Teaching English in Vietnam

[Tim]

In teaching ESL at the university here, I have three primary goals.  It's because of these goals that I'm able to post some videos at the bottom that many of you will find amusing to watch.  I'm tickled at the way this assignment turned out, and I am REALLY looking forward to seeing how the next big project goes.

First Goal: I want to encourage self-learning as much as possible.  I talk a lot about English being a "mountain" that these college students need to climb.  From the upper slopes of the English mountain there are many opportunities that they only barely are aware of from down here where they are starting.  Also, it's no shame to be lower down on Everest when other climbers are up above you in their journey--everyone keeps moving onward and upward.  Speed is important, because there are opportunities for kids who master English well before the 4 years of university life are spent that are not available to students who spend all 4 years just learning the language.

So in order to help them become self-learners, I give them techniques for learning that will outlast my stay in Vietnam.  I have them reading Newbery Award winning novels and learning the rhythm of spoken English from movies ... more about that later, though, because a specific movie-watching-assignment prompted this blogpost.

The second goal I have is to help them gain technology literacy.  Surprise surprise, right?  They build website-based portfolios and practice all manner of technology skills as they do their assignments for me.  For example, they don't just keep a reading log--they build themselves a Google Form and embed the resulting spreadsheet on their portfolio.  They don't just give speeches in class--they record themselves giving speeches and then embed the Youtube vids into their portfolios.  There are lots of auxiliary skills in those two sentences, too.  Logins and recording/re-recording and column-widths and text-wrapping ... I have happily provided no end to frustrations for my students as they have flexed their fledgling technology muscles.  There is no true growth without struggle, though, so I keep inflicting struggle.  Here is the Portfolio site of one student who is about mid-spectrum in terms of her English and technology abilities: http://kvyphan.weebly.com/b14/creating-my-reading-log

The third goal is the least important for me, and that is the one in which I actually "teach" them anything.  Yesterday I was on my motorcycle heading over to the banh-my-sandwich stand that we like so much, and I took a different route than usual.  The road that is the direct route is torn up, so I was cutting through the neighborhood.  I happened to glance in one window and saw a foreigner animatedly teaching an adult class of Vietnamese.  That was worth stopping my bike for, because it's my neighborhood, and I like to know the doings of any other foreigners on my turf.  :)

He was talking and circling words on the whiteboard and calling on students.  Teaching.  And I realized that I do the same thing when I'm in front of the university students once a week, but that I don't value it very highly.  My first two goals dwarf this third goal in importance.  He was teaching them something about currencies of the world and the students were copying the words he wrote.  It was fine-looking teaching, but my heart is not in it.  I think about John Gardner's quote: "I am entirely certain that twenty years from now we will look back at education as it is practiced in most schools today and wonder how we could have tolerated anything so primitive."

The kind of blended/virtual teaching I do isn't for everyone and it isn't for every age-level.  Please don't go dismantling any elementary schools because I said I don't value direct teaching.  It's just that I still struggle with a fair amount of disillusionment from my decade at La Pine Middle School, and I've found a mode of teaching that makes me feel like I'm doing good things for students again.  Back Stateside I teach for Baker Charter Schools in Oregon (and Michael will be enrolling in that online program in the fall) and I run Impact Virtual Learning for homeschoolers and private schools wanting technology-based electives.  Both are programs that I believe in, but especially Impact Virtual.

[Okay, folks.  He's getting back down off the soap box.  Looks like he's going to share those videos after all ...]

The last two weeks we've been watching a movie in class.  I have the same movie with English subtitles and also with Vietnamese subs.  They watch a scene with Viet subs, then watch the same scene with English subs but no sound, then watch the same scene with sound and English subs, then close eyes and listen to the rhythm of the speech, then watch the same scene again, quoting along with the movie.  Not every scene warrants this much repetition, you understand, but the movie is the eminently quotable The Princess Bride!

So then the assignment that's got me so giggly I had to share some pedagogy with you today?  They had to record themselves quoting from the movie.  I hope you enjoy!!

Her first quote is a little hard to hear.  It's awesome though: "Farmboy, fetch me that pitcher?"

https://youtu.be/GeL8k4OsZsU




And this student's attempts at doing the voices gives me GREAT pleasure.

https://youtu.be/NsN5MYXuC5Q



The next big project?  I'm going to have them create subtitle files for movies that have never had Vietnamese subs.  The fruit of their translation work (they'll work in teams, with three teams per movie, so that we can get the best translations cross-checked with each other) is that we will ultimately upload the .srt files online ... to literally benefit the world.  Isn't that cool?  Then I'll show them the movie so they can improve their spoken-English cadence.  I feel like a great teacher to think of something like this!  #alittlegiddy

(And yes, they are being subjected to a unique taste in movies.  The ones I want them to translate into Viet are both old Bill Murray movies: What About Bob and The Man Who Knew Too Little.  My movie preferences aren't the only factor in what I'm choosing, but if I'm going to have to sit through a movie, scene by scene, multiple-multiple times, I'd like it to be one that I enjoy watching...)