Letters from Laos – “My life in 10 years” by Mr Outh Sinminah
Hello! My name is Outh and I’m sixteen years old.
Outh
I was born in Luangphanxay village, Xaysomboun district, Vientiane province. There are 5 people in my family. I have one older sister and one younger sister and my father and my mother and me. The first school I start to learn at Luangphanxay primary school. I moved to Sikeud in 2011 and learn in Sikeud Primary School and continue to Secondary School.
Outh and his classmate…
… in the science laboratory…
…conducting experiments!
When I finish Secondary School the BHS project take 40 students to learn at Lao-German Technical College.
Outh during English class 2017
One of students is me, my intent is machanic in BHS company in Germany. Many people thought this is impossible. Mr Khamsing tell me who are the best student can go to work in Germany. this idea start when study at Sikeud secondary school. I met Mr John and he told me about Germany and about his job but I don’t understand. So one teacher translate it into Lao. I like this and I want that too. And then I decide to learn English. I decide to have an English extra class every evening in Thipasksone English center in Phangheng primary school when I was 12. So, now I study hard for my dream. Today I read the news in English and English books and I also have a English class at the LGTC. I like English because I can use English to my work.
If I work in BHS company I will work hard and make a lot of money for build a nice house for my parents when I come back to Laos and I will marry after I finish the house and I have achievement in my work.
In 10 years I am 26. I hope I will live alone in Germany in ten years because I want to be a machanic in Germany. In ten years I want to change my life. I like to work, I like to save a lot of money. I don’t like to go out at night.
If I live in Germany I will miss my family but I will come visit my family every years.
Text by O. Sinminah
Photos by R. Dengler & S. Uhlig
Workshop on 6 November 2017: English Storytelling for young learners
Children all over the world love listening to stories. If told the right way the stories draw them into a different world, where they freely associate the setting and the characters.
„The stories you have been listening to are very, very old;
many centuries, even thousands of years old.
Today those stories have been alive – because you have been here to listen to them. Now it is your task to keep those stories alive by going out into the world,
and telling them to other people!“
The original workshop by Richard Martin
It was in early July 2017 when I heard Richard Martin say this, at the University of Education Karlsruhe. The British storyteller (and former teacher) conducts workshops all over the world sharing his experiences and expertise in how to tell tales. Prof. Martin regularly invites him to our university to do a workshop about Storytelling for young learners for the students – soon-to-be English teachers. Hanna, Lara, Lea, and I – members of Team V – joined the workshop, alongside many other PH-students. For us it was another important part of our preparation for our work in Laos.
In Laos we give didactic and methodological support to the local English teachers of our three partner schools and one partner college. We also teach general General English, speaking (fluency), grammar (accuracy), and pronunciation to our tandem-teachers.
In order to bring in some change and variation to our tandem-teachers’ English lessons, we first observe their lessons and then offer new, interesting teaching techniques and explain or demonstrate how to incorporate them into the EFL-classroom (English as a Foreign Language) on an everyday basis. We then tandem-teach their classes together until our partners feel ready to use the new techniques on their own.
As additional encouragement for variety and professionalization, each volunteer also offers one afternoon workshop during their stay, where we get the chance to work on linguistic, intercultural, didactic, or methodological topics together in depth.
Richard Martin’s request – tell stories! – and the way he told the stories inspired me to hold a workshop based on his ideas myself, for our Lao teachers.
My Storytelling workshop in Laos
I hosted the workshop on Monday, the 6th of November 2017, in the Lending Library of Ban Sikeud primary school after school had ended and most of the children had gone. The workshop took place in the very same building where Richard Martin himself had shared a storytelling session early in 2016. I had invited the two English teachers of Ban Sikeud primary school, Ms Mittaphone “Mit” Sichampa, and Ms Phovang “Noy” Inthavong, as well as Ms Bounpheng Singhalath, the English teacher at Ban Phang Heng primary school.
I started the workshop by telling a story myself in order to raise my audience’s interest in the topic. I first lit a candle indicating that story-time had begun (which they immediately noticed) and changed my voice into „storytelling voice“, speaking much more clearly and slowly and adjusting the intonation, pitch, volume, and speed of my voice to fit each unique character. I also kept my body relatively still, so as not to distract from my words, and for poise. After telling the story „The Frightened Mouse“ I blew out the candle and switched to my regular „teaching voice“ again.
