Here is Frankie performing Imagine!

speaking circle#8

Speaking Circle # 08

8th MEETING

April 8, 2015

Fatima
Shymah

Colas
Jane

Summary: For our last speaking circle, we had three more new friends to share our opinions about this class. Everyone talked about how they thought about our listening and speaking class; some people think we had a good opportunity to meet new friends, especially the speaking circle. I've never wondering to have lots of friends who can share their opinions about their cultures and stories, although we are not come from the same country.

Response: I'm glad that I can meet my best friends Chanho, Franky and Feng who make me feel like to be with my families. I also thanks for my speaking circle friends who could listen to me and share their thoughts with me. And this makes me learned a lot from other cultures.

Analysis: We met at international center;because Shaymah and Chanho didn't come to our class, we talked with another speaking circle group. And that's good for us to share opinion with more people.

8 Speaking circle

Sunday, April 12, 2015

8th Speaking Circle

Young

Heba

Hanan

Feng

8th Speaking Circle

4.12.2015

Summary

   On last Wednesday, we meet at Wells Hall in the ESL center building, and this is our last meeting for our speaking circle, we meet for like an hour before class begin, we talked about our study plan for next semester and also things that we didn't do well in this semester we hope every one can do excellent job on final text.   

Response

    We talked about speaking and listening class, we love Mrs Levine's class, and we learn lots of things during this semester, she is really nice to us. And some of our group members said that they want to change major next semester, like me, i want to swap to Finance major. They told me I need to work really hard to get in Business college, so i need to make a plan for my rest day on this semester and try to not waste of time to do class work. 

Analysis

   Eight times of speaking circle make our four people know each other deeply, and we love this kind of activity on speaking and listening class, we are really thankful to Mrs. Levine to give our chance to know each other, we made lots of nice friends, and even we love sharing the way how to study, and we learn lots of thing from each other, we think even this speaking circle finished, we still will meet somehow.

8th Speaking Circle

Ziyi Wang

Qiqi He

Faris

Ali

8th Speaking Circle

4.12.2015

Summary

   On April 10th, we finished our last speaking circle meeting in ESL222-2. We went to a Chinese restaurant which is called 'East Cafe' on Grand River Avenue. The meeting spent 1 hour. This restaurant is famous as spicy food, we tried some spicy dishes. Though the food is spicy, Ali and Faris still can handle it. We talked about our experience during this semester and our plan for next semester.   

Response

   During that period of time, we talked about our current semesters. We learn a lot from Ms. Levine's class, like we know more vocabulary when we listen to the lecture and watch the video. Also, we talk about our next semesters. Faris, Qiqi and I are undergraduate students, we will take more academic classes next semester, and try our best to working on it. Ali is a graduate student, he said he was going to finish his graduate education about next two years. Hope he can get his degree on time as he wishes. On that day, we ordered some spicy dishes, like fish, beef. In general, we had a great lunch time with others.  

Analysis

   I think we improve a lot. At first, we were shy to talk with others because we were not know others. However, after almost 4 months studying, we know others more than before, and feel free to talk with. We still need improve in the future, but I believe we did great job. Thank you Ms. Levine, thanks for finding out a lot of ways to help us improve English, thanks for my other three group members. Hope we all have a great future. Thanks you all!

