A bit of culture (1) (July 2005)

Thailand is very different from Western countries. If you are here for the first time, you’ll notice the obvious differences. It’s bloody hot compared to just about any Western country, apart from Northern Australia, which also has a tropical climate. Thai people smile a lot. A lot more than their Western counterparts do anyway. Everything is cheap. Dirt-cheap compared to prices in farangland. These differences are the usual suspects.

If you live here though, you’ll experience a few more subtle differences. You’ll get to know Thai culture and Thai attitudes better and you’ll understand that Thais sometimes have a completely different view and way of doing things. The way they act and think is often beyond Western comprehension.

Now let me first get one thing straight. I like Thailand and I like Thai people. They are very friendly and I usually don’t mind their strange behaviour and views. They say it’s culture. It’s not a problem for me, but the question is: can you handle it? With ‘you’, I mean the newly arrived farangs who are still in the so-called honeymoon period and think Thailand is heaven on earth. They’ll soon find out that not all is what it seems in paradise. Can they handle it? I can. For now.

To clarify things, here’s a selection of differences I’ve discovered so far.

Air
Air is the Thai word for air-conditioning. Thais love their air-conditioning. I agree that it can be pleasant to be able to get away from the sweltering heat from time to time, and relax in a nice, cool place. The problem is that more often than not, the air-conditioning is on full blast, making the environment you’re in not just cool but cold. If the outside temperature is 37 degrees Celsius and the air-conditioning is turned to 20, the sudden transition can give you quite a shock. Although 20 is relatively warm in absolute terms, it feels arctic when you just came in from the heat.

Have you ever been to a Thai cinema? If you have, you’ll know that it’s always freezing in there. During my first visit, I was only wearing shorts and a T-shirt. I had to keep rubbing my arms and legs to prevent frostbite. A friend of mine brought his leather jacket to Thailand just for one reason: being able to go to the cinema.

Other extreme examples include forms of public transport. Although the Skytrain is very fast and convenient, it should be called Skyfridge. The same goes for the recently opened subway and most air-conditioned buses. Taxi drivers are usually dangerous individuals too. Whenever they get the chance, they’ll try to freeze you to death. If someone ever expires in a metered taxi, rest assured that his corpse will be delivered fresher than ever to the nearest hospital.

What can I say? It’s a way of life. Just ask a few of your students what they do when they have a day off. They’ll tell you they go to the shopping mall. They’re not really going shopping. The main reason for going there is window-shopping and hanging out with their friends in the chilly confines of the local mall.

Loud, louder, loudest
This is not a grammar lesson to remind you of the comparative and superlative forms. It’s about the way Thais like music. Wherever you go, the volume of the music that is being played will be set to high, higher or highest. Sitting in a bar doesn’t involve lots of meaningful conversation. Not just because Thais are incapable of it, but also because it is physically impossible to make yourself heard and understood while spending time in these venues.

In many bars, there is often a live band performing, and they always produce more than the legally allowed 90 decibels. Don’t think you’ll be able to get your say during breaks, because a CD will then take over and make even more unwanted noise.

The same is often true for shopping malls. The music played in many of the small shops, such as the ubiquitous clothes shops or video stores, isn’t the soft background music one would expect; it’s earsplitting noise that has only one effect on me: run an never come back.

Walking
Thais aren’t particularly good at walking. By walking, I mean just walking around in the shopping mall, on the pavement, anywhere really. I don’t refer to hiking or trekking; those are activities are entirely foreign to most Thais. People who do that are completely out of their mind, if you’d ask Somchai Samsong (the average Thai, in analogy with Joe Sixpack). No, I’m talking about using your feet to get from one place to another in daily situations.

What’s wrong with the way Thai people walk? Objectively speaking, probably nothing. As always, experiencing another culture involves comparison with your native culture, however objective you try to be. I’d say that my normal walking pace is about twice that of the locals. This means that, according to my view of the world, Thais walk incredibly slowly.

I do like a leisurely stroll in the park myself occasionally, but I’d never dream of obstructing pedestrian traffic wherever I go the way Thais do. I realise it’s no big deal, but their perambulations sometimes get on my nerves. I guess they are so slow because they don’t like to walk and they are hardly ever in a hurry. The tropical heat, the culture at work or the lack of a job are probable causes.