Jessica tells the story “The Frightened Mouse”
The warm-up phase
For a short warm-up activity I then divided Ms Mit and Ms Noy into one group of partners A and B and Ms Bounpheng and Lea, who is Ms Bounpheng’s tandem-teacher, into another group of partners A and B. First, partner A had to talk for 60 seconds about a topic that I had pre-chosen, in this case „weekend activities“. This might sound easy, but it can really be challenging: It requires vocabulary and forces one to continuously keep talking in English without being allowed to stop. After partner A is finished, it is partner B’s turn to talk about another topic, for example „a day at school“.
Warm-ups enable the students to become comfortable in the new learning situation. They can provoke a positive attitude and foster interest.
The follow-up activity
The follow-up activity focused on the body language of the teller. Whoever tells a story uses his or her body and more explicitly his or her gestures and facial expressions to “illustrate” (semanticize) and contextualize, in order to deliver a more comprehensive understanding of the story. Thus, it is important to pay attention to one’s face, hands, body, and even feet. I therefore told the story „The Frightened Mouse“ one more time, and this time the teachers had to observe my performance closely and write down their observations and impressions.
When I had prepared the workshop I was not sure if the variations that I had intended to be noticed – from “teaching voice” to “storytelling voice” – would actually be registered by the teachers.
“Storytelling mode”
However, I was positively surprised, because they did note my body language (for “far distant land” or “small mouse”, for example), and the changes in my voice, my facial expressions (e.g. wide open eyes when saying the word “magic”), and the way I was securing their attention by lighting the candle.
Mit also noticed that I did not use any pictures for visualization of the story. This supports the children’s imagination and ensures that the children do not lose track of the plot. They closely follow – “read” – what happens in my face and voice.
Afterwards I added further tips for preparing a story:
- Do not learn the text by heart, but find its logical structure. Use a “skeleton” of the most important key-words of the story (up to 10 words).
- Rehearse the story! Tell it to a friend or another teacher to get some practice.
- Do not overuse descriptive detail! Otherwise children could get bored or distracted because they do not understand the details.
- Do not be afraid of mistakes! Mistakes are a natural part of spontaneous communication, so do not panic.
- As a little help: Learn only the first and last line by heart. This can give you a lot of confidence as you then know how to start and how to end your story.
- And lastly, Richard Martin’s golden rule: Never tell with the text in your hand. You will lose touch with the listeners. (Martin, 2017)
But when it boils down to it, according to Richard Martin, there are only two rules for Storytelling:
Rule 1: There are no rules for Storytelling except rule 2.
Rule 2: Don’t read.
The most important tips go on the board
Ms Mittaphone “Mit” Sichampa shares her impressions
The “skeleton”
I told the story “The Frightened Mouse“ one last time so that each teacher could write down a “skeleton” in order to then be able to freely tell the story themselves. By knowing only the logical structure of the story one builds one’s own sentences and speaks much more freely.
A skeleton for the story “The Frightened Mouse“ could look like this, for instance:
mouse, cat, dog, horse, tiger big – bigger
frightened – proud
asked – changed – did not say – thank you
Now that each teacher had written down a skeleton we discussed the 6-10 words they had chosen. Had they found the most important words of the story in order to be able to retell it themselves? There is no better way to find out than by trying it out!
So they retold the story in partner-work. When telling a story one always has to step out of one’s comfort zone and behave in an extrovert manner, which is especially hard for the shy Laotians. This is why I chose the first presentation to be delivered to only one partner, not the entire group, as a first step towards becoming a storyteller. This worked out well because they gradually enjoyed telling the story more the more often they repeated it.
“If you want to be a storyteller, tell stories! If you want to become a better storyteller, tell more stories!”
(Richard Martin)
As a final task they now had to work on a new story on their own. I chose the tales “The Giant Turnip“ and “The Noisy House“, as both stories are suitable for the young learners that Ms Mit, Ms Noy, and Ms Bounpheng teach: The vocabulary is not abstract and there are no cultural barriers that could cause confusion on the children’s side. I handed out a script containing all of the stories of the workshop so they would be able to practise independently.
Firstly the teachers read out the stories to their partners. Then each teacher wrote down a skeleton, which provided the basis for retelling the story. After some practice time I asked one of the two partners to volunteer to present the story in front of everybody.
Ms Mittaphone “Mit” Sichampa and Ms Phovang “Noy” Inthavong work on a skeleton
Lea and Ms Bounpheng discuss the story “The Noisy House”
My help is barely necessary
Final results
Ms Mit presented „The Giant Turnip“ and Ms Bounpheng „The Noisy House“.