The Last Speaking Circle

  After three months listening class, we meet each other and have the opportunity to understand and know each other. We improve our speaking ability and make us closer. From here I want to say thank you my mates. The last speaking circle we talked about our thoughts and changes during this semester. Lee is my best foreign friend; I am glad I can make a Korean friend from this class. He always can think some great topic for us to discuss in order to keep our mouth moving. He told us that he was not that good at listening to lecture and following the speaker at first. After these listening module exercise he gained a lot skills to make notes and improve his shortage. His favorite part of this class is group discussion during the class. He really loves to talk. Abdu is the person who makes the greatest progress in our group. I still remember the first of the class he was nervous when he introduced himself to us because he couldn't speak frequently. I could tell he is a truly hard worker. He made many notes during the listening lecture, and his notes were detailed and neat. Every speaking circle he tried his best to talk with us and I could see his difference from day to day. He told me he really appreciated this class. Sloth was not good at writing lecture. We encouraged him to write the blog in order to strengthen his writing ability . That was a hard process because at fist he updated the blog very slow. After all these practices, he could write a essay and blog in very short time. We really appreciate what this class has brought for us. Though we have a lot of work to do in this semester, but we can tell we enjoy this class and we sincerely have our thanks to our teacher Mrs. Levine. 

#7 meeting circle report(Sloth's group)

Group members: Sloth, Frankie, Lee, Abdulrahman
7th circle meeting
4/5/2015

Summary: This time we met out of the International center because of the warm weather. In general, we told about 3 topics, which are about Lee's soccer game in Indiana this weekend, the situation of soccer all over the world, and the situation of population in Asia. Lee told about his soccer game that, there are 14 teams(all of them are Korean teams)in the match, and all of their competition will divide in only one day. Thus Lee said that he feel so excited and stressful because of the tired competition. Then we told about the other soccer games, not only the games between two countries but also the famous clubs. Lee said that he like Argentine team, while Abdulrahman prefer German team, And both of them thought that Korean team is the best soccer team in Asia(I think it should be Japanese team). China is the country that owned the most population in whole world, which caused many problems in many years until now. Thus we told about the necessity of birth control in China also, and the conclusion is exactly yes.

Response: Actually both I and Frankie did not know a lot about soccer, but I have learn something from my friends, so I could understand what they told about. I think Lee's competition was unbelievable because it was so tired to play soccer such a long time even though it was 40 minutes per round(God bless him :) ). Even though I do not like Korean team, I still think that it is a strong team in Asia. Chinese soccer team was not as strong as Korean team and Japanese team, which even could not appear on the World Cup, that is the most sad thing to Chinese soccer fans. I have seen the World Cup in last year that German team vs. Brazil team, I have to say that German player have played a wonderful competition and won their opponent, they just like a tank and crush their enemy and unstoppable. The birth control in China is that, every couple could only have one child, but if both you and your marriage partner are the only child of your parents, you could have two children. I think this policy really helping to control the population in China, but the problems is that, a lot of people do not obey the policy, especially the poor want more children and think the child could change their future even though they even could not raise them.

Analysis: The most topic in this circle meeting is soccer, which is a famous sport around the world. It should be a good topic to young age, but maybe not to everyone, because somebody do not play this sports. Thus Lee and Abdulrahman spoke the most this time, and I really think they could be good friends. I am the person who prefer listen to others but express my own opinion, and I think it is interesting that listen to their chatting. In a word, this is an interesting meeting circle.

7th Speaking Circle from Qiqi's Group

Qiqi He
Ali
Faris
Ziyi
7th Speaking Circle
4/5/2015

Summary
    On April 3rd, we actually planed to eat in a Italian restaurant in Hannah Center. When we got there, the store was closed at 3 o'clock, and we walked around other restaurants which all were closed but finally two last.Then we decided to eat at Menna's Joint as our second last speaking circle meeting. We ordered the food and chatted with each other. The decoration of restaurant was very special. The wall was hanged with different interesting themes pictures. During eating, we talked about our hobby and the background of the pictures that showed up on the wall, for example, The woman says " We Can Do It!" , Bruce Lee, Marilyn Monroe,etc.

Response
    We felt little bit upset since we only have one time left to meet together. We talked about the background that showed up on the pictures and learned the names of our body skeleton. I shared my life experience for playing music when I was three years old. Faris liked rapping and dancing, and also showed us a break dancing post which was very cool! Ziyi liked drawing and working out in her spare time. And Ali enjoyed hanging out with his friends.