Fortunately, there is an economic advantage to this aversion to walk. The fact that Thais are completely unwilling to do the tiniest bit of walking makes the day for all kinds of taxi services. Especially motorbike taxis benefit from the Thai reluctance to walk even 200 metres (I am not exaggerating).

There are many more differences, but for now, my column ends here. See you next month.

The author of this article can be contacted at philiproeland@hotmail.co.uk.

Never mind fluency, here comes the grammar teacher! (June 2005)

I met a Thai girl the other day. I looked into her eyes. She didn’t turn away but looked straight back. Bold, defiant, seductive. We started talking. She was nice and talkative. One thing led to another. We hit it off and ended up talking about English grammar!

Sorry to lead you on, but this is not a Thai-farang love story. I suggest surfing to other websites if that’s your thing. Please don’t email me to get the web addresses. I’m sure most of you can google your way around the World Wide Web. By the way, I wonder how long it will take for the word google to turn up in mainstream dictionaries as a new word, a verb perhaps.

Now here’s what really happened. I was waiting for a bus into town the other day while this Thai girl was standing next to me. As the bus approached, she opened her purse and dropped a few coins. Being the perfect gentleman, I picked them up handed them to her. She smiled and thanked me in Thai.

I assumed this would be the end of our brief encounter, but to my surprise something remarkable happened. We made contact. We started talking. My Thai is all but perfect (read: it sucks) but to my relief, she spoke English. Her English wasn’t accurate or sophisticated, but she was quite fluent. More than that, her pronunciation was first-rate so I understood almost every word she said. I was flabbergasted. Rarely had I conversed before without having to ask my Thai counterpart to repeat things ad infinitum.

Fon was a student at a well-known university in Bangkok. She had almost finished her first year of Political Science but still had some exams coming up. After the usual chitchat about her background, she told me that she had flunked her English exam, and not just by a narrow margin. It wasn’t a close call; it was a disaster. I wondered how that was possible, as her spoken English wasn’t bad at all, on the contrary.

Being an English teacher myself, I wanted to know more about it. It turned out that she had three hours of English every week. Her teacher was a Thai lady who apparently didn’t do a lot of teaching, but instead instructed her students to read books. I couldn’t find out if the books she mentioned were textbooks or English novels. Unfortunately, dear Fon didn’t seem to grasp the difference between both and I decided not to push her too hard.

I believe it’s likely that she meant reading textbooks. When you ask university students what they do in their free time, they often reply reading books. When you ask what kind of books they like to read and in what language, they turn out to be textbooks, so what the students really mean is that they study in their free time.

She told me she didn’t know things like subject and object, adjectives and adverbs. The exam she referred to had clearly focused on grammar. It was probably one of those typical multiple choice grammar quizzes. There wasn’t an oral exam to uncover if students were actually capable of uttering some basic English sentences. Who needs conversation if you can have grammar rules?

I wasn’t really surprised. I had heard many stories before about Thai teachers of English awarding a ridiculous importance to grammar, as if it were the best thing since sliced bread. Of course it’s obvious why they do it. For many of them, it’s the only thing they’re really comfortable with and good at when they are teaching. I don’t want to offend Thai teachers, but it is no secret that numerous Thai teachers aren’t great conversationalists in English. Quite a few speak heavily accented English and aren’t particularly fluent. If the Thai government is serious about improving educational standards, they should either provide more assistance and funding for Thai teachers or hire more well-trained Western teachers.

I think it is quite absurd to reward students who are good at cramming grammar rules – and may not be fluent at all – and punish students who can speak English fairly well but aren’t very accurate. English is a language. The main purpose of a language is communication. Communication in daily life means talking to other people, not being able to explain in your mother tongue what the difference is between a transitive and intransitive verb.

When I asked Fon if failing English would have negative consequences on her further studies, like preventing her from advancing into the next year, she shrugged and said it wouldn’t be a major problem. She’d just have to take the exam again and again and again until she passed. I was relieved. In the end justice might prevail. She deserves to pass English exams. I’m sure she’s much better than most of her fellow students who scored well on the test. I wish her well.

= = =
Additional comments

How should people learn a language or how should teachers teach it? I don’t pretend to know the perfect way, but here are some ideas I’ve come across that I agree with. They are just a few theories about language acquisition but they are food for thought (note: I’ve translated boring, academic prose into understandable English).

