Xiaoyu Wang

TE842
Fall 2017

Mini Project 1: Oral Language Assessment

Do NOT use your student’s real name for this. Assign your student a pseudonym (fake name) in
order to protect your student’s privacy.

1) Observe a student in your classroom. (You will likely be assessing this student’s oral language
development in Chinese.) Complete the Student Oral Language Observation Matrix (SOLOM) for
your student.
1 2 3 4 5
Comprehension Cannot understand Only understands Can understand most Understands Understands class
simple conversational conversations if the almost everything conversations and
conversation language spoken speech is slow and at normal speed, discussions without
slowly includes repetitions but may require difficulty
some repetitions
Fluency Speech is halting Usually silent or Often speech is Generally fluent in Fluent and
and fragmentary; hesitant due to interrupted while the class discussions, effortless
makes it extremely language student searches for but may lapse conversation
difficult to initiate limitations the right word or sometimes into
conversation expression word searches
Vocabulary Very little Limited vocabulary Frequently uses Sometimes uses Fully capable in
vocabulary makes and often misuses incorrect words, and inappropriate using vocabulary
conversation words speech is limited by terms or must and idioms
nearly impossible insufficient vocabulary rephrase due to
limited vocabulary
Pronunciation Difficult to Pronunciation Pronunciation Always intelligible, Normal
understand due to problems make it problems cause but may have pronunciation and
severe necessary to repeat listeners to have to heavy accent or intonation
pronunciation a great deal listen closely; some inappropriate
problems misunderstandings intonation patterns
Grammar Acute problems Grammar and Frequent errors with Sometimes makes Appropriate
with grammar and syntax problems grammar and syntax grammar or syntax grammar and
syntax making often force that sometimes alters errors syntax usage
speech nearly repetition or meanings
unintelligible overreliance on
simple or familiar
patterns
Stage I: (score 5-11) = not proficient in the language Stage II: (score 12-18) = emergent proficiency
Stage III: (score 19-24) = developing proficiency Stage IV: (score 25) = fully proficient
From: Reutzel, D.R. & Cooter, Jr., R.B. (2016). Strategies for reading assessment and instruction in an era of Common Core Standards: Helping every
child succeed. Boston: Pearson. (p. 57)
Comprehension: 5
Fluency: 4
Vocabulary: 4
Pronunciation: 3
Grammar: 4
Total: 20
2) Briefly, what overall trends do you notice in this student’s oral language? Explain…what are this
student’s strengths, and what are some areas on which this student needs to work more? (Describe
no more than 2 strengths and no more than 2 areas on which to work.)

The student could speak long sentence without stopping a long time and I asked him to write
down the English meaning on the paper before speaking out to check if he understood the
sentence, which showed that he also understood what he was reading after checking it. However,
I found that he was a little bit confused with the tone of Chinese and his vowel pronunciation was
not clear enough, especially the “ao”, “o” and “ue”.

3) Choose one activity/lesson you would do with this student to help him/her improve one aspect of
oral language. Describe the activity you chose. Explain why this activity would a good choice for
your student.
I design a Chinese tongue twister practice activity which allows the student to practice the vowel
pronunciation. I chose the simple words in the town twister so that it’s not hard for him to
pronounce the every single word, but when he reads them together he needs to adjust his mouth
and tongue quickly in order to read it fluently and clearly.
When I teach the tongue twister, I will teach every vowel loud and point it so that student can
hear it and put the sound to his mind. We will read together to get used to it and then he will try
to read by himself slowly later.
I choose this activity because I notice that the reason he can not make the vowel clear is the lack
of practice. If he tries hard to pronounce a vowel, he can make it clear, but when he finds a vowel
in a sentence, he can not make it because he does not speak enough to practice. So the tongue
twister is good to practice certain pronunciation of the vowels. Besides, the tongue twister is also
a very short story telling about cat and bird so it will be a fun material to read because student
can think about what happens between them. Meanwhile, I also think of how I learn English, my
teacher also recommended me to read some tongue twister to train my muscle of my tongue,
which works for me.

This is the tongue twister I prepared:

鸟和猫 niao he mao

树上一只鸟，shu shang yi zhi niao,
地上一只猫。Di shang yi zhi mao.
地上的猫想咬树上的鸟，dishang de mao xiang yao shu shang de niao,
树上的鸟想啄猫的毛。 Shu shang de niao xiang zhuo mao de mao.

Translation:
Bird and cat
There is a bird on the tree,
There is a cat on the ground.
The cat wants to bite the bird,
The bird wants to peck the cat.

