Second Speaking Circle Meeting

     Hello, this week we talked about what's our favorite movies. From the beginning we were hungry so he had a panda for dinner. All for of us favorite movie was action movie. Since we were guys we love any types of action movie.
 After we done with our talking we talked about sports. Abdul and I like to play soccer and we figured out that we play soccer in same place every Saturday. I think most of Asian countries love soccer. Especially World Cup which happens every 4 years. Every week when we meet together we figure out that we have lots of common thing. Speaking circle is such a great idea because we can know and understand each other more.

Speaking Circles's Meeting #2

Speaking Circles's Meeting #2

Hello everyone,

  For our 2nd meeting, we have gone to international center to have a dinner. We have talked about the wedding in Chinese culture and Arabic culture. In Chinese culture, for example, when we have weddings we will invite relatives, families and friends to have meal with us, and they have to bring money ,which is put in a red pocket, to celebrate new couples. In Arabic culture, they also invite lots of people to have a big meal; however, they are not required to bring money but bring some gifts instead. 

 Furthermore, Shaymah asked me about my ring, and she told us how gold is normally seen in their country. And when they have wedding, the husband always give golden rings, necklaces, charms, bracelets and money to them, which is similar to Chinese culture. In this way to show high value about the marriage.
 Overall, that was a nice meeting to compare with two different countries' culture.

2nd Speaking Circle Meeting Report by Qiqi's Group

Qiqi He, Ziyi Wang, Ali Algefary, Faris Alabdulqader

Speaking/Listening 222-2

Ms. Levine

2nd Speaking Circle Meeting Report

February 22, 2015

    On Friday, February 20, we met together at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum as our second speaking circle meeting. This museum is the only modern building among the antique buildings which can be easily found next to the Grand River Street. There are three floors totally, most of the exhibitions that is opened for this period are about Asian art from China and Lao, and the expectation of East Lansing. 

          I think one of the most interesting exhibition area was "Future Return: Complementary Art from China". Since most of the exhibitions were from China, it was little bit difficult for Ali and Faris to understand the meaning. Therefore, me and Ziyi acted like one day tour guides to explain the exhibits and introduce our culture to them. We talked about how the difference between ancient and modern time of the lifestyle in China, and explained the meaning of the pictures which were showed in Chinese words. For example, the pictures show below which is from a set of painting called "Notes from Reading". In order to deconstruct the violent nature of the blade and the illusory nature of the words, the creator Zhou Qinshan uses antonyms in Chinese which were "real" and"imagined" to compare with the process of sharping a knife which the blade gradually disappears. In my opinions, this means people should be retain some spaces on doing everything. Do not push yourself too hard which will be lead to a bad result. 

       Finally, it took us about an hour to see all the exhibitions and we all thought the museum should post more different kinds of art. Even though our major are not about art, we were all enjoy watching this time. Also it was a good time for us to introduce our own culture. Sometime, we may not understand with each other very well, but we tried to use the body language to explain more clearly. I am looking forward to our next meeting! 

Second Meeting of Speaking Circle

Chenyang Huang

SL Class

Mrs. Levine

2nd Report

Feb. 20th 2015

Team Name

1, Heba Alkhamis

2, Hanan Alalwan

3, Feng Zhang

4, Chenyang Huang

Report#2

       On February 19th, our team had the second meeting in MSU Art Museum, and this building is amazing like our team. This is the first time for me to go to art museum, I always see it on the way to class, but never come in. Our topic for this meeting is the most important festival in your country, because this week on Wednesday is the Chinese New Year which is the most important festival for Chinese. Feng and I introduced our Chinese New Year for Hanan and Heba, and they felt very interesting about it. In Chinese New Year, we always have a family union, and watch Spring Festival Gala together to celebrate. The essential part of Spring Festival is dumpling, and in this day, all of Chinese eat dumplings, because it symbolize happiness. Although we study in America and cannot union with our family, we can celebrate with our friends and eat dumplings in Chinese restaurant. My partner Heba and Hanan come from Saudi Arabia, and the most important festival in their country is Kerkien. They told me that kids in Saudi Arabia wear the traditional clothes and  knock the door for candy or other good, and it sounds like Halloween in America. However, people in Saudi Arabia would like to watch firework in Kerkien. During this festival people are very excited, kids start thinking of what to wear. Also, people can buy some special goods for celebrating Kerkien.

