Chigaijin

Translation in Teaching Language

2012-02-17T18:00:00+07:00

Immersion’s a cool way to teach a language. You spend time in an environment where everyone speaks the language, and you just have to figure out what’s going on. Unfortunately, PIO is no immersion environment. Nor is my one-hour-a-week speaking class. For the former, the kids still talk to each other in Khmer during my class;¹ for the latter, it’s just too little time.

So once you’re back to a multilingual environment and a more traditional teaching style, how much do you use the students’ first language?

Somehow in my mind I decided that if you couldn’t do real immersion, the next best thing is to avoid translation as much as possible. Better to explain things with pictures, and let the students figure out how to represent it in their mind. That way, when they hear the word in their mind, their first thought might be a picture, not another word.

I think most students who have studied a language for a while will agree that one of the milestones of fluency is when you can think in the language. A related point is when you can understand a sentence without translating it, or make a sentence without translating from your first language. I never got this far with Mandarin, but for a while I could do this with Japanese. (Not sure about now.) As for Khmer…I think I would be getting there if I weren’t leaving so soon.

Don’t believe me? Think about when you hear a word in English like “ferry”. Do you think of the word “ship”, or do you just think of a ferry itself? It’s that direct connection from word to concept that separates knowing a language from being fluent in a language.

(I can’t help but compare this to a paragraph in Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality about belief.)

What people really believed didn’t seem to them like beliefs at all. People didn’t say ‘I strongly believe in the sky being blue!’ They just said, ‘the sky is blue’. Your true inner map of the world just felt to you like the way the world was…

So I taught using pictures and sometimes explanation (in English), in the hopes of forming direct connections between the new words and the concepts. And for the students who had trouble understanding, well, their classmates could usually help them out…yes, in Khmer, but that’s a concession to those who aren’t learning as fast…

Okay, so at least part of this could have been rationalization for the fact that it’s more difficult (or even impossible) for me to do translation exercises, or even translate new vocabulary. I could ask the teachers, but the Grade 4 teacher’s English wasn’t so strong, and in Grade 6 I usually haven’t had a teacher with me at all. But then came the “before/after” incident, and I started to consider this all again.

I’ve come to think of translation as a useful way to check and fortify understanding, a way to prevent the “before/after” problem from coming up again. Even so, when it comes to new nouns, verbs, and adjectives, I usually still try to use pictures or demonstrations to introduce the words; if the students decide to translate themselves, that’s fine. Only later, once we’ve been using the words for a while, will I do a translation exercise that uses those words. As for grammar…well, since I want to make sure the students know what they’re saying, I’ve been asking my teacher to explain how the equivalent grammar pattern works in Khmer. But it’s a bit hard when things don’t translate properly; English’s present perfect tense (“I have done…”) doesn’t really have an equivalent in Khmer², so I have no real choice but to try to explain how it’s like past tense, but different.³

I still think using translation is a bit of a crutch, and I think that translating everything might actually be one of the reasons for non-fluent grammar (such as an English speaker trying to put the adjective first in Khmer). Different languages are not the same, and telling students that there’s a one-to-one mapping between words or even phrase structures can sometimes lose a lot of subtleties. (Example: the Khmer equivalent of “to be” is only for relating two nouns; predicating an adjective doesn’t use a verb or auxiliary at all.)

On the other hand, not doing any translation creates Chinese Writing Rooms. And translation’s a very common thing to do anyway; not all language use is dynamic conversation. So I do do translation exercises, and put sentences to translate on my exams.

As for my Khmer lessons, well, the two of us regulars are still beginners, and we’re just now reaching the point where Ms. Kumneth can try explaining something in Khmer instead of just translating it to English. But each time she’s tried it, the two of us still end up finding an English translation as our answer anyway. So, we’re not there yet.

Conclusions? Sorry, I don’t have any. I’m still not sure whether I should be using more translation in my lessons, whether it should be limited to only vocabulary, or only grammar patterns, whether I’m really helping the students learn more intuitively or just making things more difficult. (Probably both, for that last one; the strong students get stronger and the weak students get relatively weaker. Hm. That’s not good.) I am sure that I was just rationalizing my inability to do translation exercises by saying I shouldn’t be doing them, but that doesn’t mean I was wrong. Has anyone else thought about this issue?

P.S. I tried to remember what my language teachers in university used; I think my Japanese teachers (mid- and upper-level) actually did speak in Japanese most of the time. (I remember being surprised hearing them speak English, how much less fluid and confident they were. All of my teachers were from Japan.) It was good for me, but I was a strong student, for the most part; were the weaker students left behind?

If you actually read this far (or just scrolled down), you get a prize: photos from PIO! In January they did a unit on cooking, so I promised I’d bring them sushi some day. That happened last Wednesday, during the break between the two parts of their English midterm. Check out the cooking and eating process on Facebook.

Sometimes now they even talk to me in Khmer, because they find it very amusing that I can understand some Khmer. I usually try to respond in English, though, so they still practice.↩
Actually, as I understand it, the usual Khmer translation of English past tense, the auxiliary verb baan, is closer to present perfect; you don’t use baan if you have a specific time involved. But since simple past is always introduced before present perfect…↩
I’m leaving before they get to past perfect, but trying to explain that is going to be annoying.↩

"City Hall"

2012-02-11T13:30:00+07:00

This a song I picked up within my first month of teaching myself basic guitar. It’s almost in my range (in the key of G), it’s by my favorite artist, Vienna Teng, and it’s pretty easy to play, so it’s stuck around in my repertoire since November. And since we moved to our new house I’ve wanted to record something out on the balcony…I feel like a post-college musician in New York or something when I play out there.¹

So in light of recent events, here’s my version of Vienna Teng’s “City Hall”.