I was really satisfied with the results. Our tandem-teachers might have needed a little more time to practise in order to speak even more freely, but they did really well. Hanna, who is Ms Mit’s and Ms Noy’s tandem-teacher, will now continue with this topic in her teacher-lessons. Lea and Ms Bounpheng also told the story „The Noisy House“ in their English class during the following week.
Ms Mit presents “The Giant Turnip”
Ms Mit modifies her facial expressions
Ms Bounpheng tell the story “The Noisy House”
Ms Bounpheng uses body language
Every detail is important
„Above all, storytelling is a skill to be experienced and worked on practically. Just as you cannot learn to swim by reading a book, the only way to improve as a teller is to tell.“
(Richard Martin)
In the end I rewarded everyone by telling one more story myself – “The Old Woman who Lived in a Vinegar Bottle“ (cf. note 1) – so our tandem-teacher-friends could relax and listen to a story one more time before we all headed to the Villa and had a delicious dinner together.
All of the stories mentioned and many more can be found on Richard Martin’s website, where he also uploads new tales and videos on a regular basis.
Overall I can say that all participants had a lot of fun listening to the stories and telling them themselves, which is what storytelling is all about. I am very happy about the outcome and hope the tips help them to step out of their comfort zone once in a while and try something new in their classrooms – like telling a story.
Bounpheng, Mit, Jessica, Noy, Lea: Make your teaching fun!
Text by J. Porscha
Photos & videos by V. Golla
References:
Martin, Richard (2000). The Strongest of Them All – Tales and Music for Young Learners (Cornelsen ISBN 3-464-04006-2).
Martin, Richard (2003). “The frightened mouse: How to tell a participation story in class 4” (Primary English 1/2003), p. 20-21.
Martin, Richard (2002) “Discussing Mr Fox” (Humanising Language Learning http://www.hltmag.co.uk/jul02/sart6.htm) (last accessed on 12/26 )
Martin, R. (2017). “Storytelling for young learners”. Handout 12 skeletons [hard copy], page 8.
Note 1: “Vinegar-bottle” is the British name for a narrow house with one room upstairs, one downstairs.
Workshop on 5 December 2017 – How to embed experiments in science lessons
There are many suggestions in the scientific literature about how to integrate experimenting into scientific teaching. In Germany an important point in teacher education is not only to study these in theory, but also to learn to practically use and embed scientific approaches in lessons.
For this, future teachers at our University of Education do not only study didactic and methodological concepts theoretically but also do three internships during their studies. While completing the internships, the students are supported by a trained mentor at the school as well as by staff of the university.
This is considered necessary for at least two reasons: First, the principle of learning by doing, and second, because in one class there are many pupils with different levels of prior knowledge and experiences with scientific phenomena.
Already during our first stay at Ban Phang Heng Secondary School in spring 2017, we, Rebecca and Veronika, sat in on many biology, chemistry, and physics classes that our Lao tandem-teachers were teaching at the time, in order to get an idea of what was going on and how exactly we might be able to assist.
As the lessons were obviously held in Lao, we very often had to guess what the content and topics of the lessons were. However, the actual teaching was plain to see, and soon we guessed that an education in general or subject-related didactics and teaching methodology does not seem to be part of a university or college education for science teachers in Laos. The simplest didactic principles or techniques seem to be new for them – but they are only the “simplest” for us. It starts with using coloured chalks for writing on the blackboard to visualize different categories, or using illustrations that are big enough for every pupil to see.
This is why we decided to give our four tandem-teachers Mr Sackbong, Mr Phit, Ms Khamsee, and Ms Chanmany an understanding of how to embed experiments in a science lesson in such a way that it might foster pupils’ knowledge and understanding. For this we broke down the steps of a typical scientific discovery process into four basic steps, to make it easier for the Lao teachers to remember:
1. Plan the experiment
2. Do the experiment
3. Explain
4. Check your pupils’ understanding
When we were preparing our own workshop, we followed exactly these four steps. We followed the same four steps again while we were conducting the workshop a few weeks later. Here is what we did:
1. Plan it
In the first workshop, we introduced the teachers to the Didactics Room and encouraged them to use the new equipment there to prepare material (e.g. flashcards) for their lessons. We also encouraged them to integrate experiments into their lessons so that the students would be able to experience the scientific phenomena practically.
Some of the teachers subsequently started to go to the new science lab with their pupils and do more and more experiments. However, sometimes the experiments were shown or conducted one right after the other instead of embedding them sequentially and meaningfully in the lesson or the current topic. We assumed this might be due to the lack of didactic and methodological skills.
