It could have been disastrous, 14 students from ages 18 to 56 from all over the world crammed into a tiny classroom in tropical heat. Luckily the air conditioning does a decent job and the students are all good people who take the class seriously.
The instructors are good for the most part. Andy is a British expat who has been teaching for years and loves it. With him you have to think before asking him a question because there's a good chance he will go off on a tangent for 20 minutes. Which is good. It's encouraging to see his enthusiasm.
Diem (pronounce yee-UHM, but as one syllable) speaks English with a pronounced Vietnamese accent but her grammar is absolutely perfect. She's a quite capable teacher.
Sa taught one lesson in "direct teaching". One of the primary philosophies behind the teaching methods we are learning is that only the target language is spoken in the classroom. If you have a class full of people who speak no English whatsoever you have to be able to teach them without using any Vietnamese.
To demonstrate the basic methods Sa taught us phrases in Thai without speaking any English (or Vietnamese). This was a particularly unnerving session, although it was encouraging to see that it can be done.
We've had two lessons in Vietnamese langauge, which I was looking forward to. Unfortunately these almost did more harm than good. The instructor, Mr. Vu, was atrocious. All you really need to know about Vu is that when students would make a mistake he would laugh.
I've spent several weeks in Vietnam and have tried to learn basic phrases and pronunciation rules. A few other students had also tried to learn some of the language on their own. We ended up coaching the other students. You know the teacher is bad when students are asking ME to help with their pronunciation!
The next day Andy asked us what we thought about Vu's methods. I was happy to learn everyone in the class was disappointed. Andy explained that Vu works for UNESCO, which happens to be the organization that the school rents the room from. So they're stuck with him. In the end, though, it was a good lesson in how not to teach a class.
Here are my classmates working on a project. You can see drawings we did for previous lessons taped to the walls.
I'm standing in the doorway to the classroom. The desks on the left are against the wall, which gives an idea of how cozy the room is. Behind me is the office.
These are the two camera shy course administrators, Nhi (left) and Nghiem (or Nina, on the right). We walk through the office to get to the classroom, which perhaps explains why the office is bigger!This is the exercise we are working on.
This week we will observe one of our instructors teaching a lesson in a classroom. Later we will work in pairs to teach our first lesson in front of actual students. Yikes. My partner is Thu, the only Vietnamese student in my class. Yesss... She is confident in front of the class and has firm opinions on how to teach. I am more than willing to let her drive on my first trip in front of a class!
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