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?
Thirdhand English and Chinese Writing Rooms
PIO’s a great organization. They’re not perfect, of course, but they’ve got a lot of really great things that makes them stand out from other orphanages and private schools in Phnom Penh. One of my favorites is how they bribe families to let kids come to school by offering rice at wholesale prices (in addition to giving the kids lunch).
Jane Error
Note: this article is about problems with the current way in which Literature is taught in primary and secondary education, but deals with the problems in a way that is biased towards strong readers like myself. Please accept the unpolished musings in this post as such.
About a year and a half ago, one of my friends put up a rather eloquent treatise, inspired by Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, that discussed being a writer and being a woman and being a female writer. One of her points challenged readers (specifically male readers) to attempt A Room…
Older Posts
- 2011-01-31 [Chua] "Nothing is fun until you're good at it"
- 2011-01-24 [Chua] "Not Being the No. 1 Student"