In our first workshop, we had given them the “teaching tools” – and now it was necessary to give them the “instruction manual”. Therefore, we decided to offer a workshop on the topic “How to embed experiments in science lessons”.
Introduction to the four steps…
…and the audience is listening carefully.
2. Do it
After a theoretical instruction about the four steps (plan – do – explain – check pupils’ understanding) for using an experiment in a science lesson, we demonstrated an example lesson which included the experiment “Can crusher”.
Through model-teaching, we showed the science teachers what a lesson can look like when one follows the four steps to embed an experiment in the context of a particular lesson.
Mr Sackbong and Mr Phit try the experiment using candles…
…and, more advanced, using a Bunsen burner.
Ms Khamsee and Ms Chanmany heat water in the can and wait until water vapour appears…
…and this needs a lot of patience.
Experimental set-up of the “Can crusher”
3. Explain
The challenge for us in working with our science teachers is their still basic level of English, which is why, alongside everything else, we teach them English 3-5 times a week. Reversely, it was a very demanding challenge for them to a) follow our model lesson, and to understand b) the concept, and c) the content that we had explained in English. Just imagine for a moment having to do this yourself with a lesson held in Lao.
This is why the second step of our workshop sparked a heated discussion. They tried to translate our theoretical input to one another, and to understand what exactly was happening in the experiment. Even though it did not become clear to us (guess why) whether they understood everything correctly, we could see that we had given them a big boost – not to be afraid anymore of
a) trying out new things,
b) interpreting the scientific concept behind phenomena witnessed in an experiment, and
c) discussing open questions with colleagues if one is stuck oneself.
Visual explanation of the experiment
4. Check the understanding
To practise and consolidate the four steps – plan, do, explain, check – the teachers were now asked to worked in pairs to prepare one lesson together, with one integrated experiment. They were to use the same pattern in a new context, all on their own. Ms Khamsee and Ms Chanmany decided to work on an experiment on surface tension while Mr Sackbong and Mr Pith prepared a lesson around the experiment “How to build a lemon battery”. As the concept of surface tension did not seem to be known to either Ms Khamsee or Ms Chanmany, we explained it to them to start with – and thereby killed two birds with one stone.
After the workshop our tandem-teachers seemed quite exhausted – no wonder – as from observing their faces while working we could see that their brains were working at maximum speed for over two hours.
Nevertheless, we hope that they will adapt our suggestions for their lessons and integrate the “simple” four steps for their lesson structure when they use experiments as from now on – but we are also quite confident about this. We have got to know the science teachers as very motivated, and open to new ideas.
Mr Phit and Mr Sackbong discuss the four steps for the lesson they are planning
Text by R. Dengler & V. Golla
Photos & videos by L. Malchow
Workshop on 16 November 2017 – How should we teach “Technical English” at Lao Vocational Colleges?
A sustainable English language education in our four Lao partner institutions is a crucial aim of the project “Teaching English in Laos”. We started our project 2 years ago in 2015, and one year ago our fourth and newest partner joined up, the Lao-German Technical College.
While the most important part of our work has been teaching English and methodology to our tandem-Lao-English teachers (15 hours a week), we 3 volunteers at the LGTC – out of a group of ten – devote the remaining 5 teaching hours (of our total of 20 teaching hours per week) to the four student groups at the LGTC, who graduated from “our” AfC school, Ban Phang Heng Secondary School, in the summer of 2016 and 2017.
These students (ca. 40 in each year so far), who are between 15 and 19 years old and who received study grants from BHS and were allowed and supported by their parents to begin this training, have now been enrolled either in the Electrical or the Mechanical Sections at the Lao-German-Technical-College (LGTC) since September 2016.
It is therefore important to help their teachers broaden and deepen their didactic and methodological knowledge and skills, apart from their command of the English language, so that they will be able to provide their students with lessons for sustainable English learning without our tandem-support in the future.
Vocational colleges often do not have textbooks for all of their teachers. They sometimes receive one copy of a textbook, for example, from one of the universities, or from the Ministry of Education and Sports. This is then shared by the teachers and usually only used as a guideline. Teachers therefore mostly prepare their own scripts. These are typically around 50 pages long, are worked through in one academic year, and consist of collated material, cut and pasted from unquoted sources and in parts also written by the teachers themseves.
These are then photocopied for the students. The students’ copies are either made by the teachers in the secretary’s office or the class spokesperson receives a copy and copies them for everyone in a copy shop, in which case the students pay for them themselves. This is expensive.