Analysis
    We now did not have any difficult on communicating. We can now make joke with other and speak more confidently. From those seven meeting, we get much well along. I think speaking circle not only can practice our spoken English, but also can help us to share our culture and interests to others. I feel a little upset that the time goes so fast that we almost finish our this semester. I hope that we can still get in touch with others classmates after the class end.

Report #7

Report #7

Heba Alkhaamis
S/L class
Lessa Levine
Report #7
4-4-15

names:
Heba alkhamis
Hanan alalwan
Feng
Young

 Report #7

Summary

Last Wednesday, me, Hanan, and Young went to the International center at 1:45Pm. We had our lunch their. We ate chines food from Panda Express restaurant. It was the first time for me to eat chines food, and I like it so much. We talked a little bit about the food. However, Young, my chines partner, did not like the food at all. He thinks that the food is not a real Chinese food.  After that we started to talk about some strange rules in china, such as children’s number in the Chinese’s families. Me, and Hanan were so existed to know about that, so we asked Young many questions about that. He tried as much as he could to answer our all questions.

Response

I enjoyed the meeting with my partners because I really used to sit and talk with them. Hanan, and Young are very friendly, and funny people. We always make jokes while we are talking together. Also, I enjoyed it because I learned much new information about china.

Analysis

This is the seventh meeting for us together, and we know each other very well, so there was not any communication problem in the meeting.  We talked together for an hour, and we understood each other in every thing we said. It is a really good chance for us to practice English, and learn new information about other countries.

Video Drop Box for speaking homework due Monday April 6 10:00am

Please go to this link to record your speaking homework for Monday, April 6.

You must submit this before 10:00am.


new video drop box

Speaking Circle # 07

7th MEETING

April 2, 2015

Fatima
Shymah

Colas
Jane

SUMMARY

Today we played bowling at MSU Union. No one of us knew how to play bowling. What we know is that the player should roll a ball over a wooden surface toward 10 pins. The balls are shockingly heavy, so it was very difficult to throw the ball forward, and exactly in the middle without slanting. Initially we tried, but no body hit the target, so we asked the cashier guy to show us how to throw the ball. He rolled it once in front of us. Then he told us that balls have different weights, and we chose the heaviest one, so might be that was the reason of why we did not succeed. Progressively our performance improved in the next shots. The best player unpredictably was Shymah. She hit almost all pins; nine out of ten in three times. Colas, Jane, and Jane’s friend,  who is called Sofia, did very well too. In opposite to me, where I failed to compete with them.

RESPONSE

I enjoyed playing with my group. Especially, this is the first time I play bowling. It is funny experience to share it with such amusing people like my friends. As a group we have had a mutual happy memories as a result of these speaking circle’s activities. However, this meeting was different because we did something entertaining  together. Maybe we did not speak too much, but we laughed and enjoyed playing together. Obviously, all of us learnt something new at this meeting. It is not only how to throw bowling ball, but also how things are always difficult at beginning. Also, I noticed that bowling is very good sport, and it is convenient for women who wear Hijab. Although, Shyma and I wear Hijab, it didn't limit our movement as it does when I play other sports.

ANALYSIS

As I mentioned above, we did not speak too much, so there were no difficulties in communication. Also, when that guy talked to us, we felt comfortable with his explanation. The only difficulty faced us is how to roll that heavy ball, and hit pins that stand so far away. Sport could be the best way to bring people together from different cultures to get to know each other without restriction or any sort of barriers. I hope if we can practice other sport in our last meeting which will be at the next week. 

You can chick this link. It is about how to play bowling for who never play bowling like me.

