Could I possibly love what I am doing even more? I don't think so. I have wonderful students and this semester is going better than any semester I have ever had! I feel very blessed and honored by the respect and hard work I receive from my students. This week was spent discussing research questions. Last semester, I had a hard time helping my students find good research questions for their future research, and this time, I decided to spend a lot of time on it and set up a few rules: nothing about the war in Iraq and nothing related to sports. I don't know if it is a weakness of mine or something too difficult for anyone, but I simply can't handle those questions well and find myself unable to guide the students efficiently. The research question must also be academic enough, and I will not say "I THINK you can find something written about that topic, I THINK someone must have done research about that." No, this time, I want to know for sure if someone has written something about the topic before the students actually decide to write about a certain topic. I have also made my students read quite a lot about how to formulate research questions and hypotheses, what kinds of questions they can ask, etc. I introduced the future projects and how they had to be on the same topic but would be different too. This is tough to explain, and we spent most of Monday's class discussing it. Again, unlike my previous class, this class asks several questions, makes comments, asks for examples, and likes to discuss ideas. I guess I didn't feel very comfortable spending so much time on talking, but this week, I really tried to pay attention to WHO was doing most of the talking during these discussions. I could have done some more "scientific" research about the dynamics of our class discussions, but well, I didn't. I just paid careful attention and noticed when I was speaking and when my students were talking, the kinds of questions I asked, and the kind of answers given, if I provided some answers too quickly if the students didn't seem to know, or if I gave enough time for them to think about it, if the discussions were about useful topics and problems or if it was more just for the fun of it. I also monitored the topic of our discussions to see if we were often going on a tangent or staying on track. I remember that in some of my own classes, I always tried to get the teacher to talk about "other stuff" so we would have less to do and more fun in class, or that I didn't like some teachers because they were always talking about their wives, dogs, or political views, and I really wanted to avoid this in my own class. Well, I know that it is extremely difficult to monitor your own speech habits, but from my little study, I noticed a few things: - I do ask many questions, but I do give opportunities to all my students to answer them and even argue about the answers. I must be more careful about which students always answer and which ones never do so I can make sure that everyone has a chance to speak. - Yes, I do go with the flow and someone go off on a tangent, but if I have specific questions I want to ask actually written on my little lesson plan, I can easily go back to the initial topic pretty easily. In fact, this happened just yesterday as we were speaking about different ways to find good research questions. I had asked the students to fill out a simple form asking questions about different "sides" of their lives: hobbies, jobs, families, beliefs, problems, policies that affect their lives, news stories that interest them, campus organization they belong to, interesting facts about their families or friends, places they have visited or wish to visit, questions they have, etc. All the students had filled it out but didn't know how to use this information to find questions for their papers, so we spent about 20 minutes discussing this. I took the example of one student who had written that most people in his family were either teachers or in some kind of business. So there, how can you use this to find research questions? I asked him if these were common jobs in Malaysia (where he is from), and whether these jobs were prestigious. I then asked him what he and the people who were teachers there thought of the educational system in Malaysia, and if it was very different from the educational system here. And this is where other students started to catch up, and someone asked him what he was studying (engineering) and why he was not following his family traditions and studying to become a teacher or a businessman. Then someone asked why he had come to the US instead of studying engineering in Malaysia and if this had to do with the educational system there or here. More questions were asked and the students started to realize that there were several interesting topics that could be researched there already, with just this little piece of information, and then the conversation changed focus a little and we started discussing about the fact that the US students found in engineering here are those who really WANT to be there, while several of the international students in engineering programs here do not like engineering but do it and do it well because their families force them, because it is the only career that has any prestige in their countries, or because they know it's the only career that will allow them to earn enough money back in their countries to be able to "repay" their parents for the immense sums of money they spend to send their children here. I guess this was a culturally enriching discussion because everyone realized the differences in social systems, educational systems, and "family relations" that exist between countries. In the end, I was able to say, "OK now, we could speak about these differences forever, but do you see that differences in cultures and motivations and family relations would make greatresearch questions?" - As for the time I allow before I answer my own questions, I am not doing to bad. I made of point of looking at each student individually after asking a question and of rephrasing some of my questions to make sure everyone had understood. A couple of times, I gave one or two examples which showed what I was expecting and allowed the students to feel more comfortable in giving other examples. Yes, I did think a couple of times that I could have waited a little more, but I wait about 5 seconds every time, look at