There is never a copy in the library. Sometimes there is no library.
Teacher’s script on the topic “identifying things”
Teacher’s script on “numbers”
Teacher’s script on “numbers, definite and indefinite article, translation”
Teacher’s script on “conversational English”
In July/August last summer, Prof. Martin and the first two LGTC-volunteers Lena Wink and Denise Burkhardt spent several weeks researching the “Technical English” course book market and selecting potential future course books for the College’s English classes. They came up with a shortlist of ten titles in the end and then met up with BHS-advisor (and vocational teacher) Mr Bernhard Fürst to discuss the choices, get his advice, and make a plan for the four different learner groups.
The course book chosen for the regular English classes was Technical English Level 1 (Pearson), clearly the best one on the market for our purposes. It has careful progression, three more levels, is attractive on all counts, and avoids some of the usual linguistic and intercultural traps.
One of the other books on the shortlist was the course book Tech Talk (OUP), which was chosen and bought as extra material for the “Technical English” classes. The difficulty with both books is, of course, that they were written for Western students – using, for example, pictures of Caucasian children as well as concepts, activities, and items not commonly known or used in Laos. To name a few examples: Names (Emma, Ulf), food (cereals, burgers, Coca-cola), currency (dollars).
Similarly, the teacher’s guide/handbook is directed at teachers who received comprehensive (Western) training in ELT/TESOL. It therefore presupposes methodological knowledge or expertise, e.g., which pre- and also post-activities to do when and how so that the students can successfully progress. This knowledge or training is not available to most Lao teachers up to this day.
Lao teachers normally do not yet receive such in-depth training because the English language and methodology associated with it never played a role in this country until relatively recently (private schools exluded). Therefore they tend to go through such course books word by word, page by page, asking the students to read, copy, and translate. Of course this is difficult enough already, for everybody involved.
From our point of view this is completely understandable, but neither advisable nor necessary. We would therefore like to explore another way with our tandem-teachers.
This is what happened in this workshop:
One more important idea for us teachers to consider in this context and in our daily work is the fact that (language-) learning works better if it has a somewhat personal meaning and a connection to the students’ daily lives. Therefore, in order to use this (any!) course book here in Laos, we need a special didactic approach for adapting it for our Lao college classrooms.
This means we need to come up with Lao or at least Asian examples for some of the topics dealt with in the book, e.g. instead of using a photo of a Caucasian child having cereals or toast for breakfast, we add to it (or substitute it with) a picture of an Lao child eating Lao breakfast, i.e. sticky rice, grilled fish, or noodle soup. Only changes like these make talking about, e.g., “daily routines”, actually meaningful and true-to-life here. There are countless more examples.
In the long-run, one will also need to adapt the linguistic presentation of language material to the types of learning difficulties experienced by Lao learners. These can (only) be properly understood once Lao pronunciation, grammar, syntax, and morphology rules are understood by us. (This is work-in-progress and will be reported about in the New Year.)
At the LGTC, the students study either in the Electrical or the Mechanical Section. Depending on the students’ field of expertise, they need a deeper understanding of either electrical or mechanical matters – also in English. Therefore, the Technical English teachers now use a mixture of materials from Technical English, Tech Talk, and online platforms and create their own script with all of these to address their particular students’ needs.
I was asked by the teachers to hold a workshop during which we would rewrite the book(s) so that they would have a script that they could work with in their lessons, and to learn to use this new approach on their own in the future. As this would be a project for about a year rather than a workshop, and as a comprehensive 4-level course book had already been identified and bought to serve as a guiding medium, I considered it more useful to give the teachers an insight into how exactly to choose and adapt activities, exercises and tasks from another (any other) book, by going through a page or two in minute detail.
This was to be preceded by an overview of how to organize a lesson plan, how to plan a dynamic lesson which goes with the learning goals set beforehand, and the different phases of a lesson. This way, the teachers would gain the ability to critically analyse any material they would work with in the future, to help them enable the students to reach the learning goals of a(ny) particular lesson.
It was a welcome bonus that on this particular day Prof. Martin was present, who did exactly this with me when I was her student in the half-year-school-internship 2 years ago at a partner school of our University of Education in Karlsruhe.
Therefore, on Thursday, 16th November 2017, the five teachers of the “Technical English” class as well as two “General English” teachers came together to learn to analyse and scrutinize the activities, exercises and tasks in the course book Tech Talk.
During the following 2.5 hours we worked with Unit 10: “Here or there”, and, step by step, filled out a model lesson plan. The unit was chosen because it was the one the teachers were either working with, or it was the next one in line.