Mini project 2: Chinese Reading MSV Analysis

Watch
 "7-Year-Old LeiLei Reading Chinese": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4YrvHc5kvo

Complete the chart:

Character Meaning Syntax Visual Self-
? ? ? Correct
?
The wǒ ài wǒ de bā bā，
chil 我爱我的爸爸，
d ✔ ✔
javascript:void(0)javascript:void(0)javascript:void(
said: 0)
wǒ ài wǒ de bà bà，
The
text 我爱我的爸爸，
said: javascript:void(0)javascript:void(0)javascript:void(
0)

The
chil wǒ ài wǒ de gě gě，
d ✔ ✔
我爱我的哥哥，
said:
The
wǒ ài wǒ dí gē gē，
text
said: 我爱我的哥哥，

The
chil wǒ ài wǒ de jiē jiē,
d ✔ ✔
我爱我的姐姐,
said:
The wǒ ài wǒ dí jiě jiě ,
text
said: 我爱我的姐姐,

The
chil
d
said:
The
text
said:

The
chil
d
said:
The
text
said:
Analyze.
1. Briefly, what trends do you notice? (What systems does the child use most and least?
Does the child recognize his/her errors and self-correct?)
This girl’s errors were based on the tone of the pinyin. She pronounced the similar syllabus with wrong
tones, for example, she said bàbà(爸爸) with wrong tone, so I checked for visual because bābā was
similar with bàbà. There are four tones in pinyin and I found that the girl was confused with the first tone
and third tone from her self-correct. For example, she used the first tone for jiējiē(姐姐)，after teacher
correct her, she used the third tone jiějiě (姐姐).
She did self-correct twice, which were in bàbà and dìdì, but she only made it right for dìdì.
Therefore, she did try to self-correct, but she can not correct herself successfully because some shortage of
the pinyin practice.
There was no error related to sytax cause the errors were all nouns after the verb ai(爱). There was also no
error related to meaning because wrong tones meant wrong characters so her errors of wrong tones made
it no meaning in the context.

Application to Chinese:
2. What other strategies do you need to read Chinese other than thinking about what makes
sense (meaning), what sounds right (syntax), and what looks right (visual)?
I think that strategy about speaking accurate tone of pinyin is also very important because the four
different tones make the pinyin very similar and sometimes cause confusion if readers can not make the
right tones. Besides, the difference between English and Chinese makes it even harder to recognize the
difference of the four tones since there are no tone marks in English. Some students even notice the fact
that there are four tones, but when she or he tries to speak in different tones, I hear the same tone.
Therefore, teacher can teach students practice single pinyin with gesture to help them to be aware to the
tones, which is similar with the word rubber banding practice with the phones.
Watch
 "FCC Children Reading Chinese Book": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDKI6Q_47yg

Complete the chart:

Character Meaning? Syntax? Visual? Self-
Correct?
The child said: xiāng jiào 香蕉 ✔
The text said: xiāng jiāo 香蕉

The child said: wǒ sì pú táo 我是葡萄 ✔ ✔

The text said: wǒ shì pú tao 我是葡萄

The child said: wǒ shì 我是… ✔ ✔

The text said: xiāng jiāo zài nǎ lǐ 香蕉在哪里

wǒ bù shì， xiāng jiāo zài nǎ lǐ ？

The child said: ✔ ✔
我不是，香蕉在哪里
wǒ bù shì xiāng jiāo，我不是香蕉，
The text said:
xiāng jiāo zài nǎ lǐ？ 香蕉在哪里？

The child said:

The text said:

Analyze.
1. Briefly, what trends do you notice? (What systems does the child use most and least?
Does the child recognize his/her errors and self-correct?)
They used few self-correct because I noticed that teacher would correct them before they tried to make a
self-correct, so I think that teacher should give students enough time to think about their reading. In
addition, MSV chart is better served to individual reader, so I did not point out the errors belonged to
which one this time.
They kept making the errors of the word xiāngjiāo(香蕉). First time, they made the wrong tone of xiāngji
ào. They used the visual cue in this error because they are similar with only different tone on the top.
Teacher helped them to say the words twice later when they can not say the word.
Sometimes they uses both meaning and syntax cues in the reading, for example, they started the sentence
with wǒshì after they finished the last sentence, which made sense to start a sentence with wǒ shì (I am),
and meanwhile, the whole book was talking about where the banana was by asking other fruits, therefore,
wǒshì was always be the starter in the context.
Last error, there were two xiāngjiāo, but they omitted one. From their stop during reading, their sentence
did make sense and with correct grammar.

Application to Chinese:
 2. What other strategies do you need to read Chinese other than thinking about what makes
sense (meaning), what sounds right (syntax), and what looks right (visual)?

Thinking about the punctuation when read the Chinese characters can be a better reader.
From the video,Students thought the “,” was after “wǒ bù shì”，
so they read : “wǒ bù shì, xiāng jiāo zài nǎ lǐ ？”
But the text is : “wǒ bù shì xiāng jiāo，xiāng jiāo zài nǎ lǐ？”
Also, their sentence was similar with the sentence in the book, which both meant that: I am not banana, where is it?
But they still missed some words by that way.
Therefore, teaching students about the stops of different punctuation and appropriate tone of it helps them find the
cues to read better.