everyone, and well, we'll see if I can do better than that. No, really, I think I am not doing too bad. - When it comes to my doing all the talking, it is only when there is something I must explain or that the students have not read about or understood. For example, I spent some time explaining about word limits on projects and why they were important because someone had written on the blog that he/she would have gotten a better grade if there hadn't been a word limit. I said that I really wanted them to concentrate on the QUALITY of their writing and not the quantity, that much could be said in just a few words, and that I hadn't taken that many points off in the first place. I reminded them of the two stories they had read, "No Cats in America?" and "Bart" and how powerful these stories were even though they were only a couple of pages long. It is true that I have reduced the number of words they can write from 1000 maximum last semester to 900 this semester, but I don't think this makes any difference. The students last semester were also complaining, and so were the English-speaking students last year when they had to write everything in 1500 words only. It was actually funny to hear them say "WHAT? 1500 words? That's waaayyy too much, I'll never be able to write that much!" and then, once they started writing, they would complain because they had 2000 words and I would tell them to reduce, reduce, reduce! Well with 900 words, at least, no one thinks it's too much, but some students still managed to write up to 1200 words on their first project! I too do hate the word limits imposed by my own teachers, but I do understand them for two reasons: 1) they DO force me to go back and cut out the unnecessary information, the blah blah, and to rephrase my sentences and paragraphs in a more focused and efficient way; 2) there are several instances when a very strict word limit is given, for abstracts or grant proposals, for example, and it is never too early to practice following very specific directions. I won't give a maximum word limits for the interview report but I WILL give a minimum limit, because I know that this is a paper that the struggling students have a tendency to seriously shorten. I will not give ANY word limit for the final paper, because by that time, the students have so much information about their topics that they can write pages and pages of interesting information without any difficulty. I am still thinking that NOT giving them a word limit might lower the quality of the overall paper so I might still change my mind, but last semester, I initially said 7-10 pages, then felt bad for the struggling students and also because other 106i teachers were not asking for that much, so I said 5-7 pages. In the end, I got anything from 5 to 12 pages. The question then becomes, "is it possible to grade fairly papers that are so different in length?" But I told my student that it was not because they wrote a lot that they would get good grades, that what HAD to be in the paper COULD be written in 5 pages, and that quality (organization, depth, etc.) was always the most important of my grading criteria. It is important to realize, also, that by then, I know my students very well as well as the grade they will get in this class, and I usually don't go into much details to grade this last paper, except if the student's grade is borderline between a B and a C, for example. Talking about grading papers, the first project, which I got on Monday and returned on Wednesday, was not bad. The maximum was 99%, the minimum 78%, and the average was 89.3%. Wow, now that I am looking at this, I realize that this is very high and that I was maybe too nice. The thing is, several students had low B's but had gone to the writing lab a couple of times, which really increased their grades a lot! So FIVE students got an A- instead of a B because of that. I will give a little less extra credit for the writing lab next time and will try not to inflate my grades too much, but really, I don't know if it's because I am a bad writing teacher or because my students just worked hard, but I sometimes simply couldn't give a low grade to a "good" paper! This is also the first project and the easiest one, and I am also struggling between the desire to not discourage my students from the start and not tell them that they get good grades with not much work. The last thing we did this week, besides going for a walk in the snow on the only day of sunshine (but by a temperature of 10F!) to get some sunlight, and watching Fried Green Tomatoes yesterday night (I just love those evenings, they are so fun and refreshing, especially when we have arguments about what an orange is or is not), was to have our first "individual" conferences. By personal, I mean in my office, one student at a time, and for 15 minutes or plus if needed, instead of the usual 5-10-minute, in-class, rushed, with-everyone-talking-around-us, kind of conference that I don't really find efficient. Talking to my students like this, in a more quiet and nice environment, allowed me to get to know them a little more, to ask them about their other classes, their lives, our English class, their questions and concerns, and their ideas for their research. I find this kind of conferences very nice and agreeable because it allows me to spend some face-to-face "quality" time with students who are often very quiet in class or sometimes "hiding" on the extremities of our semi-circle table arrangement. During those 15-20 minutes, I feel that I have finally "met" some of the students who have always been in class and done their work (by the way, in 3 weeks, I haven't had a SINGLE absence!), but who have been there without really been there for some reason. During conferences, we talked about their fears of making mistakes when they speak English, their fears of saying something stupid, and their shyness in general for some of them. I also saw that about half of the students already have good research questions but that the other half will need more help. The discussion we had yesterday in class will have helped, hopefully, and next week we are also starting the week with three days of conferences, readings, and form-fillings. I have a not too bad feeling about this, and think that everyone will be able to find something good and interesting to research, even if with a little help. Ah, what a great week this has been!
