Class One: defining citizen; name; to be

Second meeting: Class 1            04/11/09

For the second meeting we have two new students:

R2: 30-55, female, South America, no application yet

N: 30-55, female, SA, plans to apply soon

I distributed the reworked Class 1 handout, which came from the longish one I had created for the last several class cycles. Other than some aesthetics I didn’t change much, but hope to improve the content, functionality and style of future lessons.

Here’s why I decided to use PowerPoint to create the class handouts. First, if the content is ever presented to a larger audience, the materials will be ready. Not pretty and pseudo-professional ready, but 80%-of-the-content-is-done ready. Second, just about anybody owns, or has access to PP, so it’s adaptable as a collaborative medium for other tutors. Third, whether used as stand alone handouts or as a set of printed duplicate slides, the print options are great, and easy to handle.

Class 1 focused on the first part of the N-400 - Name; the portion of the old-test dictation sentences that feature the use of the verb am ~ is; and Chapters 23 and 20 (in that order) of PECA.

Part 1 of the N-400 is the first section of the application. Because it’s crucial that the applicant make a good first impression on the adjudicator (interviewer), we need to make sure that all of the students have a clear understanding of the content.

There is a tremendous amount of material to be covered in Part 1 in terms of pure vocabulary: at least 14 different variations of “name”; 15 verbs or verb phrases; 4 conceptual nouns; and a dozen or so articles, pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, and adverbs. Not all need to be learned perfectly the first week, of course, but the applicants do need to be able to hear, understand and react properly to the vocabulary in order to feel confident going into the interview.

In the handouts, the presentation of a specific N-400 section and the related vocabulary is followed by a series of questions that are designed to simulate the variety of ways that officers can ask the same question. A similar section is in PECA, page 197. We had the time to go over these in class, but they could also be used as an assignment. The students could either have an English-speaking partner ask the questions and respond orally, or they could read the questions and respond in writing. There is also a page where the students can write their own questions with similar beginnings, such as, “What is …?”, or “What is the name of…?”

Handouts for future classes will also have a synopsis of the assigned lessons from the text to reinforce the material. Vocabulary not stressed in the book will be explained and corresponding questions from the USCIS 100 will follow.

The dictation sentences and vocabulary took a little more than a full hour of the class. The sentences were grouped by the verbs am ~ is. This is the largest natural (to me) division of the sentences, and can easily be spread out over two meetings. Much of the reading and writing vocabulary for the redesigned test can be found in the “old” sentences. I have yet to try to correlate the old vocab with the new, but will do so by the end of the classes. I will probably rewrite some of the sentences to accommodate the newly prescribed words.

Note that some of the vocab has multiple and thus potentially confusing meanings, for example, the three words pronounced /tu/, the four common meanings of “right”, “work” as both a verb and a location noun, and the distinction between “free” and “freedom”. My favorite sentence is, “I am too busy to go to your house with my two kids today.”

As far as the civics and history part of this class, I taught the two chapters directly from the book, which is a sin of the lazy. Sigh. I was, however, clever enough to end the class by using flash cards from the set published by the USCIS that were appropriate to the material. You can buy them, and lots of other naturalization study materials, directly from the feds at a very reasonable price. There were a few cards that covered concepts in lessons 20 and 23 that I thought hadn’t been given enough exposition, so I decided to open the next class with them. These were related to the rights and responsibilities of United States citizens.

Things I need to do for next class:

Get a lesson plan already!

Things I should have done in this class:

Paired the stronger with the less facile students yet

Finally, I made a special appointment with A to conduct a mock interview two days before his actual interview. He will call to finalize the time once his work schedule is clear. I’ll discuss the process in another post.

The First Meeting

The first class meeting: Introduction 4/4/09

On Saturday April 4th we had our first class meeting in the Plainfield library. We met for three hours, 10 am to 1 pm, which will be the standard time. There were seven new students. The husband of one also attended. He was a student the last cycle and had recently passed his interview. Of the new seven, six have Spanish as their native language; five are women, two are men.

We began with J, the new citizen, who told us about his interview experience, which was mostly positive and smooth. In contrast, AH volunteered the story of his recently failed interview. He appears to have not had some required documentation, although he felt that he had what was called for. The there was a dramatic contrast between the two CIS officers, one of them, MO’C, was cordial and non-adversarial, while the other was described as oddly distracted and coldly unhelpful.

The rest of the class reacted by adding their own stories of friends and relatives, both positive and not.  The thread was that a lot depends on the demeanor of the interviewing officer. The characteristic that raised the most concern was “strict”.

One of my objectives for the first class was to make an informal evaluation of the learners’ level of spoken English. I asked the students to introduce themselves and tell a little of themselves. I think that I can identify three who can use extra attention, and three who might have strong enough English skills to help.

Here’s a list of the students:

R1: 30-55, female, South America, medical assistant, anticipates interview in early July

E: 55+, female, SA, childcare, plans to apply soon

A2: 55+, male, SA, factory worker, interview in two weeks

F: 30-55, male, SA, driver, applied approximately March 1st

A1: 30-55, female, Caribbean, no application yet

X: 30-55, female, SA, no application yet

B: 55+, female, SA, factory worker, no application yet

Towards the end of the class I distributed my contact information, the class syllabus, and the book that we will use, Pasa el Examen de Ciudadanía Americana (PECA), discussing each briefly.

Next week we will begin the actual content of the course. For clarity (mine, if no one else’s) the next 12 classes will be numbered from 1 through 12.

* * * * *

Things I wish I had done:

Had a formal lesson plan, even if just scribbled on legal paper, instead of an ineffective portion of a spreadsheet.

Introduced myself earlier. I didn’t want to make the first class about me, but I waited so long (until almost the end of the class) it must have seemed weird or at least make me look eccentric. Oh, well…

Made a more concise class schedule. The syllabus/schedule is accurate enough, but it’s spread out over two pages, and has too much unneeded stuff, so it’s almost unusable. This is easy to fix for the next class meeting.

Spent time with the alphabet page that I distributed, showing the letters as pronounced in English as well as their Spanish pronunciation.

Been more proactive when two of the Latino students made remarks that possibly could have been taken as derogatory towards blacks, especially because one of the students is black. Neither comment was harsh, to my ears, and neither was racist, to my mind, but both showed lack of sensitivity. I need to find a strategy to deter and/or defuse similar future episodes, without stifling candid expression.

 

AmCit Syllabus ~ First Draft

Before we get to the draft outline of the syllabus, a word on the number of weeks in the course. Last post I laboriously argued for a 12 week course with 1 week of review. Well, that was last week.  I still think 12 weeks is the right length for the material, and it fits the timing of many students, but I also think that there should be an extra introductory week, so the total weeks are now 14.

There's not much to say about the draft PDF syllabus that that isn't self explanatory. 

Check it out and see what you think. This will not be the last version. I expect to tweak it throughout the course and suspect the final may look a lot different.