective- Not a cultural experience

Cultural Provisional Improvements-  None

Tomorrow- I should write the list of the words I want to ask and bring them back up with the speaker

Further Comments- I had procrastinated this for a while, but now that it is done, I feel much better and more prepared. I am eager to see my speaker's reaction when I present him with this list. I also and eager to get on with my next homework assignment of transcribing the story.

Boat and Prose

Duration- 00:50:48

Session Activity- Go over a boat diagram

Item Produced- list of nautical terms

Linguistic Effective- The speaker has worked most of his life on boats. The terms he uses are centered on this lifestyle. Getting more boat terms helped me better understand what my speaker was talking about

Linguistic Ineffective- Though effective, it was not very organized. I am afraid I jumped ahead of myself on this exercise. The boat terms were not as useful as they could have been as we have not gone through verbs. Most of the terms could not be implemented as I am still missing critical verbs

Linguistic Provisional Improvements- Let this be a lesson to myself and everyone else using the system that the challenges should be taken seriously. Don’t skip ahead until you get past the first part!!

Cultural Effective- my speaker lives and breathes boats. Knowing boating terms helps with the Ola! weather talk and also general conversation. I am finding I am learning new niche terms in English also

Cultural Ineffective- the third member of our group came for a lesson and I feel as though we didn’t take them into account enough. They had missed quite a few sessions and had difficulty keeping up. We should have slowed down and allowed them to ask more questions

Cultural Provisional Improvements-  make sure the pace is always even to include all learners

Tomorrow- VERBS VERBS VERBS! This has to happen before we take on anymore cultural activities!

Further Comments- My speaker seems to be gaining ease a fluency also. I told him this, and he mentioned that he re-reads the book at night using the charts to strengthen his vocabulary and memory of the language. I never envisioned the book also helping speakers improve themselves, but this is a welcomed outcome!

I Want it Now!

Ola! making it to the community!

Duration- 00:58:47

Session Activity- Began to look at syntax through the modification charts, skimmed possession, plurality, and modifiers.

Item Produced- basic theory on modifier and possession syntax, questions about plurality

Linguistic Effective- the charts kept us on track. Although they did not follow them directly, using different words than those in the examples, the charts helped to keep track of our progress, and keep us on the right track.

Linguistic Ineffective- the time was ineffective when we jumped around. A lot of the jumping happened because of guilt of wasting the speaker's time. I felt today he was so eager to work that I did not want to make these exercises a drudgery and dampen his perception for further session. we covered alot of different areas this way, and I have a strong instinct about how things are working within these rules. But I cant say I could make any grammatical conclusions.

Linguistic Provisional Improvements- I need to reconcile the balance of speaker interest and learner value. One thing I noticed in the Ola Weather talk is the speaker talks a lot about boats (he has worked on ships since the age of 14). Understandably, the breadth of ship terms was not covered in Ola. Maybe look into butting a "roll your own" chart in this section to encourage users to gather the vocab in the genre they detect the speaker using often in the weather talk

Cultural Effective-  Also effective is the "homework terms" the speaker researches. When we cannot find a word in our sessions, the speaker will ask the french speaking men at work the next day. This outside support group has so far been able to answer all of our outside questions. They have also invited me to visit the shipyard.

Cultural Ineffective- Although my speaker was not keen on his family terms, he was keen on explaining his boss' family structure, and the history of the boats.

Cultural Provisional Improvements- If we are stumbling on context, try and put things in boating terms

Tomorrow- I want to bring a diagram of a ship to our session and get fundamental terms for things. I also want to base our verb inquiry on ships.

Further Comments- I assumed I understood which culture I was gaining access in with the study. I guess I misjudged my speaker, his experiences, and his ship-based lifestyle

Describing the Sounds

The books have arrived!

Duration- 45 min 

Session Activity- Make a consonant list of the past few days

Item Produced- consonant list

Linguistic Effective- Went through the words I had gathered through the sessions and made a list of all the letters or symbols I used to describe the sounds. I then went through again and tallied how many times each letter had been used. With this, I made a list of sounds and letter I will try to use when explaining that sound

Linguistic Ineffective- I was kind of fever-y in a doctor's office. If I want a professional consonant list, this cannot be the final attempt at this product.

Linguistic Provisional Improvements- Maybe try and do this again in a few sessions.

Cultural Effective- n/a

Cultural Ineffective- n/a

Cultural Provisional Improvements-  n/a

Tomorrow- In my next session, I will try and observe if any new sounds appear beyond what I described in this list

Further Comments- In my next session, I will try and observe if any new sounds appear beyond what I described in this list