Considering that I was already really mad at my students last semester after only a couple of days, it is a real miracle that today, end of the second week, was the very first time I had to say something in a half-angry tone to my students! Well I wasn't even angry but rather disappointed, that's what I said, because they didn't have much homework to do for today so I had asked them to write on the feedback blog, and no one had done it! I said it would make me sad to have to force them to do it. But really, this is the only serious "event" I can complain about so far and these students are just wonderful to work with! How can that be? Is it that I told them from the start that this class was going to be impossible, and so the less hard-working students left quickly and now I only have 14 ready-to-make-the-effort students? I am not sure it's even that, since a few students are already having difficulties. I see two kinds of difficulties already: the first kind of difficulty that one student in particular is having is that he doesn't have this Asian hard-working mentality (sorry for the generalization here), nor the engineering students' motivation (yet another unfair generalization, since my two only other students who are not in engineering programs are the two best students, so far). Consequently, his papers are written very quickly, his homework is always approximate, and I can't see much effort and time put into what he's doing. The other type of difficulties that some students are starting to have is simply because of their level of proficiency in English, and literacy in general, also. I can see that these students work hard and are eager to do well, but the truth is, they will be struggling twice as much as the other students. I will really have to watch for these students or they will quickly become discouraged and the semester will be a living hell for them. Of course, there are also those students who are fighting with both kinds of difficulties... I'll have to be twice as careful there too, and not let the sad story of last semester happen again (student who struggled all semester and finally gave up). I am tempted to have a "class for extra help" for those who struggle, and I know they could use it, but at the same time, I already feel overwhelmed with my own classes plus our movie night every Thursday. I need to think about it though.
Movie night: what a great idea and a pleasure! Eleven (our of 14) students showed up for our movie, Eat Drink Man Woman, a Chinese movie because it was the Chinese new year yesterday, and a couple of ex-students showed up too. I am talking to other 106i teachers and telling them that they can come and/or send their students too. It'd be fun to have students from several sections come, although the space is quite small, but the more the merrier! I was afraid the students wouldn't like this movie because it had subtitles, but again, as for last week, they got into the story quickly and loved it! I know they come for the extra credit they get, but I hope that soon, they'll come for the fun of it! A few students have already thanked me for the good evening they had, which is nice. Several students said that they would be interested in watching Gandhi and Schindler's List, but these are very long movies and I'm afraid it would get boring. Making a good choice every week won't be easy, but those students seem to trust my taste now, and they also seem easy to please and interested in different things. It'd be harder with US students!
Monday: no class, MLK holiday. Tuesday: quiz about the important parts of a story: setting, theme, characters, plot. Most had it all right, but a few had problems with terminology. I got "theorem" for theme, "slot" for "plot" and "characteristics" for "characters" to name a few. This is a problem I often have to face: careful reading. I wish I had more time to do additional reading and make sure they pay attention to the details, because I strongly believe that careful reading will allow everyone to avoid making a lot of "stupid mistakes," either in English or in math or physics or anything else too. But I guess I can't teach them everything! We talked again about the stories they had to read the week before and tried to discuss them in terms of theme, character development, plot, and setting, because it is difficult for them to understand that they need to "detach" themselves from the facts (the guy died, the little boy felt bad), and discuss instead HOW the writers of these stories write about those facts and WHY the stories are so powerful and successful in making the readers "feel" for the little boy and "cry" when the guy dies. It is interesting to notice that this semester, I speak a lot more and spend much more time discussing about writing styles, ideas, organization, problems, etc. I ask my students for input, of course, especially when we discussed these two stories and when I try to help them share ideas about their first project (writer's autobiography). But I also give them a lot of examples, descriptions, and ideas on how they can do it and why writers write the way they do. Last semester I don't think I did that much and it might have been because the students were so shy, at first, that I didn't feel they'd participate much and ask many questions. In fact, they never asked that many questions. Of course, I can wonder if they never asked many questions because I didn't give them the opportunity, or vice versa. But my students, this semester, are so talkative and "participating" that discussions are natural and easy to carry. The only problem then is that we have a tendency to talk, talk, talk, and then we don't have much time left to do other things!
