Thursday, July 22, 2010

Paper Fun & New Students Too

I had lots of fun today playing with paper. Unfortunately, I didn't finish a single project. Instead, I played with stamps and really enjoyed coloring them too. Later, I'll turn them into something presentable. LOL!

I've also got new students this week. For the first time in my career, I'm now teaching students from Brazil. I've had students from: Mexico, Puerto Rico, Panama, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Argentina, Russia, China, Viet Nam, Korea, Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, and India.

No matter where they come from, I am always amazed at the things I learn from them. For instance, my students from Cambodia and Laos would not even sit on the same side of the room because, culturally, they did not get along very well. That made practicing speaking English a bit difficult. LOL!

Tonight, I learned that the northern half of Brazil speaks a different dialect of Portuguese than the south. I discovered this when I realized one of my new students can pronounce the "th" sound while the other cannot.

Did you know that the "th" sound is one of the hardest sounds for a non-native speaker to make? That's because that sound does not exist in their languages. The closest sound they have is what we recognize as "d" as in "dis, dat and da udder ding."

Now, make sure you come back tomorrow for the weekly free file. I think it's very timely.

Until then, Happy Creative Time!

2 comments:

Lisa Avolio said...

Wow! You have so many different nations represented. I guess FL is more popular for them than MD. We mostly have Koreans and Latin Americans in our classes. What fun for you!

Elizabeth said...

Very interesting. Glad you had fun with your stamps and coloring.