Watch the video.

If you’re on a slow internet connection, you might want to download the audio instead.

Lyrics (with a new second verse):

Me and my baby on a February holiday
Cause we got the news, yeah we got the news.
Five hundred miles and we’re gonna take it all the way
Got nothing to lose, we got nothing to lose.

Been ten years waiting, but it’s better late
Than the “never” we’ve been told before.
I can’t wait one minute more.

Chorus:
Oh, oh, oh,
Me and my baby driving down
To a hilly seaside town in the rainfall.
Oh, oh, oh,
Me and my baby stand in line
You never seen a sight so fine
As the one that’s gonna shine at City Hall.

Me and my baby, well, we’ll stick it out till the end
Cause our love just grows, ever since we said “hello”.
Seen a lot of folks that we once counted as our friends
Turn their backs and go, so we turned to go.

It’s been ten years and then some, cause people go and get some
Strange ideas that it’s about them.
Why can’t it all work out in the end?

Chorus
Instrumental

Outside they’re handing out donuts and pizza pies
For the folks in pairs, in the folding chairs.
My baby’s looking so damn pretty with those anxious eyes
Rain-speckled hair, and my ring to wear.

It’s been ten years waiting for this moment of fate
When we can say the words and sign our names.
If they take it away again some day
This beautiful thing won’t change.

Chorus x2

Unfortunately, at night the mosquitos are pretty bad, so I usually just stay in my room.↩

Things We've Seen on Motos

2012-02-10T19:30:00+07:00

The most common form of personal transportation in Cambodia is the motorbike, or “moto”. As such, it’s pretty common to see three people on the back of one moto; we’ve done it ourselves. Heck, even four isn’t too uncommon. We’ve probably even seen five at one point, though only if you count kids as full people. But hey, this is how you get everywhere. Why stick to just people? We’ve seen…

Trays or baskets of eggs, sodas, or water bottles (to sell, of course). Or coconuts, just tied to the back.
Posters, and cardboard-backed, flower-adorned signs for weddings and such.
Large rectangular cakes.
A baby tree. Actually, we were carrying that one.
Cabinets.
Large sheets of glass.
Dogs, often standing on two legs with their front paws on the handlebars. Very cute.
Bicycles, held upside down by a passenger.
A baby in the front basket. (Worse, we once saw a woman riding a bicycle with a baby…and the baby was in a sling, maybe a shirt, that was tied to the front handlebars.)
A live pig, tied legs-up on the back of the moto.

Yup. I’m sure there’s been more, too…maybe after five months I’ve stopped noticing it.

This week’s post is one I’ve been planning ever since Jaclyn and I went to Siem Reap. Next week I’m hoping to post a thoughtful analysis about translation vs. explanation when teaching a language, but (as usual for this blog) don’t expect “thoughtful” to mean “well-thought-out”. And two weeks from now…well, let’s just say I’m running out of time—

Kep

2012-02-07T11:00:00+07:00

Bonus post: photos from a weekend trip to Kep with Nina, Kuoch, and Tabea! Check them out on Facebook.

The seaside town of Kep and the accompanying Rabbit Island (Koh Tonsai) have been on my checklist ever since Piseth came back from a trip there in September or October, citing it as one of the most beautiful places in the world. While I’m not sure I’d give it that much of an accolade, it was a wonderful weekend (though punctuated with a number of strange troubles, everything just a little bit off).

Today (Tuesday) is a public holiday, so I asked PIO if I could take Monday off to make a four-day weekend, then asked Nina, Piseth, and Kuoch if they wanted to come. Unfortunately, Piseth is crazy-busy, but Nina and Kuoch could both come. And coincidentally, Tabea (another year-long volunteer from Germany) had just asked Nina the same thing, so we ended up as a group of four.

We left Phnom Penh on Friday night (in a dangerously overcrowded share-taxi van), stayed in Kampot for the night, and continued to Kep and Rabbit Island in the morning. On Sunday, we came back from the island and the three women left, while I stayed behind and ended up going on a hike in Kep National Park. Monday morning I went to see the caves at Wat Kiri Seila, and in the afternoon took a bus back to Phnom Penh.

I only have two full weekends left now, and both of them will be spent in Phnom Penh…just too busy with end-of-term work to go on any more vacations. But I’m glad I got this chance, both to go to Kep, and to hang out with these three one more time.

Home Walkthrough #2

2012-02-02T21:30:00+07:00

New house, new walkthrough video…

Watch the video.

Everything’s smaller than in the old house, but mostly we’ve managed to get by quite well. Except for the new bathroom. Lots of problems with the bathroom. OTOH, Mami and Mr. Savuth now have a proper room, as does Kuoch.

BTW, this was filmed on a new camera, a (relatively) cheap Sony Cyber-shot. My dad’s old Canon finally broke under the stress of, uh, being banged around a bit too much. Then again, it was eight years old or so and already not in perfect shape when I brought it here. The new camera is actually not very good, but it’s a point-and-shoot for being a tourist. Maybe I’ll buy a nice camera when I get home.