Where Are Your Keys?

For as long as there have been multiple languages, cultures have worked to communicate with each other.  The first reason was for trade, then for friendship and romance and the last was to negotiate the end of wars.  I will stick with the first two reasons for my approach.

My phrase worksheets worked fairly well but I didn't feel like there was much retention.  I wanted to know how I can teach something they can keep and use later on their own?  That said, I want to find a way to learn Thai using the same process.  Is there such a thing out there?

Google something like Learn A Language Quickly and sooner or later you come up with a fellow who says you can learn any language in 90 days.  He talks about how many languages he can speak and how he mostly just forces himself to start speaking the language mistakes and all.  I tried that for about 20 minutes and decided to continue my search.

A popular teaching method in the US is called Total Physical Response or TPR.  The idea is that you learn faster when you get your body moving with the language.  A simple example is the song, Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes.  The song has children pointing to such body parts as they sing.  I learned to song when I was probably just four and I still remember it so I figured there must be something to it.  From looking at the program, I could probably do great things if I had the training.

Then I saw something new.  Where Are Your Keys?  Up in the northwest USA there are several native American tribes with long traditions and their own languages.  Over time, though, many of the languages have disappeared.  Tribe leaders have been working desperately to keep what languages are left alive then along comes this programs.

The method is to play a game where there are a limited number of things in front of you and your fellow players.  The demonstration uses a red and black pen, a rock and a stick.  Using American Sign Language, you start with, "What is that?"  From there you move to yours and mine, want, have, give and take and so on.  Using repetition and sign language should help students retain what they learn.

I decided to try this with my students.  First I needed to find four things all students carry because rocks and sticks are not part of their usual arsenal.  After observing several classes, I came up with red pen, blue pen, notebook and bag.  Each student would place these things in a square on their desk and then, while standing on a chair, I lead the class in using sign language.  I had them copy me asking, What is this?  Whose is this?  Is this mine?  I had them say Yes and No.  This all seems quite basic, but my students mostly enjoyed it.  I was able to get some of them to work in small groups asking each other questions and all the classes ended well.

Now I need to work out more conversations about things around them.  The idea is that rather than teach long lists of vocabulary and grammar rules, have them learn by doing.  It is how I have learned most things in life and I want to give them that same opportunity.  I will report how this works in future writings.

Which came first, the grammar or the language?

If you had told me five years ago that I would be teaching English in Thailand, I would have laughed.  My teaching had been either to my sons or to adults at work.  My English grades were never stellar and I can't speak Thai.

None of that has changed except now I have been teaching English for 2 1/2 years to students who can barely understand me.  I said in my last entry that I was surprised to realize that my students speak mostly in the present tense no matter what they are asked and that probably came across as complaining.  The complaint was about myself.  I was annoyed with myself for not recognizing this sooner and now I needed to figure out how to fix it.  That is what I do.  I fix things.  I want to fix my students ability to speak English and have to speak it clearly and confidently.  

Nee is not a native English speaker so she came into this language from the backdoor as do many immigrants to the US.  She learned English here with a very strong background in grammar.  I knew of the grammar rules but couldn't tell them to you without checking them in a book.  So why do I speak better English than her and most of the people around me here in Thailand?  I think it has to do with how I learned the language.  She and a few websites told me to teach English phrases and have them build on that.  I found a list of phrases like I'm verbing and I will verb and such.  I made up some worksheets listing these and tested them on one of my better classes.  

I had them work in teams to figure out how to make sentences with the phrases.  They tackled it with vigor and that lesson went well.  I tried it again in another class and it bombed.  Then it failed again and again.  I usually try sometime five or six times before I move on and I decided to move on.  Keeping on that idea, though, I started to see patterns in English that I had never given any thought to and wondered if I could teach that.  For instance if I ask a present simple question about you doing something, I would ask What do you do or what are you doing; one being present simple and the other present continuous.  Whenever I start using terms like that, my head starts to swim, but I figured the students had been taught these rules and I moved on.

Long before the Internet, we had libraries.  When I wanted to apply for a job, I went to the library to research companies.  When I wanted to teach my sons to read, I went to the library.  When I wanted to build something or fix something...well, you get the idea.  I went to the library.  Jump ahead a few decades and now I am in a small town in Thailand.  We have no libraries, at least none with books in English.  I don't have many fellow foreign teachers to kick around ideas and I don't know how to speak Thai.  Along comes Google and Facebook and LinkedIn and I am off and running.

There are many ESL websites filled with worksheets and ideas.  I try them and keep them if they work.  Most have not for me.  Thus I am still searching.  I do want to make a difference for whomever I can.  

How Do I Keep Going?

