Editing ESL/ESL class summaries and lesson plans (section)

== Sun Nov 17 ==
[[File:ESL Lesson-04 week of Nov 17.pdf|thumb|Lesson plan 4 for Sunday Nov 17]]
This week we had four students, including a new student who has not attended any classes before. 

* it worked out nicely, as she sat next to our most advanced student, who engaged and taught her along with our teachers
** having students teach one another is very effective (and pedagogically sound)
* we started with the Rosary, ending with "Saint Mary, pray for us! Saint Joseph, pray for us!" with which the students were not familiar (interesting -- perhaps to add to the prayer sheets?)
* we discussed the prior week's dialog lesson
* we discussed how speaking slowly and enunciating every consonant (vowels as well, but consonants most importantly) leads to greater comprehension
** we worked on enunciating words and compared it to slurred, fast speech
*** i.e.  ''Heh, howya doin'? Gimme those pencils'' = hard for ESL learning to understand
**** "Hi, how are you doing. Give me those pencils" spoken slowly is more comprehsible
** but, just the same, for ESL speakers, enunciation leads to greater spoken comprehension 
* then went to the Numbers sheet that we started the week before but which had errors (Michael...) 
* we discussed the use of "dozen" or "half a dozen" as a generality 
** i.e., when asked how many students were there today? instead of replying "five" we might say, "Oh, about half a dozen"
** ''how many apples in the basket: about two dozen'', etc.
* this led to a discussion about buying things in a store
** ''How much does that cost?''
** ''I want two dozen eggs'' etc.
** we will run a dialog exercise next week on purchasing something in a store
* we spent a lot of time working on how to pronounce "three" and "thirteen," which are difficult for Spanish speakers
** we found that breaking the word phonetically and into syllables helps
*** "tha  - ree"
*** :"thur - teen
** we reviewed other words that English speakers slur or mispronounce (especially Michael )
*** ''library, nuclear, February''
* Michael taught students how to count to 60 using rings of the finger
** this is the ancient method of counting, which is why we have twelve- and sixty-based numeric systems
*** months (12), seconds (60), minutes (60), Apostles (12)  
*** and why 13 is considered unlucky > it is not natural
*** a student asked about 7 as the perfect number: God chose it to represent completeness
**** (thus 6 is incomplete)
** similarly, we might discuss origins of measurements, as well feet, yards, etc.
* some interesting things arose from discussions about numbers:
** we decided that when reading a room, course, telephone, etc. number it becomes a proper noun
*** thus we read Room 1024 not as 1,204, but as 1-0-2-4 as if that were a title or name
*** this brought up the whole notion of "proper nouns"
**** the Spanish is explicit as to what a proper noun is: "one's own name" (nombre propria)
**** in English, then, "proper noun" is a noun that refers to itself as distinct from something else
***** (in English we get stuck on the notion of "proper" as in "appropriate" while it actually means "belonging to")
**** "proper" comes from Latin ''proprius'' for "one's own, particular to itself" 
** we might consider that a "proper number" is a number that is particular to itself, thus its numbers are spoken out distinctly rather than as a whole number
* we used but did not complete the numbers worksheet
** students practiced reciting their phone numbers as "proper numbers"
*we also reviewed comparative stems, -er and -est
**Spanish uses ''mas'' and ''le mas''
**Bible learning opportunity:
***Hebrew does not have comparatives and instead repeats the adjective, thus
****holy = holy
****holy holy = holier
****holy holy holy = holiest