Learning English

[village idiot]

When i move to Samui from oz in the new year i need to organise some English lessons for my 39 yr old Thai partner.
She has got a little English as she works with tourists, but definately needs some help !
Does anybody know where i can find her the help needed. She lives and works in the Cheong Mon area.
Thanking you for any info.

[Sean Moran]

Merry Christmas Mr VI!

I am sorry to have not had the chance to reply over the last ten days - stuck in an ICU ward until yeterday arvo. Considering that there have been no responses to your request over the past 12 days, I hope that there might be two possible options as suggetions that might assist your friend with her foreign language studies. Please disregard this post if you have made alternate arrangements already.

The first thought that comes to mind is that there must be oodles of drugged-out English-speaking foreign hippie tourists combing the beaches on Samui with the sort of experience required with language English and pasa Thai, and it might be not difficult to find another ex-pat who might be interested in trading language for language on a 1:1 basis. Learning Thai is perhaps more valuable in Thailand on the street, but from what I've heard or experienced, it is usually a matter of trading hour for hour so she learns better English one day while the English teacher learns better Thai the next.Swap your A,B,Cs for your gor-ah-gaa, kor-ah-kaa. Win-win situation - No money down?

The secondary thought that comes to mind is for you to take on the role of the English teacher/pasa Thai student. The four tools that you would require for the job are:

1. A student.
2. A curriculum for your student to study.
3. Your time.
4. English Grammar In Use by Raymond Murphy.


Quote: I'll let you in on a little secret. It's a myth that all or even most EFL or ESL teachers love grammar. A lot of them don't even understand most of it when they first begin teaching. As someone said to me when I was starting out, The trick is to stay one exercise ahead of the students. Now decent lesson planning does take a bit more preparation than that, but I regularly learn grammar rules just a day or two before I teach them for the first time. The problem isn't that I don't know what you say in English, but that I don't know how to explain why it's correct in a simple way my students will understand. Enter Murphy.

One step ahead is all you need to keep your friend busy with learning English.

Murphy 's sixth edition (last one I had from memory) is a couple of hundred A4 pages and rather more comprehensive than what a native-English speaker might learn at high school. You might find it invaluable though when you need to answer some of the typical questions that Thai English students invariably come up with, but the main criterion is for the student to have studies to go on with. The one I have found most useful in teaching adult graduate students is the Headway course, which has six levels from beginner to advanced:



Supposing you were to spend one formal hour every other day teaching English, I'd imagine that she could learn to read, write and speak English to an advanced level in perhaps three months. It comes down toyou simply guiding the coursework that has already been developed. The usual Thai style of pronouncing room as loom and vinegar as winegar are the sorts of things where your own conversational English skills will help, but as quoted from the Murphy text abstract above, all you need to do is stay one step ahead of the student.

Good luck whether you DIY or farm the job out to a local hippie.


---oOo---

PS: if for some reason the DIY option is not an option, perhaps check out http://www.ajarn.com/ and see what the cat drags in from there?

[Justice_Served]

this is a great Thai~English Language link that has voice aids that may be a great aid in learning Thai and its free !

http://www.thai-language.com/

I ran mcafee and avg on both these sites and both have no form of virus ware.. theie free and safe sites

chok dee....good luck

[Sean Moran]

Hi V.I.,
Sean,
For someone new to teaching (either in a classroom or out of it), staying one step ahead of your student is often enough. But with the best will in the world, I seriously doubt whether many people ‘could learn to read, write and speak English to an advanced level in perhaps three months’ unless they were almost advanced already: ‘one formal hour every other day’ learning English adds up to only 45 hours in three months. Those 45 hours wouldn’t get you through even one of those Headway books if taught properly.

I can imagine the surprise I would have felt had I read Murphy's words, "one step ahead of your students" back when I was teaching the Headway course to small adult classes in 2005, because I was so gung-ho about it that I'd studied through the text books (beginner & intermediate) and listened to the cassette tapes repeatedly in the weeks before starting classes, but looking back on the 22 classes of 45-50 Mattayom students in 2006, I can see where he might be coming from. I wonder if perhaps it's enough just to have some faith that there will be more to teach after this week's sessions are over, which might enable the teacher to concentrate fully on the act/s of the week, trusting that next week's lessons will be divulged on Sunday night when you open the book at the next chapter.

