After nearly a month after moving to site I was finally called upon to do some work in the traditional sense; my Saw Naw (supervisor at the Primary Education Service Area Office, equivalent to a school district) asked me to do a training in conversational English for some of the office’s directors. It would be around 35 people over the span of two days at a resort in a different district called Wang Nam Khiao.
I was excited to get started doing some work and got ready by planning some sessions. I wanted to make sure that they had the ability to introduce themselves with a wider range of vocabulary and I wanted to teach them some small talk topics so that they could continue to practice using their English among themselves at the office. Saw Naw Panya also wanted to go over filling out forms in English.
So I planned a three sessions: Introductions, Small Talk about the Weekend and the Weather. Most interactions with Thai people go something like this:
Thai person: “Hello, how are you?”
Me: “I’m (however I’m feeling). How are you?”
Thai person: “I’m fine, thank you. And you?”
Me: *you already asked me that…*
The standard response is that they are “fine.” I think that is something that is almost every PCV’s personal mission is to provide the vocabulary to respond something other than “fine.” And to break the habit of attaching “And you?” onto the end. So I set out to teach “great” “good” “fine” and “not OK.” I also wanted to teach “Where are you from?” instead of “Where do you come from?” We played some games and the participants had some fun.
My other sessions that I had planned: to talk about things you did over the weekend and the weather, never actually happened. After the first session, they all complained about being tired and needing to take a rest (in spite of starting the training two and a half hours later than planned in the first place). So we took a rest and by the time that was over it was dinner time, which turned into karaoke and drinking.
The next morning, almost everyone was “sick” and only 5 of the participants actually showed up in the room, again much later than the time on the schedule. So rather than attempting to do either of the sessions that were planned for, we decided to just sit down and try to talk in English. It ended up turning into allowing them to ask me any questions they wanted about the US and the culture there and being much more enjoyable than leading more training sessions, but I was still frustrated in the end.
After, we had lunch and then, of course, toured around the area on a bpai tiao before heading home. I was also told that I would be running a training for 200 principals three days later. Which sent my stress levels up and you can read more about in the next post.
curlyadventurer May 7, 2013
Don’t be frustrated. Be invigor(d)ated. 🙂 ESL is hard, and it is hard for the students to learn. When I was in Cusco, My brain hurt all the time, from lessons. The question game sounds fun. I think it would be cool, if you made it a question for a question. So they ask you something about the US and then you ask them something, simple, about Thailand or some easy subject. The hardest part about spanish for me was, and still is, connecting my brain’s understanding to an expression. That reminds me, I need so study more spanish!!!
Christine May 10, 2013
At least I inspired you to study Spanish more! I think it’s more that the people I was training didn’t really want to learn or even try. They know the importance of ASEAN, but don’t see that for their lives and livelihoods. And I don’t think I can blame them: if I were a supervisor for a school district I wouldn’t worry about finding another job in a different country either. But, it makes it hard to tell the people you are supervising that English is important if you yourself aren’t also investing yourself in English as well. This isn’t something that I’ve just run into; having talked to other volunteers, this attitude is pretty widespread. I think it’s just going to be making the connection for them. And that can be difficult.