Translation in Teaching Language

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?

"City Hall"

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”.

Things We've Seen on Motos

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…