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.