Form and function
In language teaching, great attention should be paid to the relationship between form and function. Form means structure, grammar, while function indicates which type of language should be used in different social contexts. Function is more important than people think.
What good is it being able to form grammatically correct sentences without knowing how or when to use them? Imagine a student asking another student “How are you today, Sir?” and when seeing the school principal using the expression “How’s it hanging, dude?” Quite hilarious, isn’t it?

Organic
Language learning is an organic process, not a brick-by-brick process. Teachers shouldn’t try to build a wall of grammatical bricks and then expect the students to be able to use them correctly. Instead, they should consider themselves farmers who sow grammatical oats. Some of these will germinate and keep on growing, giving the students essential information about the English language.
Sometimes the oats will grow and flourish, while on other occasions they might not even germinate. Teachers will just have to accept that not every student’s brain is capable or willing to produce another language.

Rules
The teaching of rules is not helpful. Teaching students grammar rules first and then have them produce artificial sentences with these rules isn’t the best way to proceed. Students should be exposed to English as much as they can in order to familiarise themselves with the language. Then the teacher can have them use the target language without the need to pre-teach rules.
This is probably similar to the way as an infant learns a language. I’m no expert, but I don’t think parents teach babies the difference between present simple and continuous, nor do they expect them to utter grammatically correct sentences when they start speaking.

Inductive
The learning of grammar should be inductive, rather than deductive. Students ought to discover grammar rules by themselves, be able to grasp the rule after having used lots of target language, rather than have the rules spelt out for them first and then start using them.
To do this, teachers should try to use as much of the target language and structure as possible before teaching the actual rules. Immerse the students in the target structure and have them formulate the rules themselves afterwards.

I’m sure there are many more theories, but my column ends here. If you’ve come up with a brilliant theory of your own, please keep me informed. To end the article, I have a quote I came across on the Internet. I think it hits the nail on the head.

The mediocre teacher tells.
The good teacher explains.
The superior teacher demonstrates.
The great teacher inspires.

PS: I might write an article about the use of English in the classroom, particularly how much English is used in a typical Thai classroom. To this effect I have a set up a poll that will hopefully give me some more information. Please surf to http://www.geocities.com/opium1213/poll.html and vote. Thanks!

The author of this article can be contacted at philiproeland@hotmail.co.uk.

Boom, Bomb and Bambam didn't like Beer and Porn (May 2005)

Contrary to what some of you might think, this article is not about naughty, extracurricular activities, terrorism, the Flintstones or alcoholism. It's just about names. Another title for this month's article could be "What's in a (nick)name? It's about Thai culture, especially the use and choice of Thai nicknames. It's particularly interesting for people who are unfamiliar with the Thai situation. If you are already living in the Kingdom, you will know about it and maybe find it less interesting. I've tried to make it as entertaining as possible though.

Like most people, Thais have a name and a surname. Nothing special about that, one might think. Indeed, that's not really front-page news. What is unusual is the fact that they never use their official names. The reason for this is quite simple: all Thai names are very long, complicated, and (certainly for farangs) quite unpronounceable. The different transcription systems to transform the unique Thai script into Roman characters make it extra difficult. The transcription for the /i:/ sound for example (as in sheep) can be 'ee' as well as 'ii', depending on the source. Try pronouncing Kittisak Kittisopano, Kantathi Suphamongkon or Barnharn Sipa-archa correctly and without stuttering. Quite a task, isn't it? By the way, it's also virtually impossible for farangs (for the uninitiated, this is the Thai word for Westerners) to determine if those names belong to men or women.

Don't think I'm using extremely difficult names because I'm not. I just copied a few names at random from the Bangkok Post. Thank Buddha that they've found a solution to this problem. Unlike people from other countries, all Thais have a nickname. Like first names, nicknames are chosen by the parents and the children will probably use them for the rest of their natural lives. Personally, I think a name is quite important. It identifies who you are. It's a part of you. I definitely wouldn't want to be called Basil, Boogaloo, Bespectacle or Gonorrhea (a quick Google search turned up these REAL first names!).

Now how do Thai parents choose these nicknames? Sometimes a nickname is just a short form of an official name. If your name is Jiraporn, you'll probably be called Porn (this is a frequently used Thai nickname and has got nothing to do with being able to perform in X-rated films, on the contrary). Likewise, Sukanya can become Su or Ya. Or something completely different. More often than not, nicknames are unrelated to the official names. Scores of people go through life using popular nicknames such as Lek (meaning small), Noi (small) or Nok (bird). As these nicknames are chosen when you're just a kid, a girl named Noi isn't necessarily short.

