First English Lesson
The group of children was already waiting at the gates of the office building when I arrived at 6:50. We had planned for a 7 pm class. They were very talkative kids speculating saying that “ong chu” which is the boss or owner has arrived. There was a large group of what seem to be 10 year olds with little white shirted uniforms. I directed them up to the class room not knowing what to say really. It seems like all the prepared elegant greetings escaped me since my Vietnamese is pretty weak.
They all sat down to next to the computers since I had arranged two seats next to each PC. We had planned for 12 kids but some how there were about 14 since there were extra kids on one of the PCs. The school master accompanied them and she spoke very little. She was dressed all in gray in a traditional Buddhist monk uniform. I know very little about this orphanage but apparently, it is a pagoda which was operated by Buddhist monks to teach and help these children.
I have stood in large group to give presentations before but this was different. The children had this eager anticipation as they looked upon my instruction. I started out in English knowing that it was going to go over their heads explaining that I wish to emphasize on teaching the children on speaking rather than reading and writing but that will also be part of the course. I then uttered my best Vietnamese in translation so that the message is communicated. I shared with the children that my Vietnamese is not very good but I will try my best to get the message across. At the same time, I will plan to speak English because I want them to hear as much English as possible.
I have never really used Reader Rabbit in a class room setting before. I then used my laptop and LCD projector to display the big cartoon on the white office wall. The kids were wowed by colors and the sounds. I did not realize that there was an entire dialog that the cartoon characters went through so I was not able to give instructions. After a minute or so, I turned down the volume and tried to explain the purpose of the game. It was pure improvisation since I had no idea how to teach children English using software. It sounded like a neat idea but when the rubber meets the road, it was quite a challenge. I then had them start and it seemed that all hell broke loose. Several of the PC did not have the volume turned on so there were on sound. Once PC did not even have the software installed. I had to scramble and called one of my team member for a password to then install it. On one level, it seemed like a disaster, but on the other hand, the kids were having fun and they were very patient.
The children are brilliant. They are witty and pick up the slightest subtle of speech. In my confirmation on their work, I say “uh hmmm”. This is slightly different from the Vietnamese and universal “a ha”. They would repeat my little mannerism. The really took upon the speech of the software too. The software would ask them to repeat a word for them to say it correctly. At first, I thought they would be bored after repeating it once. Rather, they would repeat it many times trying to capture the subtle difference trying to perfect the pronunciation. These are brilliant children.
posted by Sy Truong @ 11:26 PM
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