This is what happened when I tried to successfully, this time, introduce peer reviewing. It has always been my weakness as a teacher, and this semester I decided to spend enough time on it so that the students would really learn the reasons why it is important and the ways to do it efficiently. First, I decided to make them realize that they can all contribute to each other's efforts with valuable input, because everyone is different, everyone understand directions differently, everyone has some knowledge that others don't have, and every language has different levels of similarity with English. Then I tried to make them understand that they can help others, of course, but they can also learn from others by reading their papers and discussing with them. Asking questions as to "why" they did something this way and not that way, comparing their papers, thinking about what they like in the other papers, can only contribute favorably to the writing of their own paper, since they will have new ideas and a better notion of what is expected of them. Finally, I told them that no, I didn't know EVERYTHING, and that I could give them some feedback on their writing and teach them how to write, but everyone in our class had something to teach and knew something I didn't know. This is a major issue in the feedback I receive in my evaluations, where the students say, "I feel uncomfortable reviewing my classmates' papers because I am not the teacher and think I should be the one telling others how to do it." I explained that we ALL together make this huge pool of knowledge that we should share and learn from, and also that no one has the obligation to accept the comments other people from the class make. If the comments seem helpful and useful, fine, keep them. If they don't, just say, "thanks for the feedback" and don't use them. Hopefully, that made the students feel less pressure to "act like the teacher." Was this little speech convincing? Successful? I don't know yet, but I sure hope so. It can't have made things worse, I think, and the students seemed to take it rather well.
On Thursday, the students had to bring their first draft, and wow, it was the first time I had the opportunity to really evaluate the differences in levels of proficiency of my students. This might be purely incidental, since I only had one student from there last semester and one this semester, but it looks like students from Taiwan have serious difficulties with grammar. Interestingly too, these two students both went through the last few years of high school in the US! So I can't tell if the grammar problems come from the Taiwanese language education system or from the fact that these two students came to the US before they had to take the TOEFL and might have landed in an environment that in all probability wasn't ready or capable to give them appropriate help. Anyway, so far, it seems that I have about 5-6 students who are excellent writers, and that is a good start. During peer review sessions, I will try to pair these strong writers with students who need more help, although I let them choose their partners yesterday, and two students who are way up there were together, and listening to their conversation was just amazingly inspiring!
Because of the long discussions on Wednesday and Thursday, I didn't have the students write two draft but instead spend more time on reading and evaluating other students' first draft. The first form I gave them was rather simple, with just a few general questions such as "What did you see in this paper that you like and might use in your own paper?" The second form I gave them was more complex because I also wanted them to start reading directions carefully and becoming self-reliable when it comes to format (cover page, title, font, size, page number, etc.). Last semester I found that I wasted a lot of time explaining these things over and over when all the students had to do was open a PDF file that contained all the directions and even gave them examples! So maybe they can help each other there too by saying, "Wait, is this the correct font that we must use?" or similar comments. I hope. A few questions on my form also talked about transitions between ideas, introductions, and conclusions. I haven't talked much about this yet, so I count in these to be rather vague and inconclusive (and unintroductive?) still, but I want my students to start thinking about it. From what I saw and heard during those peer reviewing sessions, things might be more successful than last semester. I have taken their first draft home and given them some feedback, and so far, it looks like except for a few students who are obviously struggling already, everyone will have been able to write something quite good.
Well this is about it for now. Next week I will introduce the big "research question for the rest of the semester" idea, and will spend about two weeks on finding good questions for everyone. It is an energy and time consuming activity but doing it well will be rewarding throughout the whole semester!
