Written by Lauren Bucher<\/p>\n
“Fee-fi-fo-fum \u2026Goodness gracious me! It’s my old man,” said the ogre’s wife. “What on earth shall I do? Come along quick and jump in here.” Xiaowen Xu , nicknamed Bella, read to the class.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Discussing the subtleties of voice inflection during “Fee-fi-fo-fum” and the difference between “really! really? and really.” are just part of another day for the international students in the English as a Second Language (ESL) introductory class.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
During the reading, Yujun Li, nicknamed Arthrun, the class wordsmith, told the class the meaning of the phrase “paltry beans” by looking it up on his handheld electronic translator.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“Funny looking beans means something totally different than funny-looking beans,” Professor Steve Shaner explained to the class, who speak English as a second language.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
In the speech class, international students learn about public speaking in English.Among other activities, they practice voice inflection and punctuation pauses by reading short stories in class out-loud. Through these activities, they learn about American culture and people.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“For me, teaching the students English is a ministry,” Shaner said. “They really don’t know people here and they have a lot of questions about the culture. They need to make friends with American students outside of classes, which is where the conversation partners program comes in.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Pairing an American student up with an international student to be conversation partners is a tool to get international students plugged into the HU community and involved in student life.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
By becoming friends with Americans, International students get to participate in American culture themselves, instead of being firsthand observers.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“I would love to get to know American students better,” Ngan, a business major from Vietnam, said. “I do not know about activities and games that happen on campus. I spend most of my time studying.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Conversation partners must be willing to meet once a week. They help the students meet other English speakers and participate in campus activities. Ideally, American students invite their partners to concerts, club sports or to eat in the cafeteria together.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“I think it’s a great opportunity to learn about other people at Harding and expand our world-view,” said American student Calea Bakke.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
To sign up to be a conversation partner contact Lauren Boone atlboone@harding.edu<\/a>or Steve Shaner atsshaner@harding.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Written by Lauren Bucher “Fee-fi-fo-fum \u2026Goodness gracious me! It’s my old man,” said the ogre’s wife. “What on earth shall I do? Come along quick and jump in here.” Xiaowen…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":376,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[268],"class_list":["post-3868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-hurricane-florence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/376"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3868\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}