In 1997 I taught Chalore English in ten weeks of one hour sessions *** straight from a ten chapter textbook we'd picked up at the campus library. I had to return it and take it out again twice to avoid late-return penalties. Chalore went on to open her own English school and she was the head teacher; she was the one who put me onto the Headway course, actually.

I forget how many chapters in each of the Headway books now, but three one-hour sessions per week at a chapter each session would get you through 36 chapters in twelve weeks, which is probably around half-way through the whole course, and that's more advanced than the average native-English speaker.

Anyway, I reckon Murphy was rather genius in that "one step ahead" motive. It helps keep focus on the students in the actual class rather than generalised lesson plans that these textbooks are comprised of.

In any case, now that I have Linux and Skype VOIP working, it's much easier to learn a new language via the Internet than by having to jump on a plane and risk your life flying all over the World for the sake of an education.

---o0o---

*** In fairness, I should mention that it wasn't quite Graduate-British-English in Ten Hours because each of those ten lessions did entail around 4 kays of walking to and from her on-campus dorm room and my SOHO classroom, as she was a young lady and required an escort to walk through my neighbourhood in daylight hours back then, so we probably managed around an hour of pure conversational English either side of that formal book-learning (we had to walk fairly slowly because I didn't realise that traditionally in Thailand the woman walks two paces behind the man and until we'd discussed this, I'd keep slowing down my walking pace because I thought that she was falling behind, to which she would then slow down even further to remain two paces behind me. In hindsight, it was rather hilarous, eh?

[Sean Moran]

by Noaksy on Wed Apr 22, 2009 9:21 am [115.67.163.xx]
I see you are a man with a sense of humour, Sean.

Sean Moran wrote:... three one-hour sessions per week at a chapter each session would get you through 36 chapters in twelve weeks, which is probably around half-way through the whole course...

One chapter in an hour! That’s not teaching or learning; that’s skim reading with little understanding unless at an advanced level already.

The first page of each chapter is predominantly pictorial, and so you can breeze through that in around 10-15 minutes with a new class, and 5-10 after the first chapter. Pp 2-3 are then where you bring the cassetet player into action with the vocals/examples, and then sometimes there's time for the exercises on pp 4-5 if they have any, but there's always a half-hour at the start of a two-hour evening class where you wait for so-and-so to arrive, and it's best to knock off 20 minutes early, so there's really only two 30 minute sessions with a ten minute break in between and as long as you never forget to remind everyone to catch up in their homework before next week's lesson then you'd be amazed at how many chapters of the beginners' / intermediate stuff they can get through if they're keen to get it over with.

Sean Moran wrote:... which is probably around half-way through the whole course, and that's more advanced than the average native-English speaker.

There are 6 books in the series. If you look at the pictures you provided, you’ll see the six levels are classified as: Beginner, Elementary, Pre-intermediate, Intermediate, Upper-intermediate and Advanced.

An average adult native speaker would have no difficulty with that advanced level book, whereas a learner who has only reached Pre-intermediate or even Intermediate level would struggle with the advanced book. The language ability of adult native speakers is without doubt at a higher level than someone who has only reached the equivalent of Advanced level books designed for non-native English language learners.

There were only four books in the series back when I was teaching it. They never thought about the future of Wall Street when they added the 1a and 1b sections to cater for the whatever market.

Regarding your mention of adult native-English speakers, I am referring to the entire population of native-English speakers from first-world Western nations, rather than a few academics like Twain and Verne. Westernised standards of the English language are a complete joke still, even since the US election.

I suppose it depends on what we consider "advanced", but you can't go wrong with the Headway course, even though not many English speakers have probably ever heard of it before.

[Sean Moran]

Sean,

I also like the Headway series of books and have used them myself in teaching. The 1a and 1b sections you referred to are probably in the American Headway series. The books in your pictures are the British English series.