Here are steps of how to play bowling

#6 Speaking Circle

Summary: Since last week. Franky and I were sick so we could not meet on Wednesday. Therefore we decided to meet on Saturday. I invited all of them to my performance which happened on Kellogg Hotel. We meet on International center and then we went to Kellogg Center.  I am part of Korean Student Organization(KSO), so I invited few of my friends to the performance. Colas, Franky, Sloth,and Abdul came over and I hope they had a good time. This events was about Music Festival and 6 teams come out and compete each other. Winner get the $1000.00 dollar airplane ticket and 2nd winner gets $300.00. Since I was part of the KSO, I was doing a special stage which was dancing. I was kind of excited because I could introduce Korean Culture to my friends.

Response: I was the first time that I invited my friends to Korean Culture events. Before I invited my friends I was worried because since all of us culture is different and I thought they would not like it at all. But I decided to invite them. After the performance I talked to them and they all said they had a fun because of my dance. For this events I learned that before at least try something you will not know what's the result. I can't believe we only have 3 more speaking circle is left. 

Analysis: My performance happened on last Saturday 5 pm and I invited all of my speaking circle group members who were Franky, Abdul and Sloth. We all had a such a great time through my performance. I don't know how other people thought about my performance but I hope at least our group had a wonderful time. 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaLaB4m4Wj_E2JaWuPkNRMe8NsqT1yThU

This is the link for the Korean Music Festival 

Speaking Circle #6

Jane

4/1/2015

Members: Shaymah, Colas, Fatima

Summary: 

               Today's weather is super awesome! We sat outside with sunshine nearby wells hall. With the attractive nature view, we talked a lot excitedly. Firstly, we talked about beauty staff. I recommended them some products which I use such as "Vaseline" for body, "L'Occitane" for hand and "GlamGlow" for face. In order to persuade them, I introduced the function, ingredient, comments from others especially celebrities, and my own experience to them. Secondly, we talked about homosexual. In shaymah's and Fatima's view, they cannot accept homosexual. Because they think it breaks the nature role. Moreover, homosexual is illegal in their countries. However, Colas and I don't care about this and we can accept it. From our view, this is because we are young generation, so we can accept every different and new things. But Fatima thinks this is because the culture we grew up in. Thirdly, we talked about our next meeting, because we wanna something special. So after discussion, we decided playing bowling next time.

Response:

               After today's meeting, I feel our friendship become closer. It is "Friend" that it is difference with before which is just "Member". Because we were not talking on purpose in order to finish the "homework", our topics are just free like beauty things. Besides, according the discussion on homosexual, I learnt that this is still a disputable topic and there is a gap among young and old generation, and also different cultures on this issue. 

Analysis:

              When we talked about beauty things, we had difficulty on a lot of special words to the products. So when I introduced the products, I also used some relative images to help me describe clearly. And we checked dictionary when we had to use some words about chemistry. So, next time we can shop beauty products online together, and there are a lot descriptions to the product online for us to learn. 

Speaking Circle #5

On Friday, I had lunch around 1pm with my partners Ali, Vickie and Ziyi at a Japenese restaurant on Grand River Called Sushi Ya. It was Ali's first Sushi experience and we tricked him into eating Wasabi which is very hot. We discussed geography and places we've visited around the world. We also talked about driving in general and how it is much easier in Saudi Arabia to get a license than it is in China.

We enjoyed our time because we had great company and amazing food. Our Chinese partners taught us the Chinese food etiquette which is somehow the opposite of the Saudi Arabian food etiquette.

It was easy to talk to one another because we've been doing this for a while. We didn't have any difficulties speaking in English.

Report #4 Hanan Alalwan

Hanan Alalwan

SL class

Ms. Levine

Report #4

3-26-15

Team Names:

1-      Heba alkhamis

2-      Hanan Alalwan

3-      Chenyang

 