This might seem an uninteresting phenomenon to most of you. I agree. Luckily for me, some people seem to have gone overboard when choosing a nickname, especially when using an English nickname. I don't know exactly why (probably because it's fashionable), but lots of Thais have English nicknames. And not just English names. Most of these nicknames are just English words. Sometimes quite ridiculous words really. Whereas Belle and Beau are acceptable (especially if they belong to pretty girls), other nicknames are laughable. I wonder what the hell possessed parents choosing nicknames such as Boom, Bomb, Bambam or Beer (as mentioned in the title).

Other strange nicknames include Music, Stamp, Gift, Machine, Bumbim, Ice, New, Arm, Title, Benz (as in Mercedes?), On, Off, Pop, Ay (as in the letter A), Bee (this could be the insect or the letter) and Bird, just to name a few. There are lots more, even more bizarre. Some of these might make sense in Thai, but others surely don't.

As you can see, some Thais go through life using the name of an animal. Sometimes in English, but often in Thai. I've met people with names like Gai (chicken), Kob (frog), Phueng (bee), Pet (duck), Muu (pig) and Luukmuu (piglet). Although they don't always resemble their nickname, the girl called Muu definitely had the face of a pig and the boy called Luukmuu looked like an overweight piglet (and had the brains of one). The other kids often made fun of him in the classroom. I wonder why the parents chose that name. They just added insult to injury.

As far as I'm concerned, I haven't got a nickname yet. And if people ask I just tell them to call me Teacher.

Sit ! Fetch ! Roll over ! Basic Thai commands for teaching children (April 2005)

Kids, who doesn’t like them? Well, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes they don’t listen to a bloody word you say. Especially when they haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about. That’s why this month I’ll take you through a few basic Thai commands you might need when teaching youngsters. Some of the commands are aimed at very young learners, as you’ll find out.

Being a victim of summer school, I ended up teaching young (6-11) and very young (4-5) learners every day and I soon realised I needed more basic commands to make the kids understand what I wanted them to do.

Let me get a few things straight first. First of all, it doesn’t really matter if the kids understand everything you say. Even if they do, they still won’t listen to you. Second, even if you know the commands in Thai, you’ll probably get the tones wrong and no one will understand you. And third, if you do know a limited number of Thai words, some of the students might assume you speak Thai fluently and start chattering away in Thai all the time. Not really what you want.

Besides, I have a few doubts about so-called programmes for young learners (not just the summer school programmes). At the end of the day, it all comes down to one essential question: Do the kids themselves want to learn English or not?
If they don’t, there’s really no point in trying to teach them anything, as they will only be focused on having a good time in the classroom and nothing else. Their parents will pay hard-earned (or hard-extorted) money to get them nowhere.

To my disappointment, lots of kids are learning English because they are forced to do so by their parents. Now as far as I’m concerned, forcing someone young to do something he or she doesn’t like isn’t necessarily a bad idea (they might need it later), as long as there is the right incentive to make them do it, and more particularly, make them behave in class.

Parents should try harder to motivate their children and make them respect other people, esp. the English teacher and his meagre worldly possessions he takes with him into the classroom. In spite of what a lot of Thais seem to think, we are not farang clowns whose only job is to entertain and kids should be taught this. Anyway. we’ll see who laughs last when they really need their English later for some entrance exam or IELTS/TOEFL test. It’s no secret that even university students can hardly put a three-word sentence together, let alone pronounce it correctly.

Now what about the incentive for children (or even teenagers) that parents can or should use? The incentive can be positive or negative. A few examples:
- Positive: “If you behave, listen to the teacher AND learn English well, I’ll buy you a Masked Rider VCD (pink jacket, or some other crap).”
- Negative: “If you don’t behave, don’t listen to the teacher OR don’t learn English well, I won’t buy you a Masked Rider VCD.
This is what I’d call the bribery approach. Please notice the strategically important words and/or.

There is also the more threatening approach:
- Negative: “If you don’t behave, don’t listen to the teacher OR don’t learn English well, I’ll kick the shit out of you.
- Positive: “If you behave, listen to the teacher AND learn English well, I won’t kick the shit out of you.
I’ve got no problem with either approach as long as it’s effective.

