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Second Unknown Language Lesson

The document summarizes a second language lesson in Malayalam. It describes the procedures used, including dialogues to practice greetings, questions, and spelling names. It compares the lesson to the previous one, noting more communication. Learners found the new approaches helpful but struggled with the unfamiliar alphabet and some pronunciations.

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Thales Nicoletti
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31 views2 pages

Second Unknown Language Lesson

The document summarizes a second language lesson in Malayalam. It describes the procedures used, including dialogues to practice greetings, questions, and spelling names. It compares the lesson to the previous one, noting more communication. Learners found the new approaches helpful but struggled with the unfamiliar alphabet and some pronunciations.

Uploaded by

Thales Nicoletti
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Second Unknown Language Lesson

Thales Pantaleoni Nicoletti

Main aims:
By the end of the lesson, students will be able to introduce themselves using basic language such
“hello”, “my name is” and “how are you” in conversation.
Subsidiary aims:
For students to

 Spell their names.

Procedures
The teacher started the lesson by reviewing what we had studied in the previous class. For the first
task, she proposed a dialogue between the students: we had to take turns to say “hello”, tell our names
and ask for the name of one of our classmates. The teacher drilled the phrases many times, so we could
produce them when performing the dialogue. The main aim of this task was to put in practice the
language that we had already studied. Everyone enjoyed the activity because we got the chance to use
the vocabulary to communicate in Malayalam, which was very exciting.
For the second task, she introduced new language. She taught us how to ask, “how are you?” in
Malayalam. She drilled it many times, focusing on intelligible pronunciation. Then she also taught us
“I am fine” and “I am not fine”, as these are the two most common responses to that question. The
second task was also a dialogue. Basically, we had to use the language to ask each other how they
were. The main aim was to build up our vocabulary for basic and functional conversation. Everyone
tried it out, always relying on the teacher’s pronunciation to get it right.
As the teacher saw that we were struggling with the new vocabulary, she decided to do something
different. She showed us all the alphabetical letters that we would have to use to spell our names in the
target language. The task consisted of trying to put the letters together to spell them correctly. The
main aim of this activity was to use the alphabet in a meaningful way. Everyone seemed a little bit
frustrated, for no one had really internalised the symbols that made up their names yet. The teacher
said she wished we had studied the alphabet as homework.
For the final task, she introduced language that could be used to ask about the origins of someone,
which roughly corresponded to “where are you from?” in English. She initiated the task by using the
phrase herself and then drilled it many times with us. As all the other communicative tasks in this
lesson, this third one also consisted of a dialogue. We were supposed to use the language to ask the
questions to our classmates. The aim of it was still build up our vocabulary and to practice the new
language. Everyone tried to perform the dialogues with the help of the teacher, who had to scaffold the
phrases. In the end, we all enjoyed using the language to have a basic conversation.

Comparison to previous experience


The teacher changed her approach in this second lesson. The tasks were much more communicative
this time. Consequently, we interacted much more, asking, and answering questions in real-life types
of conversation. Even if the tasks were all dialogues, I think that they fit our needs and corresponded
to our level in the target language.
Yet the teacher continued using English throughout the entire lesson and tried to make us retain the
correspondence between sounds and alphabetical letters in Malayalam. We have only four hours of
lessons with her. One of the best ways to ensure that we will see any meaningful progress is by
exposing us to as much language as she can. I also think that understating the alphabet is not really
necessary to start learning a second language. Sometimes, it only confuses learners.

Contrastive analysis table

Malayalam English Analysis


“You where from?” “Where are you from” In Malayalam, we don’t use an auxiliary verb to ask
the question (the verb to be, in this case).

“I am England from” “I am from England” In Malayalam, the names of the countries are
pronounced in English. Apparently, the language has
not specific pronunciation for the countries.
There are 56 letters in the There are 26 letters in the There are 30 more letters in the Malayalam alphabet,
Malayalam alphabet English alphabet which means that writing must be very challenging
in this language.

Peers’ responses
All of us shared similar experiences with this lesson. Heather liked that we spoke more. She thought
that this gave her a better chance of retaining the new language. Yet she didn’t enjoy the teacher’s
circular system for talking as we always spoke in the same order and always spoke to the same people.
Similarly, Kevin thought that the second lesson had much more communicative activities, which were
a good way to make us practice Malayalam. He wished that the teacher had understood that some of
the pronunciations were too similar for us to recognize the difference. I agree with Kevin: quite often
the teacher seemed irritated that we didn’t remember the pronunciation of certain symbols.
I also shared that this is my first time learning a language that doesn’t use a Roman alphabet.
Therefore, it has been very challenging for me. My classmates told me that it really takes time to
connect the symbol to the meaning, which was quite a comforting thing to hear.

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