Why do students need to be at school 9 hours a day? Why are classes so chaotic?  Why don’t I have so little support from the school to do my job?  I never taught in the US, my home, though I certainly attended school there.  Although Thailand is, in many ways, a wonderful place to be, teaching can be a challenge.  Here are a few examples.

I have only taught in one school, so I don’t want to say all Thai schools are this way.  I have read stories from teachers around the country with similar problems, though.  My school has students ranging in age from 3 to 18 and there are over 4,500 students.  I teach senior high school with 50 to 55 in each of my 14 classes.  I teach two of them twice a week and the others I teach once.  My students have been “taught” English since first grade yet they don’t seem to remember anything beyond good morning and good afternoon.  They have to check their watches to be sure they say it correctly.

When I started two years ago, I had no idea what I was in for.  I was given the freshmen and sophomore classes, called Mattayom 3 and 4 here, without a textbook or a curriculum.  Few of the teachers can speak English including many of the English teachers, at least in the elementary school.  In only a few classrooms do students actually sit down and become at least moderately quiet before I begin.  Much of my time is spent getting them to settle down to listen to my lesson.  Such experiences bruised my ego and frustrated me.  To that add that there are too many students in the room, no audio visual equipment for me to use and I can barely speak to them.  Some teachers came and went within the same year, finding it too much.  And yet, I stay.

I make up all my lessons from things I find on the internet, books I bought in Bangkok and sometimes ideas I make up in my head.  Each has its successes and failures.  I treat each day as a chance to bring someone along to speaking and understanding better.  

Each day I am greeted by endless smiling faces, both students and teachers, with a good morning.  A common greeting is to ask if I have eaten yet.  I have considered getting a hat made that says, in Thai, gin laeo, I have already eaten.  It is probably no more frustrating than Americans who also ask, “How are you doing?”  In both cases, the person asking doesn't really care; it is just a habit to ask.

What keeps me going is the energy I get when I do get a class to do what I want them to do, whether it is to repeat a lesson, sing a song or play a game.  I don’t flatter myself into believing I am going to get all 800 of them to speak English by the time they leave school.  Still, I want to give it my best effort.  I work at letting them know that English has its fun side and it isn't all about grammar.  Ironically, most of them know English grammar rules far better than I do despite their inability to understand simple questions like, “What are you doing?” and “Where can I find…?”

Next week is midterms for them which will give me a break.  My job will be to help teachers grade their tests, a mechanical process at best.  After that, I want to try something new.  I have read that being able to speak English requires you to know a certain number of words and ten basic phrases.  They know quite a few words.  Now I want to help them express themselves.  Wish me luck.

Finding someone I never knew

Back when I went to the University of California, I studied such things as biology and chemistry.  I wasn't particularly good at them, at least in my college, but I managed to get through.  I graduated thinking I had wasted my time.  Soon I was working as an insurance adjuster and thought I would never see the sciences again.  Over time, I found myself working as an auditor with good pay and benefits.  I got to where I could do the work in my sleep which I gradually came to realize was part of what was causing me to be so bored and depressed.  I knew I needed a change and, when I lost my job in the US, I decided I wanted to do something completely different and found myself teaching English.  I hadn't given science another thought.

Then last year, a former student of mine who had moved to a higher grade approached me.  "Can you teach me science in English?" she asked.  I don't remember why she asked or how she knew I had ever studied such things but I decided to give it a try.

I started researching what she needed to know about.  She said she needed help with photosynthesis.  Oh sure, I thought.  That's easy!  The plants absorb sunlight and turn it into sugar which becomes starch and even wood.  What could be simpler?  Then she showed me her text.  Though it was entirely written in Thai, I could see from the photos and diagrams that I had much to learn.

I knew that one of my professors, a Dr. Calvin, had discovered what was to be called the Calvin Cycle (catchy name, huh?) but it was so new, there hadn't been much teaching of it then.  That had all changed.  I found a website called Khan Academy where I found myself glued to my computer by the hour.  Through his simple, yet meticulous presentations, I learned the mechanics of photosynthesis down to the organic chemistry. Wait!  I died in organic chemistry yet this guy makes it fascinating.  I was hooked.  I couldn't stop watching.  She had also asked me to help with chemistry and from Mr. Khan I learned so much about the periodic table and valence electrons and so on.  I was becoming addicted to science.

Ironically, after all my preparations, she only had time for a few classes.  We tried it again this year, but after two classes, she and the two friends she brought along, said they just didn't have time.  They were tied up with many other outside classes they have to take in order to graduate.  I was heartbroken, though I tried not to show it.

Back when I was in college, most of us had big plans as to what we wanted to do with our degrees yet few of us ever actually used them.  They got up jobs, but rarely in our field of study.  After almost 40 years, I got to step back into my old shoes and live a life I had never had an opportunity for.

This is why I will probably never work in the US again.