           On Thursday26 March, we decided which is my group and I to meet at Tutti Frutti on Grand River because it is a nice place, and the other reason was that Young had no tried the frozen yogurt ever, so that was a good opportunity to him. I was very excepted to know his opinion about the frozen yogurt’s flavor, and the good thing that he liked it, and he told that he will eat it again. During enjoying eating the frozen yogurt; we took about the system educations and the differences between Saudi Arabia and China. The first difference was kind of schools according to gender for example in Saudi Arabia the boys’ schools and girls’ schools are completely separated from each other. That is contrast with Chinese’s schools with gender system, so boys and girls study in the same class and same school. However, the interesting thing that Young told 50 years ago the Chinese system was different which was similar to my country system. Acutely Habe and I were very surprised, and we immediately asked why the Chinese government changed that, but he did not know why because it happened before along time acutely when his grandmother was student. After that I asked him about his language, which is Chinese, if it is difficult language because I want to learn it in the future. Young told that it is very difficult because Chinese language has a lot of words and letters, but the nice thing that most of shape words have the same shape of things for example world “Mountain” when we write in Chinese language, it has mountain shape “山” which is very inserting language. The end of our meeting, Young written our name in his language, and we did his name in Arabic letter that was pleasant.         

   

 

Speaking Circle No. 5

Speaking Circle, 5th Meeting

EAP Speaking Listening

March 25th,  2015

           After several attempt to meet last week , my group's members and me finally met on last Monday. It is nice to see them again. because we had Spring break before two weeks ago, we started our meeting by talking about our activities during that time. I would like to start with Jane trip. She went San Diego, CA with her korean girlfriend. they had such a good time, then they went Chicago.            But the rest of my group were staying in East Lansing. We also talked abut interesting topic which is the hoppy. That  topic made me surprising the whole meeting. I learned something new about my group's members, I learned how we are optimistic people. I can sort Jane as sporty person. She is interested on basketball, swimming, and tennis. She had bad experience with basketball before she came here; that made her gave up of favorite sport, which is basketball. when she was in high school, she represented her school in basketball game ; but she broken her knee at that time.  Colis likes music and singing, and she plays the piano and guitar. She loves playing the guitar because her father was playing guitar to grab her mother's attention  before they get married. Fatima likes to play table tennis.           It was a good day to have these information about my group's member. they are brave and optimistic people because they were losing somethings that they love, but they don't give up.

Thanks,
My group's members: Fatima, Jane, and Colis.
Done by Shaymah Almutairi

Speaking Circle

Chenyang Huang

Speaking Circle

EAP Speaking Listening

March 21th 2015

Spring Break

       This Friday I had an amazing meeting with Hannah and Hebe, unfortunately, Feng is not here, because his passport has some problems and he still in China right now. This meeting is the most interesting one I think, because we shared our great spring break with each other, and there are a lot of funny things.

       Heba went to Cancun with her friends during spring break, and she told us Cancun is the most amazing place she been, and she showed a lot of pictures in Cancun and strongly recommend us to visit there. Although a lot of people told she that Mexico is the most dangerous country in the world, Cancun is very safe. The beach is pretty good, but crowded, and she loves the sunshine in the beach. Also, she told us people in Cancun always drive so fast that you should careful when cross the road, maybe these driver drunk, because Mexican likes drink. Moreover, she found she likes Mexico food so much. She hopes that she can go there again in the future.

       Hannah also went to Orlando with her family, and she saw the launching of rocket in Orlando, it is awesome. She also went to the Universal and Disney World, and she really like the cartoon characters in Magic Kingdom, because she always watched cartoon in her childhood, and she felt excited when she saw the real one. The food in Orlando made her feel impressive is the Turkish food, and she likes the taste of this kind of food.

       I went to Florida with my friends for spring break, but I didn't go to the Universal in Orlando, cause the schedule had a conflicition. I went to the Magic Kingdom in Disney World, there were a lot of cartoon characters, but I just know some of them like Mickey Mouse. At night, we saw the firework at night, it is beautiful. We stayed in Orlando for two days, and then we drove to Miami. In Miami, we ate a lot of great seafood like crab and lobster, and it tasted great. The Miami beach is one of the most famous beaches in the world, but it was not crowded. The last two days, we drove almost four hours to Key West which is the most western land in America. Key West is amazing island I think, and most of the buildings are cabin. There are a lot of special restaurants in Key West, and all of them is not expansive. The most important I want to say is the highway from Miami to Key West, because the landscape on the highway is better than the Miami and Orlando. The highway is above the sea, and there are a lot of small islands are connected by the highway. When you are driving on the highway, the sea is next you, and the sky is blue with some cloud.

