I realize I don’t post a whole lot about teaching, you know—the main reason I’m here. It definitely has its ups and downs. It is incredibly difficult yet incredibly rewarding. You ride the highs as long as you can because you never know when you’ll hit a wall of frustration and communication breakdown. Believe it or not, it’s totally worth it for me.
Most of my students are at a very low level of English. That might surprise you since they have been taking English classes every year since starting school. There are many reasons for this, some of which I probably don’t even know about. One reason they have such a hard time speaking is that their education doesn’t primarily focus on communication. Most time is spent prepping them for national exams which don’t have a speaking/listening portion. At my school, the other teachers teach grammar and I spend once a week with them working on communication.
If you read anything about Thai culture (and I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before), you’ll find out that “saving face” is a huge priority. Many of my students don’t want to try speaking because they will be embarrassed if they say something incorrectly (even though I’d probably be the only one to notice their mistake).
Also, some of them don’t have an incentive to do well. Maybe they don’t want to travel or work in the tourism industry. If they spend their lives in Lampang, they will have little to no use of English as an adult. This is similar to some students in America with one key difference: Thai students can’t fail. Literally…everyone passes. no. matter. what. (I guess, not showing up might be an exception. I don’t really know the specifics of that scenario.)
In light of all these hurdles, I focus my teaching on non-traditional lessons that get them to open up and just try English. I use music, play games, teach dancing, basically anything that will help them forget about the wall they put up. I hope that these lessons might play to their other strengths and they realize they can do it.
So this week being all crazy with Christmas celebrations, I decided to do a listen and draw activity. I read them Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and asked them to draw a picture of what they thought the poem described. There is quite a range of drawing and English abilities within a class and especially among classes, but here are some of my favorite submissions. Keep in mind that they only had about 20-30 minutes of drawing time. (Also, some of them have listed their class number, e.g. M5/2. The first number indicates their grade, just add 6 years for the American equivalent. The second digit is the class they placed into based on national testing of all subjects.)
Most of my students are at a very low level of English. That might surprise you since they have been taking English classes every year since starting school. There are many reasons for this, some of which I probably don’t even know about. One reason they have such a hard time speaking is that their education doesn’t primarily focus on communication. Most time is spent prepping them for national exams which don’t have a speaking/listening portion. At my school, the other teachers teach grammar and I spend once a week with them working on communication.
If you read anything about Thai culture (and I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before), you’ll find out that “saving face” is a huge priority. Many of my students don’t want to try speaking because they will be embarrassed if they say something incorrectly (even though I’d probably be the only one to notice their mistake).
Also, some of them don’t have an incentive to do well. Maybe they don’t want to travel or work in the tourism industry. If they spend their lives in Lampang, they will have little to no use of English as an adult. This is similar to some students in America with one key difference: Thai students can’t fail. Literally…everyone passes. no. matter. what. (I guess, not showing up might be an exception. I don’t really know the specifics of that scenario.)
In light of all these hurdles, I focus my teaching on non-traditional lessons that get them to open up and just try English. I use music, play games, teach dancing, basically anything that will help them forget about the wall they put up. I hope that these lessons might play to their other strengths and they realize they can do it.
So this week being all crazy with Christmas celebrations, I decided to do a listen and draw activity. I read them Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and asked them to draw a picture of what they thought the poem described. There is quite a range of drawing and English abilities within a class and especially among classes, but here are some of my favorite submissions. Keep in mind that they only had about 20-30 minutes of drawing time. (Also, some of them have listed their class number, e.g. M5/2. The first number indicates their grade, just add 6 years for the American equivalent. The second digit is the class they placed into based on national testing of all subjects.)
“Omg, Pack, did your horse die?” “No, teacha, he sleep.” “Whew!”
The details make the picture.
Nice trees…and oh, is that horse…um, yeah.
-5 points for the horse eating his master, +5 points for a rabbit in the moon.
These take place in a snowy Thailand!
Ploy learned her drawing skills from Bob Ross. Gotta love a happy little tree!
+5 points for a Mario land setting
Peter took a lot of liberty with his interpretation but he used tons of English!
These folks had a very clear understanding of the poem. Great work!
So, these are my favorites out of some 300 students that did this activity. Ironically, not a single student drew the man/woman speaking in the poem.I liked it because it worked well for my visual learners, I have more success when they don’t realize they’re learning, and it got the students who are too cool for school to open up a little bit. This was a really fun activity for me—oh yeah, for them too. 
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