       In general, this meeting was very great, I learn some cultural events in Saudi, and Hanan and Heba talked about many interesting things during festival. Our conversation is successful, although sometimes we cannot find a word to describe something, we can understand each other. I think next meeting will be greater.

        

Heba Alkhamis

SL class

Ms. Levine

Report #1

2-15-15

Team Names:

1-      Heba alkhamis

2-      Hanan Alalwan

3-      Feng Zhang

4-      Chenyang

Report #1

(Summary) Feng Zhang, Hanan alalwan, and Chenyyang are my group for the speaking circle. In 2-2-15 we went together to Starbucks in Wells Hall to talk together for our assignment we talked together for one hour. We talked about many subjects, such as dating, Chinese culture, Saudi culture, and our classes. Me, Feng, and Hanan were already knew each other because we were in the same section last semester, so we were talking easily together. Feng and Chenyang, our Chinese classmates was interesting about dating in Saudi Arabia, so he asked me and Hanan couple of questions. For example, can have a boyfriend in your country? What will happened if your parents knew that you went in a date?  The answers for their questions were related to our religion, so Hanan and I tried to answer their question by the easiest way, so they can understand Saudis’ opinion about dating, and we did. Fang studied the high in America, so I asked him about his experiences. He said that he learned many things when he lived in America without his family to study the high school. After that, Chenyang told us about a very delicious drink in Starbucks. We tied and it was really delicious. After that we stared to talk about our Academic classes. We talked especially about the math exams that we took. We were complaining about them because the exams were hard.

(Response)Feng, Hanan, and I were knew each other, so were felt comfortable while we were talking together. Also we felt comfortable while we were talking to Chanyang. He is a humorous person, so we were laughing together.  I really liked my group and I enjoyed talking with them. I wish that they felt the same.

(Analysis of Communication) I did not face many communication problems in our meeting because Hanan is my friend and we are from the same country, so we were helping each other to answer our classmates’ questions, especially when they asked us about the dating. The only problem we faced was finding a free day to meet in. It is very difficult to find a good time for all of us to meet. Every person has different classes in different times, so this was the reason for the problem. 

1st Speaking Circle Meeting Report

Ali, Faris, Ziyi, Vickie

Speaking/Listening 222-2

Ms. Levine

1st Speaking Circle Meeting Report

February 15, 2015

            On Tuesday, February 7, my group and I met at Akers Hall cafeteria for lunch meeting. First of all, because Faris and I live off campus, the place was not very convenient for us. We arrived there about half an hour later than the time we supposed to me at because we spend more than half hour looking for an empty parking place. When we got to the cafeteria, we found the other groups' members and apologized to them. They were very understanding. However, everyone grabbed some food, and we sat at a table. This meeting was our first meeting, so we started getting to know each other more. Then we discussed the food quality there. The food were not the best food you can eat for lunch, and not healthy at all in my opinion. After lunch, we begun discussing our plan for next meetings, and what the best time and locations for all of us. Finally at the end of our first hour meeting, we decided that our next meeting will be at MSU's museum. .

            This meet was a big chance for all of us to get to know each other more, and a big opportunity to practice our English with classmates who are at the level with us. Now everyone in the group know a lot about every other member such as age, nationality , major. Faris is eighteen years, from Saudi Arabia, undergraduate student majored in finance, and he has been her in the U.S. from five months now. Ziyi is twenty years old, Chinese, and also undergraduate. She studied high school her in the United States. She has been in America around four years now. Next was Vickie and she is Chinese, eighteen years old, and undergraduate student. As well as Ziyi she also studied high school her in the U.S. and this is her fourth year too. Finally, it was my turn to give them a brief information about myself. I am twenty six years old, Saudi, graduate student majored on Applied Mathematics. This is my second year a MSU and the U.S.