       All of us have a great spring break, and now we are ready for our academic classes.

5th circle meeting report

Ali, Faris, Ziyi, Vickie

Speaking/Listening 222-2

Ms. Levine

5th Speaking Circle Meeting Report

March 22, 2015

            On Friday, March 20, my group and I met at Starbucks in Wells Hall. It was the first week of school after spring break, and it was a good chance for us to talk about it. Faris went to Cancun and had fun doing many tourists things such as fishing, and surfing. He also said the weather there was so want and it was so nice to take a break from Michigan winter. Vickie talked about her trip to Orlando, FL. She and almost fifty students from MSU took a bus from East Lansing to Orlando, and it took them around fifteen hours driving. Though they had a lot of fun like visiting Universal Studio. Also, they enjoy the warmth over there. Ziyi visited her friends in Maryland for couple days. She said it was good to see and hang out with them. They did not do something special but relaxing and going out shopping and eating. Finally, it was my turn but there is nothing special about my spring break because I did not go anywhere. I spent my time in East Lansing enjoying the warm days and hanging out with my American friends.

            This meeting was so much fun for all of us because everyone talked about what s/he did and saw. Also, some of us got a brief idea about different places so they could go and visit for their next vacation. I felt we were more relaxed and happy because we just came back from a nice vacation. Though we forgot to take a picture before Ziyi leaves because she has another meeting. The meeting was more than an hour.   

            The meeting went really well. All the group members were so comfortable to speak because now we know each other better. Also, we understood each other easier than the first couple meeting. I think that because we do not have the anxiety of make mistakes anymore in front of each other. I really find those meeting are very helpful for us not just to improve our English, but also to learn how to communicate with other people from different cultures.  

Speaking Circle Meeting 5 Report

Speaking Circle Meeting 5 Report

Abdulrahman Alsafrani

Shouyou Wen

Tianzheng Gao

Chanho Lee

Summary

On Wednesday, March ,18 ,2015, right after our listening and speaking class, we met at the international Center. First of all, we were excited to listen to each other, and what every one did in the spring break. So, we spent all the time taking about the spring break.   To be specific, Lee talked about his trip to Cancun, so he went with his friends, and they had a nice time swimming in the beach and plying Volleyball and other activities. After that, he went to Chicago to meet his father for one day. Then, Sloth told us that he had a lot of fun on Orlando ,and he visited lots of beautiful places, such as Universal World and Disney Land. What is more, I talked about my trip to Orlando, so I really enjoyed with my wife. Also, we visited plenty of amazing places, such as Universal World, Disney Land, Sea World, and other beautiful places. Finally, Frank stayed in East Lansing because his friend came to meet him. They had nice parties, and they went around East Lansing.  

     Respons

Indeed, it was an amazing meeting because everyone was excited to know and tell what happened in the spring break. Moreover, it was a good opportunity to exchange experience, and practice English. I really enjoyed that meeting and experienced many things. Also, I might in the future go to Cancun because Lee recommended it as a good place to have fun and relax. Over all, I was happy to to listen to my members of speaking circle and share experience.  

 Analysis of communication

In class, we decided to meet on Wednesday, March ,18 ,2015. It was easy to communicate, and everyone came on time. In fact, I did not face a serious difficulty speaking only English because my group talked clearly, and I believe that my English language has improved over the time. Also, even if we are from different cultures, I did not have any languages ​​or culture barriers. In fact, sometimes we have some things are in 
 common, like we love to play soccer.