The first week of this new semester is over and as usual, I am surprised, amazed, speechless, confused, and, well, happy. Things are decidedly never going the way I expect them to go. So, here is how my week went: on Monday, I saw a new group of students in front of me and was sad not to see my previous students! The new ones seemed in a good mood and almost happy to be there, though, which was my first surprise. I introduced myself and then talked about the syllabus for a while--textbooks, homework, projects, attendance, etc. I explained that lateness was offending me, that attendance was important, and that this class was going to be tough. In fact, I also spent some time explaining why I thought writing was important and how this class was probably the only one they would have that would teach them how to write good research papers, so I that's why I took my job very seriously and would make them work hard. Then the students introduced themselves to the class--India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Korea, Taiwan, Ecuador, Venezuela, Turkey, Kuwait, and Thailand. One of the students is great friends with Kachru, the famous Indian linguist! Another interesting thing is that several students seemed to know my previous students, which means that they know what to expect, and I don't know if this is a good or a bad thing, but so far, it has been good. One student wrote me this: "when I first came in here I thought you were a really strict teacher but these people told me that this will be the only class that will keep yu happy during the semster and you are very friendly. so it calmed my nerves." Well... I'm sure glad to hear such things but at the same time, it scares me! On Tuesday, I explained some more rules and expectations, and also how the conferences worked and how the students were supposed to be available to come to class every day of the week. Then, I had everyone take some M&Ms and then tell as many things about themselves as they had M&Ms. It was fun, because some students had taken a lot of them. It was interesting to notice that these new students were indeed less shy and more talkative than my students last semester, who, until the last few weeks, were rather shy. My new students were laughing, making jokes, and seemed very comfortable. After the second day, I had already shared a lot more personal things about myself than I ever did last semester! Again, is this good? On Tuesday too, I got my student evaluations from last semester back, and can I just say without sounding too proud: never in my whole life have I received such good evaluations! Not even my first semester teaching French at BYU! Not even my first semester teaching 101 at Purdue! These evaluations were the greatest reward for years of worries and hard work. And of course they made me miss my students even more than before. One student had written, at the back of the evaluation form, in huge letters: Lucie Moussu is the best! It almost made me cry! Now I don't want to "dormir sur mes lauriers" as we say in French, so I know I still have to earn my new students' trust and hard work. Wednesday and Thursday, I had half the students come each day and talked to them about blogger and how I needed their feedback. This time, I really made it very anonymous by making Ongun (from Turkey) my blog administrator and by asking him to "kick me out" of the blog so I wouldn't ever be able to write or see anyone's names. This is a risk I'm taking--for example, I won't ever be able to edit comments if they are going the wrong directions (I never did that last semester but had to do it with one of my 102 sections when they started to insult each others). We'll see how this goes; it's an interesting new experience. I've told them that they could write about whatever they wanted and whenever they wanted, so this too will be a new experience since I am not asking specific questions like last semester. The other thing I showed them how to do on the computer was how to access their grades. I have to say that this first computer experience went much smoother with this class than with last semester's students, but this is probably because the students are not super fresh freshmen anymore and they are used to Purdue's computer systems, and also because the computers are now working well. I had to buy my own license for my grades ($90) and also the right to publish my grades online ($25/year), since I was still using BYU's license and thought it was about time I became a bit more legal. Bad luck, it was just when they introduced the fee for the online grade system. On Thursday too, we had our first "movie night." Wow! That was quite something! I had also decided to have a little birthday party since it was my b-day on Tuesday, and had invited some ex-students to come as well as some friends and teachers, and I think about 40 people showed up! I was so happy to see Rohit, Danish, Hans, Alan, Daniel, Esteban, and Kester! And a few older students too, from 101 and 102: Darius, David, Tiffany, Ashley, Josh Graves, even Andrew Selig! Very nice surprise! This is where I realized that most of my new students knew ex-students of mine! Good thing or not? All except for two students stayed after the little party for the movie (Life is Beautiful), and counting friends and ex-students, about 22 people stayed for the movie, and I hope many will come next week and during the whole semester. A few 106(i) teachers and even Margie said they were interested in knowing what movie we would watch every week so that they might decide to come and maybe even invite some of their own students. Since then, I have learned that: there is a cricket match between India and Australia tonight, that Australia is the best in the world in cricket, and Indonesian is not a language that allows the subject pronoun dropping like Spanish, that it doesn't distinguish between subject and object pronouns, that Nihit knows Kachru and Margie and Tony, that Indian people call "Uncle" any close friend of the family (I knew it already but I don't really "know" anything until I am faced with someone who says that his Uncle is Kachru when he is really a good friend of the family! Same thing with Indian people saying yes