Okay, time for some commands. I’ll start with a few I needed most for very young learners, let’s call it the top-5:
- ya pit fai (don’t turn off the light)
- pert fai (turn on the light)
- ya non bon puen (don’t lie on the floor)
- tam diao nii (do it, now!)
- ya rong hai (don’t cry)

I’m not going to describe the situations when I needed these, I think that with a little imagination everyone can do that for him/herself.

Other useful commands are:
- nang long (sit down)
- luuk khuen (stand up)
- ngiap noi (be quiet)
- fang (listen)
- duu (look)
- kian (write)
- kopi (copy)
- ra bai sii (colour)
- ik tii (repeat)
- puut (say, speak)
- jab nang sue (take your book)
- jab pak ka (take a pencil)
- tob mue (clap your hands)
- mun (turn around)
- row (wait)
- tam kan baan (do the exercise)
- rip rip noi (hurry up)
- ya ta kon (don’t shout)

I found the last command (don’t shout) particularly useful sometimes. Apparently Thai kids can be put into two categories. Either they are (very) shy and hardly speak at all, or they are so loud they actually seem incapable of normal speech. Everything is shouted, which gives me a headache.

Now don’t worry too much if you can’t get the commands or the tones right. I can’t either. Remember, there is always miming, which is more effective and less time-consuming and frustrating.

Finally, when kids go (or are dragged) to a language school to study for two or three hours, let it be clear that half of the time will just be an alternative form of babysitting. Never mind. As long as the parents are happy, there is no problem. We get paid, the school makes good money and let’s face it, even the kids will learn some words and hopefully some classroom discipline, making the next teacher’s life a bit easier.

Clock, peanut, frog - or the problematic pronunciation of many Thais (March 2005)

The other day I had a group of very young learners. The last period I decided to review some animals and let them do some crafts. The animal they had to colour, cut out and assemble was a frog. When I showed them one I had made earlier, a few of them started shouting an obscene word. Well, I thought it was the f-word (pronounced with a working-class accent, true) but I soon realised they were just shouting out the name of the animal.

Try the other words, clock and peanut, with your students. I’m sure you can guess what’ll happen. The way they pronounce them will make them sound like the body part one needs to “frog”. Please don’t think this is a typical kids’ problem. It isn’t. All ages seem to suffer from ”pronunciitis” (hardly documented, chronic disease that makes it virtually impossible for Asian people to pronounce English correctly).

Okay, time for a diagnosis. Thais have a very hard time pronouncing consonant clusters (two or three consonants after one another), because they hardly have any in their own language. I personally think that – apart from sentence stress – classroom activities should really focus on this problem, or else the English that Thais use will remain unintelligible.

I try to have as much empathy for my students as I possibly can and I am becoming rather good at understanding the unintelligible. However, there are limits to everything and I am not a mind-reader. If a person says for example /sa-pye/, I know he or she means “Spy” (the wine-cooler or James Bond, doesn’t matter). But if someone says “kye”, I don’t automatically think of cry.

Don’t think it’s impossible for Thais, it’s just difficult. The last example (cry/kye) shouldn’t actually pose any problems, as the consonant cluster /kr/ exists in Thai (think of Krung Thep), but it usually does. They can pronounce Spy too, very clearly even. The other day a student told me she liked to drink gin mixed with Spy. She pronounced it perfectly. I was dumbfounded, not only because of the perfect pronunciation, but also of the bizarre combination of gin and Spy. The students interrupted me though, repeating that it wasn’t gin and Spy, but gin and Spy. Spy, you don’t know Spy? Finally it dawned on me. They were talking about Sprite… (/spr/ is indeed a difficult cluster and a final –t is hardly pronounced in Thai).

The final –s is also a recurring problem as it is virtually non-existent in Thai. Confusion between the “r” and “l” is another issue. I won’t even go into sounds like “ch” (as in cheap) or “j” (as in Jeep).

Sure, everyone can learn, I won’t deny that, on the contrary. I’ve been to quite a few workshops and I know a lot of practice exercises and pronunciation games. Practice is the key to success and some Thai learners make good progress. The problem however seems to be that many students have the memory span of a mosquito. After you’ve asked them for the 50th time to please pronounce a word correctly, for example using the final –s (actually extremely easy to do), they’ll still pronounce it “the Thai way” the 51st time. And I am not referring to virtually unpronounceable words as “asks”, “vegetable” or “ventriloquism”, but to much simpler things like the final –s.

