Rational thoughts

It's often intriguing to me the topics that my English textbooks teach (ahem, telepathy), and today's listening lesson centered around an interview with a man who claimed to have been picked up by a UFO. The man saw bright lights, went outside, and saw a UFO and a pair of aliens. The two aliens spoke to him and instructed him to go with them. They took him into their craft, but when they discovered that he was 74 they said he was 'too old for their purposes' and booted him out. As part of the post-listening activities I asked the students if they believed the story. Most of them said they did not. Several said it was because they didn't believe in aliens. What stood out to me, however, was the second most common reason. It seemed absurd to them, too unlikely, that these aliens would speak English. Wouldn't the aliens speak their own language? And English is so difficult! It wasn't the existence of aliens that they took issue with, it was the probability of English-speaking aliens. This stood out to me because I don't think it would have been a common answer or even an answer at all in the US. The general population seems to expect the rest of the world to speak English for them, so why wouldn't aliens speak English, too?

I had the rest of the afternoon free, or so I thought. I got a text from Thy, one of the girls I went out with last week for milk tea. They'd told me that they wouldn't be free tonight, but apparently things changed, so we made plans for later. Then I got a call from Hong, asking if I'd meet with her to take pictures for some project. I didn't quite understand what it was for, but I agreed to meet her at four. I'm still not exactly sure how they will be used, but it was nice getting pictures with her and some of my other students. They are participating in the upcoming speaking competition I've mentioned, and somehow the pictures are relevant. They also asked me to talk to them about ambition (part of the theme, Ambition and Challenges). I get the general feeling that my potential interpretations of this theme are not the same as the intentions of whatever Vietnamese person came up with it, especially since the theme doesn't really make sense to me to begin with. I tried my best to be helpful.

From the photoshoot

A few hours later I met up with Thy, Nhu, and Túc, a new addition. We went out for milk tea aka bubble tea and this time I tried kiwi instead of strawberry. I also actually remembered to get pictures with the girls. We started out with me editing what they've prepared for the speaking competition and then we relaxed and chatted. They asked me what fruits I've tried in Vietnam and we ended up spending a good while brainstorming fruits and making a parallel list of their English and Vietnamese names. I'm pretty knowledgeable about fruit in Vietnamese, but we had to pictionary a few that I didn't know. Túc had been quieter than the other two, but near the end, out of the blue, she asked me if I have a religion. It turned out that she's Catholic too, and it looked like we hit upon a topic she wanted to discuss. All of a sudden she was dominating the conversation, although the other two, who are Buddhist and agnostic, also participated. Túc told me about how she goes to church with her mom every Sunday, and how much she enjoys the (Vietnamese version) of the Christmas pageant. I learned the word for angel (thiên thần) and taught them the word 'Bible', which they previously just called the 'holy book'. We called it a night at 9pm and to my surprise they even let me pay for everyone. Here's hoping for a repeat next week.

Drinking milk tea with tapioca at the graffiti-covered hangout

On Friday I taught speaking to the first years. The new unit is Traditional and Modern, and strengthened my conviction that this textbook is not really adequate for this level of students. For starters, the unit vocabulary in the warm up included words like avant garde and fuddy-duddy. Additionally, because students can't afford textbooks, they have photocopied versions that often obliterate the images that the book provides for activities. Instead of having students compare one black square that used to be a picture of something modern to a fuzzy square that should be a picture of something traditional, I decided to try and have some discussion. I introduced an easy application of 'traditional v. modern' regarding clothing, and asked students whether they prefer wearing traditional or modern clothing and why. Then I took it to the next level, and asked them to think about cultural manifestations of 'traditional v. modern,' for example, seeking matchmakers versus dating. Then we moved on to discussing woman's role in traditional and modern society. It gave me teacherly satisfaction to hear my students using English, no matter how limited, to talk about something more academic than their weekend plans. 

I did the same thing with the second group of first years, but they were treated with a visit from a foreigner, Violet, who had come to purvey adventure. I was a little disappointed by how few of my students took the opportunity to ask her questions, even though I had given them time to prepare questions before she came, but a few of them stepped up and asked her a whole slew of them.

Teacher Violet and my first years