*** SEE DIAGRAM BELOW ***

No, the Headway course is Oxford. That is why they call the language "English". If you want to learn American Spanish, then go to Mexico, and for American Portuguese, try Brazil. For American English, I'd hazard a guess that Canada might see you right, but you must beware the Hollywooders. Looking at the titles, "Elementary" and "pre-Intermediate", it is fairly obvious that the two extra additions were only there to cater to the tastes of the Sesame-Street English contingency. Adding two more levels to a four level course will see a 50% increase in profit, won't it? Ain't that the amelican dream?

Regarding your mention of adult native-English speakers, I was also referring to the entire population of adult native-English speakers from first-world Western nations. Their proficiency level in English would without doubt be higher than a language learner that had reached even the level of ‘Advanced’ learner.

Yes, it depends on what we consider "advanced", but language centres, universities, publishers and books designed for and targeted at English language learners all use the same or similar terms to grade their books or courses.

I suppose then that most of the newspaper journalists in the western newspapers that I read are foreigners who never made it to advanced level. Same goes for those interviewed on the television news. Same goes for Australian politicians - they must be all definately failures at ESL studies, eh?

Half of the lecturers at the university where I have been studying (English/Teaching funnily enough) this semester can't even work out their own schedule from their skedule, and so it goes ... the dumb teaching the blind.

---o0o---

Just to clarify this issue over the differences between "Beginner", "Intermediate" and "Advanced", Beginner level means that you are allowed to get away with a few mistakes with the normal high-school level stuff, Intermediate level means that you've worked out the high-school stuff already, but you might still be a little unsure on a few higher-level things, such as discrete and discreet, and Advanced level means that you can quote Act II Scene I from Romeo & Juliet from "Ye jests at scars.." to ".. as daylight doth a lamp." off the top of your head.

The standard benchmark is the level of language skills expected at the completion of high school. Beyond that you start getting more advanced. Below that, you need to go back to school and concentrate harder next time. Often as not, these "so-called" native-English speakers that we have to listen to in Australia every time we turn on the television news or read the Yahoo! pages have yet to make it to Intermediate level IMO. Goodness knows what they ever did with their high-school English teachers to matriculate?

---o0o---

Getting through a course as you described above probably isn’t the same as learning the content of the course or being able to use the content afterwards.

No. There's no difference. Have you ever done any formal studies in colloquialisms?

Sean, you seem to be very interested in languages and teaching. Have you ever taken any formal training in teaching English as a foreign language? I’m guessing not but if you have, I would be interested in knowing what, how much and where.

What: English, (the language that they speak and write in England).
How much: lots of it.
Where: here in Australia, where English is/was our native-language.

What is the job that you are offering?
How much will you pay me?
Where is my classroom?
Also, will I be using blackboards, whiteboards or modern technology?
I don't mind either way and I don't give a damn about air-cond either.

<I think we should start a new thread on this or better still, why don't you join http://www.ajarn.com and go postal there?>


*** I have a premonition that you're still going to find this 1a/1b thing a little complicated, so here is a picture.

Take careful note of the word "NEW" on the two volumes 2nd and 3rd from the left, (where the red arrows are pointing!)

[Sean Moran]

Sean,

...

Have you ever taken any formal training in teaching English as a foreign language? I’m guessing not ...

BTW: Training is what you do with your dog to make him walk on a leash.

[Sean Moran]

Sean,

...

Have you ever taken any formal training in teaching English as a foreign language? I’m guessing not ...

BTW: Training is what you do with your dog to make him walk on a leash.

I can honestly say that I have never taught 1,000 words to a single, solitary dog in all my life!

<"Fetch! Rufus" 500 times doesn't count!>

[Sean Moran]

So the answer is no. That's what I thought.

I suggest you go back and read the entire reply more carefully this time. +++

For the benefit of anybody else who reads this board who might be confused by Sean’s posts, here is a link to the Oxford University Press ‘American Headway’ section.