Normal sentences will get mangled and sound like “She very ny, she wash TV evelly evening and alway go to shopping on Saturday.” (By the way, that should read “She’s very nice, she watches TV every evening and always goes shopping on Saturdays”, in case you wondered.)

Ask ten randomly chosen students to spell the words black and blue, and I guarantee you that a significant number of them will spell them “back and bue”. Well, at least they are consistent and somewhat logical. They probably figure that if they don’t pronounce the “l” there is no need to write it.

I don’t want to go into how to teach pronunciation in detail in this piece. There are a lot of good books on the market and at the British Council you can pick up a good pronunciation booklet including two CDs. For free. Just remember when teaching pronunciation that students have to be able to hear and recognise a sound first before they try to make it themselves. It’s quite useless making them for example repeat the word cheap over and over again if they themselves can’t even hear the difference between cheap and sheep. So listening, recognising, producing the sound themselves and a lot of practice are the keys to success.

I just wish sometimes that students had more self-discipline. They should practise a tiny bit outside of the classroom and try to improve their awareness of the language and their memory. After all, pronouncing the final –s isn’t difficult at all, it’s child’s play. They have to remember to pronounce it though.

They all have a computer at home, so it might be a good idea to purchase some educational software that features word recognition. They can try over and over again until they get the sound right. The software will even tell them how well they score (often on a scale from 0 to 100%). The price of the software shouldn’t be a problem, as you can pick up pirate copies for as little as 150 baht).

Another obstacle might be the omnipresent schwa (the unstressed /e/ - sorry, but I didn’t find it on my keyboard), actually the most common sound in English. Think of the way we pronounce America. Thais would pronounce it A-mE-ri-cA, but native speakers of English will hardly pronounce the vowels and say /e-mE-re-ke/.

Linking sounds is also unheard of for many students. Think of the way we pronounce things, like /howeyou/ (how are you), /whaddeyewant/ (what do you want), /Idunno/ (I don’t know) and so on. Do you know the animal called nelephant (as in an elephant)? Do you realise better now that the way we speak is completely different from the way we spell? Not so for the phonic Thai language. Every word is written the way it is said, or said the way it is written if you prefer it that way (there are a few exceptions, but hardly as many as in English).

Until now the only thing I’ve been talking about is pronouncing sounds. Those are the first building blocks that students should try to master (and they should start doing so at the earliest possible age). Then come two other major hurdles, namely word stress and sentence stress. As you see, dear native and non-native speakers, there are a lot of pitfalls in English pronunciation. Here are a few stereotypes we all know and love to hate. I’ll focus on food and drink.
• I want eat hamburger or pizza and then go to beer garden.
• Where you going? What you doing?
• You want pineapple or watermelon?
• She not so beautiful like me.

I guess it’s possible to build a whole curriculum around these few phrases, focusing on grammar (to-infinitive or ing-form, verb tenses, use of the article, comparatives and so on), pronunciation, function etc.

I’m not going to go into this word stress business but just remember, dear learners, that in English the word stress is seldom on the last syllable. Also, as said earlier, a lot of the vowel sounds are pronounced as schwa, making the non-stressed syllables weak.

As for sentence stress, English is a stress-timed language, which means that a sentence has stress on the most important words (content or meaning words), reducing most of the other words to a schwa-ridden, linked mumbo-jumbo. Never mind that, hearing the stressed words will make the meaning of a sentence more than clear, well for people with a reasonable grasp of English at least.

My contribution ends here. I hope some of you can find some useful information in this piece. Please don’t get discouraged, as a teacher or a student, and think that teaching/learning English is next to impossible. It isn’t. It just takes a long time and a lot of determination.

Wishes (February 2005)

I went to the Thai Tesol Conference the other day and saw and heard a few interesting things. Unfortunately I didn’t have the time to go the whole conference, so what I’m writing here – let’s call it my two baht - might be a little distorted. Sorry for that. Can’t be helped.
Some hot topics were discussed “@ the bar”, a panel discussion organised by the British Council after the official part of the conference had come to an end. Not only was the discussion worthwhile, the free-flowing wine and excellent and the delicious snacks were widely appreciated. Thanks BC.