by shaking their head as if they were saying no!), that I got the student that Gigi kicked out last semester because of plagiarism, and that Delhi is up north when I always thought it was where Bombay is... I guess I'm going to have to learn more about India and Indonesia this semester! And about many more things too! Today, I had planned to give the diagnostic test to the students, but instead, I gave them a quiz on the reading (on which they did well, much better than my last students!) and then we talked about quizzes, the importance of the readings, and the first project. We talked a lot about learning the "language" of English writing, getting used to terminology, styles, learning how to use the textbook and what to kinds of questions to expect from me, and just overall learning a new way of talking about things. I don't know if I have done that much last semester, but they asked a lot of questions, seemed genuinely interested, and had done the reading for today carefully. Then we talked about the project. It was hard for them to understand what is meant by "writer's autobiography" because many never thought about their writing, their education, and their culture. It is very hard for them to "step outside" and analyze their writing style/preferences/habits from a more objective point of view. I guess the assignment is vague: they can speak about people who influenced them, specific times when they learned something important, good or bad experiences... if I had to do it, I am not sure how I would do it either. But really, it is an important project because it forces them, we hope, to think about their native culture, their new one here, the differences between their native language(s) and English, why they like to write or not, and the ways they write in their native language and in English. We talked about characters and setting descriptions, attention catchers, organization, making the writing interesting and "alive," and how to think about the audience, not the general audience, but the very specific audience of our class. For Monday, they have some more readings to do and then I hope to give them the diagnostic test, which will help them free write about their writing experiences and lead them into the first project. We might have had too much fun. It's very probable that at some point I'll have to be mean... have a "serious talk" with my new students or give them really low grades on their first project to show them that I expect more and that it's not because we can have fun in class that I don't expect high quality work from them! But for now, things are going well and I have nothing to complain about.
New year, new semester. I have decided to continue writing here every Friday or so, because I found it interesting to read what I had written here last semester. I knew that things had changed over time between me and my students, but reading about my feelings and reactions to what was going on in class made me realize the mistakes that I make over and over and the little distance I am able to take when a problem hits me--I always react so quickly and with strong measures! I need to detach myself a little more, to feel less threatened when something doesn't work as well as I had expected. I have also decided that I was going to have only one blog for my new students: a feedback blog, where they will be asked to write about once a week about their feelings about our class. For the rest, I will simply ask the regular assignments to be written on paper. The advantage of this? Not sure yet, but at least the students won't see the "blog" assignments as extra work. The disadvantages? The students won't be able to read each other's entries, I will carry more stuff around (with the risk of losing it), and we won't save trees. I'll try it this way now and if I find that it worked better before, I'll go back to my usual ways next fall. Other than that, I am using the same exact format as last semester for my class website. I spent a lot of time trying to make a new and creative website and managed to do something quite decent, but in the end, I found it too complex to change everything and redo all the work I had already done once for my first 106i section, and since this first website was working perfectly well, I decided to use it again! A few things have changed though: the blog page, as explained above, and the project pages too, especially their order, format, and little pictures I drew on every project page. Last semester was a big mess with the projects, because I added some and deleted some too, changed the order of the others, and didn't like their format. Hopefully, this semester will be a little better planned. I also know much better how much time I have to do what I want to do with this five-days-a-week class organization. Last semester, I had tried to combine both my previous English 101 and English 102 into one semester of 106i, and it didn't work very well, but this semester I know what I really want to do, what the students really need, and how much time everything takes. Some things that will be different this semester: - the blogs, as explained above - the movie night, as explained below - the first week: getting to know each others better and in smaller groups - the projects: a separate "summary" project - peer reviewing: more time will be spent on "teaching" how to do it well and why - and I'm sure a lot of other things! I think everything is ready for tomorrow, first day! I checked my class roster and can't pronounce the names on the list, but that's normal. The first week will be dedicated to getting to know each others better, and we will also start this new idea of mine: a movie night, every Thursday evening. This week will not be optional, since it is the first one and I want everyone to see what it will be, and I have also decided to take this opportunity to have a little birthday party with some friends and ex-students. When I think of last year, same time, I realize how many things have changed: I am much more confident, I don't fear having to face 50 students, I know I love to teach what I will teach, and I know (well, very much hope) that I will love my students ...and I haven't lost my voice! This is exciting!