The first step was to look at the unit as a whole. Which topics, vocabulary, grammar and chunks does it deal with? The unit contains three different topics: “Locating things”, “Telling the time”, and “this and that”.
Tech Talk Unit 10 p. 46-47
Tech Talk Unit 10 p. 48-49
In all three parts different vocabulary and chunks are used. The next questions were how or if the topics connect to one another, and which one should form the beginning of the teaching unit. For example, from locating things in general, which includes prepositions of place as in “The paper is on the table”, one could move on to locating specific things in different places, e.g. “This paper is on the table, but that paper is in the bin”.
This means that these two topics can be linked to one another, whereas “Telling the time” is an extra topic. It should therefore either be taught before or after the two other topics, but not, as the book intends it, in between. This would interrupt the unit.
Therefore, when it was decided that we would start with “Locating things”, learning goals were formulated: What shall the students have accomplished by the end of the lesson? We formulated the following “can-do statements”:
The students can
- read and write the new vocabulary
- use the prepositions about the location of objects to ask and answer questions
Nina explains
In foreign language-learning these learning goals can be reached by following the “3P’s” pattern of lesson phases: “Presentation”, “Practice”, and “Performance” (cf. footnote 1). This pattern is especially helpful for less experienced English teachers, and it is certainly very helpful for Lao learners. Depending on the length of a lesson, the amount of structures and vocabulary that are to be taught, and depending on the students’ prior knowledge, these phases vary in length and number. They are often followed by a “Consolidation”-phase, during which the students deepen their learning or apply the new language material in a slightly different and more open (“communicative”) way.
Each lesson is always framed by the “Greeting” and “Farewell”.
The lesson plan used within the workshop
Knowing this, the next step was to have a closer look at the exercises/activities/tasks to answer the following questions:
1) What do the students do in that exercise/activity/task?
2) What shall the students learn through this exercise/activity/task?
3) When can I include it into my lesson?
4) What do the students need to know to successfully complete the exercise/activity/task?
and
5) Do I have to adapt it?
Ket fills out the lesson plan
Teachers work on the lesson plan
The chosen part of the unit uses a) exercises in which certain aspects of language are being practised, and b) activities (playing a game, having a dialogue) during which the new language patterns are used.
Once it was identified what the students should do in an the exercise or activity, it also became clear what they would learn while doing it. So by answering the first two questions, we could determine which phase the exercises and activities could be used in.
Having a dialogue is an activity that requires some vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar training beforehand. Therefore the students cannot have a dialogue about a certain topic using specific chunks and vocabulary at the beginning of a lesson. Maybe the key question in this context is the fourth one: “What do the students need to know to be able to successfully complete the exercise or activity?” – because this is the central issue for a lesson to be successful.
More often than not, when originally observing lessons and getting to know our tandem-teachers better, we noticed that preparing lessons is not something a Lao teacher normally will or can spend much time on. The concept is foreign, the salary low, and there are always other important matters to see to.
Apart from this, Lao teachers (and university lecturers) are entitled to 10 days of vacation a year.
They still devoted their free time to our workshop.
(We, the German volunteer teachers, by the way, also receive no pay for our work here.)
Looking at the material in Tech Talk in detail, the teachers made a few discoveries. They realized that a lesson can include any exercise, activity, or task provided it fits their learning goal(s).
If the exercises and activities do not serve the learning goal, they either need to be adapted or exchanged by something more suitable. A lesson is not about filling it with as many exercises or activities from the book – just to have them done – but rather to use suitable exercises and activities to reach the learning goals of a lesson.
Mouk and Akina
This realization led to an animated discussion about how vocabulary and chunks can be taught in an interesting way so that the students can practise them many times, in many varied ways.
We then collected specific examples for the lesson at hand: The unit starts with a picture of an office in which a number of items are to be located while listening to a recording of a description of places. This picture can be used to have the students work in pairs, in which one points at an object and the other one says what it is, or they ask and answer each other where certain objects are located. This will also be of help when they solve a written crossword following the same kind of clues/language, i.e. “This item is on the table, in front of the computer, next to the papers”.
(Editor’s note: 90% of the students were clueless at first when asked to do this during one of my hospitation lessons. They are not used to this kind of activity yet. After ten minutes or so, everybody had understood the instructions – to speak as partner A to a partner B in a gap-filling dialogue using prepositions of place – and there was animated English dialogue in the classroom. It took another little while until the crossword procedure was understood. By this time, the first 10% of the students had finished everything, and then patiently waited. “Differentiation” would be a good next workshop topic, and something we will be able to address now in our tandem-teacher-lessons, in which we do lesson planning together.)