Topic of the night was “Changes in ELT”, and more precisely which changes the esteemed panel members would like and would not like to see. A lot was said and discussed, so I’m going to limit myself here to two points.
Sue Kay, author of the Inside Out course books, said she didn’t want any more government schemes and/or interference. She specified it was a general, worldwide wish and admitted she didn’t know the Thai situation. Never mind that, she was quite right, judging from a few of the comments she got.

Apparently people are fed up with the government telling and ordering teachers what to do without giving them the necessary resources to do a good job. It’s a very good idea to decide that Thai children should learn better English in school, but it is foolish to think that it is possible without any substantial support. How the hell can you get people to talk fluently if you’ve got one foreign teacher in a school with over a thousand students…Needless to say that some top schools in Bangkok don’t have the same problems as certain high schools in backwater locations as Nakhon Nowhere or Mahasarakham (this last city really exists, I didn’t invent it).

Okay, I have to admit that there are a number of good, dedicated Thai teachers of English who do make a difference, but there aren’t merely enough. As long as the government keeps teachers paying a pittance there never will be enough.
One Thai teacher said that parents only wanted “a white face” in the classroom. I agree that if a Thai teacher does a good job, a farang isn’t always needed, but I couldn’t help myself commenting that the parents might be right. I sometimes wonder how many English is spoken during an English lesson with a Thai teacher. I suspect it’s not enough. An English lesson should be in English, not in Thai. Thai should only be used if all other means are exhausted.

I also have some doubts when it comes to the accent of the Thai teachers. Having heard some Thai teachers speak English, I’m not surprised anymore about the awful accent the kids have. We shouldn’t blame the Thai language and it’s absence of sounded consonants all the time. Some of these kids are just aping their teachers…

Learning has become a lifelong process. Obtaining a degree, following the strict school rules that were set decades ago and being complacent doesn’t do the trick anymore. Real professionals should keep trying to improve themselves. Thai as well as foreign teachers. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. But there is a problem if even I have trouble understanding another teacher (and no, I am not deaf). A foreign teacher shouldn’t be idolised, but shouldn’t be underestimated either. Moreover, while some teachers criticised the parents’ attitude, others were all too keen to have their pictures taken with those foreign devils…

Moving on. Another panel member, a Thai teacher/intellectual/self-made man who had studied in England and who not only taught English, but also French and German (languages he had supposedly learned all by himself), wanted to (re)introduce the works of Shakespeare into the classroom. What a brilliant idea… NOT. The last thing I want to do is ridicule this distinguished gentleman, but I couldn’t help wondering why the hell he came up with this.
Okay, if someone studies English literature at university he should know about dear William. Introducing Shakespeare in other circumstances though seemed preposterous to me. I completely agree with someone who said that we should try to get the students reading for pleasure. But please, let’s try some other material to get them motivated first. I personally remember the time when a high school teacher shoved Shakespeare down our collective throats and I can assure you it didn’t go down well. It wasn’t until years later that I bought a discounted paperback with the Complete of Shakespeare to see what all the fuss was about.

I just disagree with teachers who want to impose a reading list. Let students decide for themselves what they like to read. It doesn’t matter if it’s Literature with capital L. Remember, we want them to read for pleasure! When I was young, my favourite author was Stephen King. I admit, not the best of prose on the market, but that was what I liked to read. That trashy author wasn’t on the list of my English Professor of course. So please, let students read what they enjoy. There is still a lot of vocabulary in every novel and Harry Potter is a lot more popular than Shakespeare is. By the way, another (Thai) teacher commented that not everyone possessed the abilities of Mr. Academic.
A lot more was said, but this is it for now. Keep having fun in the classroom and see you next time. Cheers.

Monty Python in the EFL Classroom (January 2005)

Sometimes teaching English in Thailand can be hilarious, even absurd. A few sketches follow. They will hopefully make you smile or even shake your head in acknowledgement. Anyway, I wish you all a happy new year and lots of fun. Cheers !

Monty Python returns

Teaching in Thailand can be rewarding, stressful, frustrating, or even downright funny sometimes. The way people talk sometimes reminds me of the famous Monthy Python’s Flying Circus sketches. What follows are a few (slightly adapted) classroom conversations. Although they might be familiar to you, I hope you’ll find them entertaining.