            In general the meeting went really well. I did not feel there is any problem communicating with each other. For sure there are some difficulties understanding some words because of our pronunciations though it was not a barrier. We tried to help each other as much as we can to improve our English. I think this is the point from the Speaking Circle. In my opinion, next meeting we should not meet for a meal because eating while having a conversation is not a great idea for two reasons, First, we came from different cultures, and sometimes what we are costumed to do while we are eating consider rude in some other cultures. so it is better to meet for a cup coffee or tea instead. Second, people get distracted while they eating, so they talk for one minute and stop for couple.   

           

 

SpeakingCircles's Meeting #1

Hello everyone,

I would like to share our first meeting with you , and I hope you enjoy what I wrote about it. F first of all, I would like to introduce my Speaking Circles and me to you. My circle's members are Fatma Madi, Jane Shi, Colas, and I am Shymah Almutairi. We decided to made our first meeting at  Peking restaurant which is a Chinese restaurant. We met on Friday, January 30, at 4:00 p.m. We met for almost two hours. We ordered some classical Chinese dishes which is called  "la zi chiken" "Vinegar Potato silk" "lamb hot top"(included tofu, cabbage), and Fatima and I tried to eat that food by using chopstick. 


I knew a lot about Chinese culture which is one of the oldest cultures over all the world.As you can see there are some Chinese landmarks. It was amazing experince that I had during my studying in the ELC.Thank you Ms. Levine for giving us this real chance to really practice English, and thank you everyone for reading my post which I hope you enjoy it.

Practice Post Feb.9

    This is my first semester in MSU. The academic classes that I currently take are EC and Maths. Also, the listening and speaking class has a lot of fun. We have two different group projects, everyone attends actively.

Heba, Chen, Frank AD-Campaign Group

I'd like to ask you about next step in campaign?

practice

Cornell note-taking system  is the most significant thing that I have learned so far in this class. I learned how to take notes in different ways, but this was it is the useful way for me I think. 

I got the idea of posting a blog.

Practice Post Feb.9

In this semester, I take two ESL classes. Listening &Speaking is one of them. The first class I met our teacher Mrs Lisa, and she is a kind woman. She introduced the syllabus for us, and there are many new things I never tried before.

At the beginning of this semester, Mrs Lisa created a program called" Speaking Circle" which include four people who have different mother language. We have different topic in each meeting, and we have many interesting activities such as watch a movie, have a dinner together and make a tour in campus. We had the first meeting last week, and I think the coming meetings will also be fun.

Although the homework is a little more and hard, it is useful. I get many tips in the video" taking notes", which has a good influence on my other academic classes.

I hope we will have a good experience in this class.

Speaking Circle Meeting 1 Report

Speaking Circle Meeting 1 Report

Abdulrahman Alsafrani

Shouyou Wen

Tianzheng Gao

Chanho Lee

Summary

We met on Monday 2-2-15 at the International Center at MSU more than one hour. First of all, we introduced each other deeply. Then, we discussed the plan for speaking circle in this semester. After that, everyone talked about his culture briefly, such as food and language, and everyone wrote his name in his own language. Next, we talked about the cost of living in the US and tuition for studying in university. Finally, we decided to meet next Monday and talk about favorite movies and books. Actually, the most memorable moment of our gathering when everyone wrote his name in his own language, and when we took a selfie

     Respons

Indeed, it was a great meeting and a good opportunity to exchange experience, culture, and practice English, even if the members of my group are not native English speaker. I really enjoyed that meeting and learned many things. For example, Lee talked about his sister. Her accomplishments are amazing, so she has six languages, she graduated with only two years, and she spent most of time on studying. So, I learned from that working hard is the way to succeed, and there is nothing impossible if you work hard. In addition, we found that some significant aspects of our cultures are 

 .similar

  Analysis of communication

In class, we decided to meet on Monday 2-2-15. It was easy to communicate, and everyone came on time. In fact, I did not face a big 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. I think that coming to the meeting 
with some preparation about the topics would make our meeting much productive and helpful