You’ll see at the bottom of the page that books 1A and a 1B are available. It’s also possible to get a 2A and 2B (see here) as well as a Starter A and Starter B. You’ll notice an absence of 1A and 1B on the books in Sean’s picture. That’s because the British English version series does not use a numerical designation - see here.

The NEW that Sean referred to indicates that the content inside the book is new (completely new updated material). It's not a new level in the series. Like the other levels, the elementary and pre-intermediate books have been around for a number of years. If you look closely at Sean’s pictures, you’ll see they say Third Edition. I believe the second edition was published in 1996 and the third edition in 2003. A fourth edition is now available - see here. The Publisher is Oxford University Press for both the American English and British English books.

Well, thank you for the information and Merry Christmas to you too Mr Noasky. ***

Do you really actually imagine that the OP of this thread, being an Australian, would want to clog up his friend's mind with such a bastardisation of the English language as Big Bird English? I've told you straight out in writing, and even went to the trouble of drawing you a bloody picture of what I meant by 1a & 1b that got you so confused in the first place, and you STILL don't understand. Probably because you simply don't WANT to, but I can appreciate that you may have been brainwashed by the yankees and don't know any better. It's fairly clear in the selective nature of your replies that you find it more comfortable to skirt around the issue raised by the OP, although I'm still not sure if it is me personally that you wish to attack, or all English teachers, or just everybody. May I just say that when you try to tell me that I am to fast for your liking, the first reply that comes to mind is that perhaps you are just too damn slow?

One of the reasons that you might have so much trouble and take so much time to facilitate the learning from these series is due to the confusion that you cause your own students from the first lesson with your continental mixups - that same old oxymoron that they call "American English". England is an island off the coast of the continent of Europe, on the East side of the North Atlantic Ocean. America is a CONTINENT (the name refers to two continents actually) on the West side of the Atlantic Oceans; North and South. You might find Gavin Menzies' thriller, 1421 - The Year China Discovered the World, http://www.1421.tv/ of some help in this regard, because there are maps included for you to look at if it helps.

So young Somchai turns up for his first day at English school, takes off his shoes and finds a desk at the front of the classroom, and the completely *new* updated ESL teacher begins by telling the class that it is NOT English that they are studying but the *new* variety - AMERICAN ENGLISH! Somchai rolls his eyes stares up at the nearest fan hanging from the ceiling and asks himself whether he is indeed sitting in a classroom in Thailand or could it be the Maldives? He pulls a hair from his right forearm just to make sure that he is not dreaming and then stares out the window until class is over.

Being stuck in a course of study and finding out that you're not really learning what you set out to learn, but some cut down, ASCII text version only really suitable for web-design or SMS, must really have quite a serious effect on student morale, which is likely to impede the progress of the lessons. So, maybe you could pick up the pace and put a little more sanuk back into your teaching if you stick to the real thing and stop discouraging your students with inferior substitutes for English?


---o0o---

*** I mean, seriously, it's 5am on Christmas morning and I've just got out of hospital the afternoon before, still high as a kite on unwanted morphine and secret bromide pills, and I see a post by an Australian bloke who wants to help his missus learn English, and bearing in mind that Chalore's school didn't bother with those two extra books that I dubbed 1a & 1b, and you still haven't clarified the number of chapters in each volume anyway, and none of us have any idea of how long Mr VI's friend has been working in the tourist industry, AND it's Christmas! all you seem to want to do is discourage his endeavours in any way you can, such as warning him of possible relationship problems etc. so is this what you're like with your students as well?


---o0o---

+++ Further, you post under the pseudonym of Noaksy which makes you basically an anonymous nobody to get into asking people personal questions and I am NOT even the OP of this thread, and when I tell you that I am currently ENROLLED in a 4-year BA in Teaching/English, then make sure that you bloody-well get the message but stop with the personal questions whether you're willing to listen to the answers or not.

[Sean Moran]

I hope you get well soon Sean. Keep taking the medication. I'm sure it will help.

Thank goodness you've finally come back after so long, sweetie. I was so worried that you might have left me for another man because you were away for so long. So good to have you back again and I hope you can stay for a long time now.