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Friday, August 6, 2010

Beena Menon

I first met Beena in 2006, when she was working in Pune, India, but as you will see, this wonderful glimpse into her teaching life comes from her experiences in Thailand, where she works in a State university. Enjoy :-)


(If you are regular reader of English for the workplace you will have already met Beena - she is the person who provided a different perspective on my mango buying incident in Chennai. See the post here .)





…My good exams should prepare is First, lessons before class. Second, should reading a book very very much and every day. Third, should rest in peace and drink water in order to refreshing and good think. Finally, must not lazy and to be in earnest. My exams must study hard…

The nightmare continues inside my dazed benumbed brain, swirling words and sentences going round and round without the least bit of coherence, until a scream explodes “No…no!!! Stop!”

It’s the alarm screeching its wake-up call…I punch ‘snooze’ but the nightmare of jumbled words returns to haunt me…

To chase it away, I push myself off the bed and with the weary courage of a bruised and battered warrior whose ammunition has long since exhausted, but who must fight on with bare hands, I get ready to face my day. We’re talking about winning every little battle here; let’s leave winning the war to others over the next millennium.

Sipping a cup of tea to soothe my jangled nerves, I breathe in the clean, cool morning air, and watch the sunlight filter through the leaves of the trees in the flower filled garden of my accommodation on campus. There’s a sense of calm and peace everywhere. I love Chiang Mai, I love everything here – my work, my colleagues, my students the university and this town.

This morning, I have a Writing Skills class with my sophomores. We’re learning to write paragraphs through a simple ‘formula’. a) A topic sentence, b) 4 or 5 supporting sentences c) appropriate signal words and d) concluding sentence.

We’ve been through all the correct motions over several weeks to ensure that we’ve not only worked hard, but worked smart and worked cheerfully!

The sample output of all that effort is for all of you to see…. sigh!

I’ve barely slept last night; was up checking those infernal paragraphs from the last assignment. This above paragraph, the stuff of my nightmare, was the product of a group writing exercise.

There is more to come… this morning at class…

“I must to go to working”!!…sigh…

Teaching at the state university in Thailand is not without its exciting moments… in fact I’d say there’s never a dull moment! One gets to listen to and read the funniest, weirdest, most intriguing expression in the English language.

The fun stops and the nightmare begins when one must teach ‘correct’ usage – grammar, structure, punctuation, parts of speech, pronunciation…one wonders just how these students got this far with such grave problems and the baffling issue is which end to pick up and tackle first!

The problems are on many levels ranging from student attitude and motivation through to socio-cultural and linguistic problems. For instance, the nature of the Thai language, is completely different from that of English. The Thai language has eliminated personal pronouns, and tenses. Everything happens in the present tense, with a little word tagged on before or after to signify past or future.

They use the name of the person (first person included) repeatedly to signify the subject of the action; so that you speak about your own action in the third person.

The students are hence completely confused with the English structures.

Added to which, they’re brought up never to question anything nor clarify their doubts with the teacher. Asking questions is seen as an affront to the superior authority of ‘the learned one’. So, the classes are full of silent spectators with serene expressions who need a lot of encouragement, prodding and poking to speak up.
The teacher confronts these issues on a daily basis.

At the end of each day the English teachers think – thank God for them, else we’d be out of business!
The work here does have its rewards though and change though slow, is visible over a span of years of relentless, focussed and patient work.

Abrupt as it may seem, more on the subject later…

I must to going to my class now! sigh… :-)

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