This topic was found to be so important that another workshop will be offered next month specifically on how to teach vocabulary and chunks in a meaningful and communicative lesson.
By the end of the workshop we had a complete lesson plan with exercises, activities, and games for each lesson phase. However, the previously set learning goals needed to be revised. Thanks to the profound work done on the first part of the Unit, it became clear that the learning goals were set too high for one lesson. Therefore they were reduced to:
The students can
- understand, pronounce and use the new vocabulary to identify the items in different locations
- use the prepositions about the location of objects to ask and answer questions in speaking
In future lessons these lesson goals can be expanded further to include one more skill: writing.
This workshop has been one of the first steps to develop the teachers’ knowledge of didactics and methodology as well as their critical evaluation and planning skills. Before we could start with this, we first needed to work on English speaking skills, also to discuss attitude. Now it is quite possible to have discussions in English with the entire group, at this relatively abstract level, but this was not the case one year ago.
Future short and long-term workshops in this area will follow from here, i.e. workshops on specific topics which are relevant for foreign-language teaching and learning, as well as from the area of general didactics.
Saythong Insarn, at the end of the workshop, came to this conclusion: “This workshop has been very useful for us because it gave us a very detailed scheme for how to structure a lesson, set lesson goals and use the materials from the book wisely. Personally, I learned how to put my lesson on one page only and still know what I have to do during the lesson.”
Text by J. Adelberg & I. Martin
Photos by S. Uhlig & I. Martin
References:
Bonamy, David (2008). Technical English 1 – 2. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.
Bonamy, David (2013). Technical English 3 -4. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.
Hollet, Vickey (2003). Tech Talk Elementary. Oxford: OUP.
Richards, Jack C.. “Communicative Language Teaching Today.” https://www.professorjackrichards.com/wp-content/uploads/communicative-language-teaching-today-v2.pdf, p. 8-24 (online 17.12.2017)
Note (1):
The grammar-based “3-P’s” methodology is one of the traditional approaches to language-teaching which were popular (in the Western TESOL world) until the late 1960s. It is a deductive approach to teach grammar in which the students are presented with a new part of language and are then given the opportunity to practise it.
Starting in the 1970s, it was argued that language ability involved more than grammatical competence. This led to shifting the focus towards more functional and skill-based teaching. Here, drill and grammar practice are substituted by fluency activities that are based on interactive small-group work to promote the students’ communicative competence.
From this the communicative language teaching approach was derived. Current methodology uses activities and tasks that seek to develop students’ communicative skills by creating a need for communication, interaction, and negotiation of meaning. It includes authentic materials such as newspaper articles and connects the learning content to the students’ lives.
For this, tasks that either focus on fluency or accuracy shall balance each other out. Fluency work can either come before or after accuracy work. A fluency task focuses on getting meaning across in the course of which accurate grammar or pronunciation recede into the background. However, accuracy work is necessary to complete the fluency tasks (cf. Richards).
A traditional 3-P-structure of a lesson helps our Lao teachers to follow learning goals, but it certainly does not prevent us from teaching in a communicative way. This way includes a variety of social forms and settings that Lao teachers – and therefore learners – are unfamiliar with. A typical Lao lesson is teacher-centered, and the teacher speaks 90% of the time. Students are accordingly “shy” of speaking. In order to leave this traditional teaching approach behind it is necessary to introduce both teachers and students to these “new” types of activities and tasks so that step by step the students can learn how to speak English by actually speaking during classes.
Everyone understands the logic when Prof. Martin demonstrates that you cannot become a good footballer by staring at the ball. You have to kick it (many times) and exercise your leg muscles. “Same same but different for your tongue”: It, too, is a muscle, and you must train it to hit the new sounds and words.
Letters from Laos – “My ongoing education as an English teacher” by Ms Bounpheng Singhalath
“Hello again, I’m Bounpheng!”
This is my second letter on this blog – you can find my first letter here.
Ms Bounpheng
Hello! My neme is Bounpheng. I am 37 years old. I studied at University of Laos. I teach English at primary school Phang Heng sice 2016. I start at Sengthong District in 2011, but in 2013 I moved to Naxaythong District.
Learning english
I learn English at school not good, But I learn at University. I learn in University besi grammar, reading, writing and pronunciation.
