A Week 4 · Live classClass guide
Week 4 · With your teacher

Live class guide

For the teacher, and for the student to read before class.

60 minutes

Say the hard part out loud

3 minutes

Open by asking how the week felt, and expect “worse than last week.” Say plainly that Week 4 is the hardest by design and that catching less here is normal.

Students quietly conclude they have plateaued in this week. Naming it costs three minutes and saves the back half of the course.

Three-voice drill

15 minutes

If you have a colleague free for ten minutes, borrow them. If not, use two recorded voices plus your own live.

Run a three-way conversation and give the student one job at a time:

  1. Follow only voice A. Report what A said.
  2. Follow only voice B. Report what B said.
  3. Report the topic only, ignoring who said what.
Round three is usually the easiest and the most surprising to the student. It shows them that gist survives when detail does not.

Floor-taking practice

12 minutes

Talk continuously and instruct the student to break in using the entry phrases — “Can I just say”, “Actually, that reminds me”, “Wait, going back to what you said”.

Do not make it easy. Leave only short gaps. Push them to start louder than feels polite to them.

Many Nepali and Chinese students find interrupting genuinely rude. Address that directly: in American group conversation, waiting for a clear gap means never speaking, and silence reads as having nothing to contribute rather than as courtesy.

Couldn't-Catch clinic

15 minutes · protect this

Work the list. Sort it by number of speakers first and start with the two-speaker entries — those are still solvable and rebuild confidence before you reach the four-speaker ones.

Sound check

10 minutes

Play the Workshop 4 recording. Then run a minimal-pair identification test: say one word from each pair and have the student point at which they heard, list hidden.

  • Nepali speakers: vet/wet, vine/wine, thin/tin, they/day
  • Chinese speakers: rice/lice, right/light, think/sink, three/free
Test perception before production. If they cannot hear the difference, correcting their mouth is wasted effort.

Set the week ahead

3 minutes

Tell them Week 5 is easier and more immediately practical — shops, ordering, phones, numbers. Flag that Week 6 ends with the final recording.

Back to the week