After breakfast and over drinks she quizzed me on flashcards she had given me a few weeks ago, and then surprised me by giving me a written quiz for the flashcard vocabulary. I surprised myself for getting almost all of them right, tones, special characters, and all. Among the many other things I learned, I learned the funny literal meaning of the Vietnamese way of saying "I'll be there in five minutes": "I will have my face there in five minutes" (Tôi sẽ có mặt ở đó trong mười phút). Also, instead of 'taking' pictures, in Vietnamese you 'catch' them, so when people want you to take their picture they sometimes say 'catch me!'
After five and a half months, Vietnam is sinking in. I was remembering a particular dinner out from a long time ago, and I caught myself retrofitting my memory with chopsticks. Last night I handed something to someone in my dream, and I used both hands to do so (something very Vietnamese). More interestingly, I am also absorbing local ideas of beauty. Even though I am looking forward to getting some sun this weekend, I catch myself admiring fair skin. I'll see someone and think, "Oh, her skin is so light! She is so beautiful." Appended to that is a parenthetical 'here', as in, 'she is so beautiful here,' but that caveat isn't as strong as the rest of the reaction. More than anything it makes me think, if after five months in one country I can start to internalize local beauty ideals, how very very hard it must be to escape unseen manifestations of cultural bias acquired through a lifetime of exposure.
Last week I said that the USA quizzes looked more promising, but that the proof would be in the (grading) pudding. Well, today I finally got around to said grading. The class average was 7.1, a marked improvement from last week's 4.2 and even slightly better than the 6.9 yielded by the first week's cheating frenzy. Moreover, there was an all-time high of six perfect scores. However, there are still some issues that I'm not sure how to address. The last question on the quiz is always something like, 'What is something you find interesting about this region?' (originally it was was 'The state I find most interesting is _________ because:', but I kept getting answers that weren't about states so I tried to open up the question). As far as I'm concerned, this question is a gimme. Last week I even made it worth 3 out of the 10 total points, and explicitly explained that the more they wrote, the more points they would get. However, I still have students leaving this question completely blank. Why? Some of them are clever enough to rephrase the answer to another question into something that suits this question, and I'll accept that. There should be no reason for someone to leave that question blank if they successfully answered any other question on the quiz. One of my students seems to think that 'Abraham Lincoln' is a good guess to answer the question 'Who was Elvis Presley?' (previous quiz) and 'Who was Henry Ford?' (most recent quiz). Again, why?
In the evening I had the teacher's English club. The class gifted me with flowers and puppies glued into a basket (it makes more sense in the picture).
 |
| Basket o' puppy love |
The theme was love stories, specifically, how they met their spouse, or another story if they weren't married. The stories ranged from interesting to sweet to a little strange. The first teacher talked about how his friends secretly found him a match using a matchmaker and introduced the two of them at a party, and despite the fact that some may object to that practice nowadays, they are still living happily ever after. The second told us how she met her husband on the ferry. The two of them had gone to high school together but never met, and then they both went to university in HCMC and met one weekend on the way home to Be Tre. One teacher told a love story he read in the newspaper, about a Vietnamese man and an American woman. He called the story 'Transnational Love' and told me he told the story because he hoped to 'communicate a message' to me. I hope the message is not the one I find most obvious. I taught them 'roses are red,...' and then we translated it into Vietnamese.
Hoa hồng thì đỏIf my internet had been working last night I would have recommended impressing someone with this, but now it'll have to wait until next year.
Hoa vi-ô-let thì xanh
Đượng thì ngọt
Và em cũng vậy!
After the club I had a lot of lesson planning and prepping left to do. Most notable from this endeavor is that I came up with a solution to my quiz quandary. Today, the only question on the quiz, other than naming the region and the states, is "What is something you find interesting about this region?" We will see what happens.
2.15.12
The day started with my USA class and the weekly intrigue of the quiz. Writing the quiz (and the lesson plan around it) is a weekly exercise in plus or minus, trying to make it just above the students' level. I want them to do well, but I don't want it to be easy. This week's region was the Southwest, with an emphasis on Texas, and I prepared a powerpoint about the region, given that it is my own. Sadly, the projector refused to cooperate, and the photos I spent hours coaxing my sputtering internet to load went unseen. The upside of this was that it gave me more time to address recurring errors in last week's quiz and hammer in exactly what I expect from them on the quiz. Sometimes it feels like I am trying to make the whole experience foolproof. I have to remind myself that my assumptions and habits as an American-bred test-taker are not necessarily the same as my Vietnamese students', and that if I want them to do something (like write as much as possible), I need to tell them so. I am hoping that the open form of the latest quiz will give students a chance to show what they know, rather than reveal that they didn't internalize whatever ideas I selected to quiz them on, as was sometimes the case with previous quizzes.
In the afternoon I was invited to attend a mysterious event that was at one point described as a fashion show, later a competition, and later, a conference. I struggle to describe it now to you. It was like an academic beauty pageant with audience participation. There were some lectures, then a fashion show featuring the contestants (tourism students), then the contestants had to answer questions relating to different scenarios they might encounter as tour guides, then the audience had the chance to participate in addressing those scenarios, and it ended with students singing. Below, the last few minutes of the fashion show. If you want to watch the whole thing, here are Part 1, and Part 2. And, here's another singing video.
I sat in the back with some of my students, and they were excellent interpreters for the whole event. When it was opened up to audience participation they really really really wanted me to raise my hand and answer a question. I didn't really want to, but I figured it was my turn to put my money where my mouth is as far as in-class participation and volunteering (even though this was not a class and I was not a student). So I did it. I got a prize/gift for participating, and when I opened the box later I found three toothbrushes and two shampoo samples. Among the tourism scenarios presented there were:
- You take your tourists to the airport and then one realizes he/she forgot his/her bags at the hotel. What do you do?
- You are supposed to take your tourists to many different pagodas, but they think they all look the same and are not interested. What do you do?
- You are a male guide and your group is in Nha Trang (a beach destination) for several days. A female tourist asks you to teach her how to swim. What do you do?
I had a Valentine's Day party for the English club and, after a short presentation about Valentine's Day, students made Valentines. At the end I gave out prizes for the top three cards.
 |
| Valentine factory |
 |
| Showing off the finished products |
The winning card, front and back, below:
2.16.12
This morning I taught Listening 2. Overall, the lesson I was supposed to teach was too short, and this was exacerbated by the fact that one activity that I anticipated being challenging ended up being super easy for my students. So, to fill the time I ended up doing something I've been meaning to do for ages. I asked the students to make name cards and took their pictures with their names. After that I collected their name cards, wrote a word on each one, and tried to read off their names in order to give them back to them. Then we went outside and they had to get in alphabetical order based on the word I had written on each of their name cards. Again, they surprised my with how quickly and efficiently they completed the task, and when they were done and I said class was over they were shocked and maybe slightly disappointed. I think they thought that it was a setup for some grander activity. Not this time, but I'll keep it in mind as a way to set up groups in the future.
 |
| Minor chaos |
 |
| One student takes charge |
 |
| Order! |
Now I'm headed to Hue, home of the former Imperial City, by way of Da Nang. I'll be back Sunday night.
Interesting indeed how living there for such a relatively short period of time is already changing you. Imagine my life, being here for 28 years. It is a seasonal process for me to keep my roots alive.
ReplyDeleteLove,
Daddy