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Do they learn anything at all?
The other day I was wondering if Thai children who study English actually pick
up anything from the lessons they attend. It must have been one of those days
where you wonder if what you do has any impact at all on learners or if it’s
just water down the drain. I guess all teachers go through that phase at one
time or another. I started having doubts because I’d been teaching this bunch of
very young learners (half a dozen five and six year olds) for almost a year and
I couldn’t see a lot of improvement in their English capabilities.
Luckily, along came a boy who had dropped out of that very class about a year
before, just before I took over from another teacher. He made my day.
Apparently, his mum had decided that he should learn English at a young age
after all, so he rejoined the group he’d left earlier. He hardly recognised his
former classmates as most of them were new faces to him. After his mum had
dropped him off in the classroom and set off to commence her weekly shopping
spree, he showed all of us what he was made of: he started crying.
The other children didn’t join in but just looked puzzled. They looked at him
and then me as if asking “What the hell is he crying for? It’s just an English
lesson, not an appointment at the dentist’s.” I just smiled and let the new kid
settle down. After a while he understood that crying wasn’t going to get him out
of his ordeal and he quietly took his seat between two other boys while I went
on with the lesson. So far, my experience has taught me that it’s better not to
make too big a deal out of a situation like this, but just to let things run
their natural course.
Anyway, why did this kid make my day? Well, when I started involving him in the
lesson, it turned out he didn’t know anything. And whatever he had ever learned
before, he seemed to have forgotten most of it or buried it somewhere very deep
in his grey matter. He didn’t understand basic classroom commands, he didn’t
know most common words, he didn’t know diddly-squat. Then it dawned on me that
the other students knew all the answers to my questions. They obeyed or carried
out classroom commands without me having to repeat them and they knew most of
the words the new kid on the block hadn’t the foggiest about. My doubts about
them not learning anything had definitely been ill-founded. It turned out I had
doubted them and myself when I shouldn’t have. I just didn’t have anything to
compare them with and I had taken their skills – limited but valuable indeed –
for granted. It hadn’t been a waste of time and money after all.
Some children never cease to amaze me. I’m thinking in particular of another
class of young children, aged six and seven, that I taught. It’s simply
incredible how noisy some of them could be. There were a few boys in that group
that were so loud you could probably hear them two classrooms further down the
hall. Until I came along. When I took over that class from a teacher who’d quit,
about half of them (mainly the boys) just acted like a bunch of unsupervised
brats with no respects whatsoever for their peers or the teacher present. My
predecessor had apparently relied on the non-intervention approach and had let
the children do whatever they wanted to do, even if that involved causing chaos
and doing anything but learning English.
Now I’m fairly tolerant myself and I don’t to want to act as the
teacher-policeman, but such a live and let live approach just isn’t my cup of
tea. I presume that if kids are in my classroom, they must be there for a
reason. The reason why they are there is to learn English, willingly or
unwillingly. I realise that quite a few of them are probably there because their
parents drag them by the hair to the weekend language school and make them study
English. I know they’d rather be out in the park playing with their friends. So
some of them think that’s just what the classroom is: a park where they can do
whatever they want because the farang teacher can’t touch them. Well, not with
this teacher.
Although weekend courses have to be fun for everyone involved, meaning both
children and teacher, I think that fun and learning should be balanced. If the
parents pay good money to get their kids on a course, the least a teacher should
do is make sure that they learn some English. This can be done using fun and
games, but not exclusively. At the end of the day, learners have to put in a
minimal effort if they want to achieve anything at all. By the way, the children
shouldn’t just learn English, but also some sense of responsibility and the
awareness that they can’t get away with everything.
In general, the boys tend to be the troublemakers, while the girls are usually
better-behaved. This might explain the difference in English skills. In my
experience, girls often do better than boys when it comes to learning English. I
know this is a generalisation, but if there were statistics, I think they would
show that I am right. Of course I agree that there exist lazy and noisy girls
whose English is very poor, just as there are plenty of boys who are bright and
well-behaved.
When it comes to singing, girls are usually a lot more willing to sing and a lot
of them actually like it, whereas boys are often shy and reluctant. As for being
cheeky or naughty, I guess girls almost equal boys. The other day, two six year
old girls insisted on massaging my arm in the classrooms. I let them do it for
just a few moments in order to keep them happy, but guess what, after a few
minutes one of them asked me for 100 baht. I could see on her face that she was
joking, but it goes to show how cheeky even the very young learners can be.
Later in the lesson, a number of them ganged up on me and tried to steal my
wallet out of my back pocket. I can assure you that even a small group of young
children can be a handful to keep at bay, especially when there are a couple of
overweight boys among them.
One of the normal-sized boys in that class was very bright. Bright but naughty.
For example, he would draw a nicely curved W on the board and ask what it was.
Before I could even open my mouth he’d proudly announce loudly to everyone
present it was a bum. He then went on to draw a picture of a girl, complete with
a pair of convincing assets. When he was done, two of the cheekier girls
informed that the girl had “big milk”. Now what the hell do you say to that? I
know I could easily have shrugged it off, but I decided to correct them so that
they wouldn’t keep saying it for the rest of their lives. In fact, it is very
difficult to correct mistakes children or even adults have grown used to, so I
decided to tell them it wasn’t big milk, but it were big… well, uh, I was stuck
for a moment. Breasts just didn’t seem the right word. Moreover, a word with two
consonant clusters would have been mission impossible for them to pronounce
anyway. I don’t know what the politically correct word is with children, but in
the end I settled for boobs. Probably better than bazookas, beer glasses,
berthas, cantaloupes, Dolly Partons, dumplings, fried eggs, grapefruits,
headlights, hooters, melons, tits or twin peaks. If I’d had to do it again, I
might go for the fairly neutral, perfectly-sized and easy to pronounce coconuts.
That’s it. I hope I didn’t offend any airbags or mosquito bites with my column
this month. Remember, suggestions remain welcome.
The author of this article can be contacted at
philiproeland@hotmail.co.uk.
1/2/2006
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