Taught 5 hours straight today

I taught 6 periods of Speaking this morning, from 6:30 to 11:30. The heat made it exhausting. I went through the whole bottle of water, and I was totally drenched in sweat by the time I was through. Good thing it was in the morning. Can’t imagine how I would survive 6 periods in the afternoon.

The weird thing about today was that the Cử Nhân class was quite unresponsive and the other did very well—totally opposite from what happened the previous 2 days. I was totally taken aback by how well the Su Pham class participated this morning. Perhaps, Monday was their very first day at University, so they were still a little scared. Oh well, I was thankful.

Since they were Speaking classes this morning, I had them learn how to greet and get to know their classmates as an activity. Before the activity, I had written on the board some common questions they could ask and some they weren’t supposed to ask when talking to a westerner (such as “How old are you?” which is totally acceptable here in VN). They were supposed to find 3 people they didn’t know and get to know them. I walked around the class monitoring their progress, making sure the students were doing what they were talking (English and not VNese). Once that was done, I asked for volunteers to come to the front of the class and introduce themselves as well as the people they had just met. No one volunteered! I stood there in front of the Cử Nhân class waiting. Total silence! My eyes scanned the class, looking at each face hoping someone would raise his/her hand. Should I start picking on them? I waited some more, and finally one student raised her hand. She walked to the front, I walked to the back of the class, and she started speaking. I made some notes of what she said wrong so I could go over it later on.

She finished, we all clapped, and I asked for another volunteer. Again, total silence. I then gave them another encouragement talk, and also mentioned that their final exam will involve having them talk for 2 minutes on a topic in front of 2 foreign teachers, and they might as well start practicing now! That little talk helped, and more students started to volunteer. It was like a snowballing effect, once some students took the courage to talk, others followed suit.

But I noticed a really quiet and shy girl sitting way in the back of the class who didn’t even meet 3 people as she was supposed to. During the break, I went and sat next to her and talked to her. Her name was L. She said her English was really weak, and that she didn’t understand anything I was saying the whole time, not even a single word. She only had 3 years of English prior to university, whereas most of the others had 7. L asked me to speak really slow, so I spoke really really slow to her, and she was able to respond. Her pronunciation was not bad, but she really lacked confidence and was really very shy. Her voice was extremely soft, and she kept saying she was afraid of speaking. I went through the questions with her slowly, she answered them, and I wrote them down. Then I told her I wanted her to volunteer and come to the front of the class and just read out these responses from my notebook, and that I would stand right next to her. She kept refusing, but I kept reassuring her that she would do just fine. It was better for her to practice now than to wait for the final exam to come, and that it was ok to speak with lots of mistakes. The important thing was for her to practice.

The break was over, and I was up in front of the class asking for more volunteers. No one did. I looked at L and motioned for her to come up. She hesitated a while, but finally got up from her seat and walked toward the front. She came and stood next to me, shaking a little bit. She put her hand on her tummy, took a few big deep breaths, and the whole class was watching and waiting. I put my notebook with the answers in front of her, and told her it was ok. Then, she started speaking. She didn’t even look at the notebook and just spoke naturally. She became less and less nervous as time went on, and the whole class clapped loud when she was done. I told her she did a good job and she walked back to her seat. That was some experience.

I told the class how grateful I was for their effort and willingness in speaking a foreign language in front of a crowd. I knew how hard it was for them and appreciated the fact that they took the courage to try. I just hope L is not going to have a nightmare tonight and that she will still keep coming to class. Poor kid. I wish I had some good chocolate to give out as bribes. These are girls, I bet chocolate will work wonders. But then there’s no chocolate here, and it’s too hot for any chocolate to survive anyway. Oh well.

In the other class (the Su Pham class), I had them do the same exercise. More students volunteered and things went a lot smoother. In fact, one of the boys went up and introduced himself saying that one of his hobbies was singing. Here in Vietnam, young people just love music and singing. Once the class heard the magic word, they immediately asked the boy to sing. The boy said he was not good at singing English songs, and the class said a Vietnamese song would do. Immediately, the boy started singing, right there in front of the class. He sang a whole VNese song, and the class loved it. I walked back up to the front of the class, and they asked me to sing. I told them not to even think about it!