Scene 1 : A classroom with seven students in an international language school. The students’ level is elementary. It’s Monday morning.

( T – Teacher ; S – Student Somchai ; P – Student Porn)

T : Good morning everyone. I hope you all had a good weekend. Now let’s get started and review some of the things we did last week. Somchai, what did you do yesterday?
S : I go to shopping.
T : Okay, now Somchai, could you repeat that, and try to remember what we said about shopping. Also, it’s about yesterday.
S : Oh, sorry, yesterday I go to the shopping.
T : Okay, so yesterday you went shopping (teacher overdoes stress to demonstrate).
S : Yes, I went go to shopping.
T : No, no, just went, no need to use go. Try again.
S : I just went go to shopping.
T : Wait, wait, wait, leave out just and go and use only went.
S : I only went to shopping.
T : (Getting frustrated) You went shopping, for crying out loud. Not to shopping.
S : Araiya? Crying?
T : Forget about that. You went shopping, didn’t you? Now you say it.
S : You went shopping.
T : (Turning his eyeballs) Not me, you went shopping.
S : (Puzzled) You went to shopping?
T : Not me, you! When it’s you, you have to say I. I didn’t go to shopping, you did, I mean I didn’t go shopping. Well, actually I did, but that’s not the point here. We’re talking about you, not me. Get it?
S : Araiya? (Looking to the other students for help)
T : Okay, Porn, what did you do yesterday?
P : I went shopping.
T : Thank you Porn. Very good. Now Somchai, what did you do?
S : (Starting to see the light) I went shopping.
T : Okay, good, and what did you after that?
S : I go to swimming.
T : Aaaaaargh.


Scene 2 : A small classroom where a private lesson is going on. There are two elementary students, both 18 year old boys who are in their first year of university. Their level is quite different. The first one’s command of English is below average, the second one’s knowledge sucks infinitely more than my job does.

( T – Teacher ; S – Student Somkit ; M – Student Machine)

T : Okay guys, let’s do it. See if you can handle the exercises I gave you last week. The ones where you had to fill in the blanks.
S + T : (Return a blank stare)
T : The basic sentences and questions, remember? Somkit, you go first. Read the first sentence.
S : Where are you come from?
T : Could you repeat that please? And remember the rules about asking questions, the correct use of the tenses and verbs. Remember? We did that last week, and the week before, and before.
S : Where you come from?
T : (Looks doubtful) Sorry?
S : Where you coming from?
T : Machine, do you want to give it a try?
M : (Looks completely puzzled) Araiya?
T : Machine, what answer did you have?
M : (No response)
T : (Speaking slowly and loudly) What – did – you – write – on – your - paper?
M : (Looks as if the teacher speaks Russian).
T : Hello! Earth to Machine. Come in please.
M : (Returns a blank stare).
T : Somkit, could you ask him to answer the question?
S : Araiya?
T : Oh well, never mind. The answer is ‘Where do you come from?’ Remember? Okay, let’s try the next one. Machine, try it.
M : (More blank staring).
T : Machine, try number two. Song. Understand? Khao jai?
M : (Starts stuttering the answer). She alway have beckfass in the morning.
T : Okay, okay, let’s try that again. It’s about using the correct form here. And watch out for the pronunciation. It’s alwayS and breakfasT. And it’s I have, you have, but he or she has. Can you try again? Machine?
M : (Looks as if in a trance).
T : No? Nothing coming? All right. (Teacher starts mumbling to himself) If you were a washing machine you’d be on my doorstep awaiting the next garbage removal. You haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about, have you?
M : Araiya?
T : I thought so. Moving on then. Somkit, could you please turn that bloody phone off and give the next one your best shot?
S : I am never go out on a Saturday night.
T : My goodness. If that was your best shot I guess you’ll never be able to conceive any offspring, if you know what I mean. No, of course you don’t. And you’re right not to go out and waste other people’s time.
S : (Looks puzzled too now).
T : Okay, Time’s up. Not a minute too early, I’d say. Let’s do the rest next week. If you’re still alive that is. You’re brain-dead already of course. Have you seen the latest Arnold flick, Machine? The good news for me is that you’ll never rise… (Teacher walks off mumbling to himself).

That’s it folks. Hope you had a good laugh. Happy New Year.