In the University the teacher say repeat after her like in the normal lesson in Lao. I need more practise in pronunciation and activity.
Thoughts about the Project
I thinkk about the project when I heard about it fort he first time I want learn a lot of English and I was excited and also shy and afraid because I needed to talk.
At the beginning htey said that we need to practice and have more activity with children I like the activity in the afternoon with teacher Lao and teacher from German.
(Editor’s note: Ms Bounpheng has worked with 5 of our volunteer-teachers since October 2015 and she still speaks a lot about them. She keeps a daily reminder of them near the “English Corner” in her school – Ban Phang Heng Primary School – that Silja established earlier this year for her.)
Daily School life
In the morning I teach English in the class. When I teach class 1 the ABC and the animals. In the other classes I teach many different topics.
I have lunch with my daughter and I relax 30 minutes and I prepare the lesson for teach class 4 and class 5.
In Activity Time we do sing the song and play the game in English because they can try speak English in a playful way. We all have a lot of fun.
The future
In the future I need to have (editor’s note: “teach”) less english lesson to learn more english with Lea.
Prof. Martin’s visit in December 2017
Lea’s note: When Prof. Martin came to our schools during her recent research stay, she also visited one of Ms Bounpheng’s lessons. This is how Ms Bounpheng teaches English nowadays, after just two years in our project. Look for yourself, this is in grade 1:
(Editor’s note: Mr Khampanh, Head of the Research Institute of Educational Sciences (RIES), Ministry of Education and Sports, said in our most recent meeting 2 weeks ago: “When we visited your AfC schools we could see that this is different. The children speak. They have no fear. They speak English with self-confidence. Thank you very much and please continue.”)
Ms Bounpheng and her tandem-teacher Lea Herrmann (Team V)
Text by B. Singhalath
Photos & videos by L. Herrmann & I. Martin
Letters from Laos – “My journey to Germany” by Khamsavay Gnommilavong
On September 6th, 2017, Mr Khamsavay Gnommilavong took up the position of the new “Acting Director” of the Lao-German Technical College (LGTC), since the previous director, Mr Somlith Virivong, was asked to work in the Ministry of Education and Sports at the Department of Technical and Vocational Education as Deputy Director. Besides his role as Acting Director, Mr Khamsavay is at the same time also one of the students in the “Elementary” class presently taught by Sandra Uhlig. Within the frame of the class work, he wrote the following article about his time spent in Germany in 2003 and 2005.
My name is Khamsavay GNOMMILAVONG.
Mr Khamsavay in front of the LGTC-sign
I am acting director of Lao-German technical college, I would like to write about Germany when I was study there for 14 years ago.
I worked at Lao-German technical school in 1985 until 2003, after studying Mathematics and Physics at Laos National University in Vientiane. I went to Gross Gerau district lying in the southern Frankfurt Rhein-Main Region in Hessen to study at Hessian institute for Advanced Training in Technology Gross Gerau Hessen. I went to Hessen because the “InWEnt” project (editor’s note: “Internationale Weiterbildung und Entwicklung“, which today operates under the “Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit” (GIZ)) invited me to there and also paid for my trips. Subjects I studied for first time were programmable logic controller, power electronic and Computer Technology.
I went there the second time in 2005 to study Computer network at the same place. Gross Gerau is small city but very nice place, I liked because it was quiet and safety.
Mr Khamsavay at a museum in Germany
My impression in the every morning and evening I saw dove cooing on the tree besides my room, when dove cooing I was homesick, I don’t know how to do, I went to Penny (mini mark) for brought some food and beer to drink. I liked the weather in Germany it’s cold and sometime there was snow. When I was in Germany I always got up at 5:30 AM in the morning for cooking and prepare something for go to school at 7:00 AM until 5:00 PM. At the weekend I went to somewhere by train on Saturday morning such as: Frankfurt, Darmstadt to buy something and came back on afternoon. Some weekend I went to Mannheim to visit Lao peoples on Friday afternoon and came back on Sunday afternoon The organization of institute took me two times to visit Berlin for 5 days each time. I saw Germany is very developed and high technology in Europe.
Mr Khamsavay and his friend Ali from Yemen on the train
Mr Khamsavay with Ali
Mr Khamsavay with his international fellow-students
I started study English in 2016 for Elementary class with Denise and then with Amelie, and now I study English with my German teacher Sandra in Lao-German Technical College, she is very kind and beautiful. I want to thank her very much to improve my English knowledge to communicate with foreigners and I can use English for my work.
Johannes Zeck and Mr Khamsavay
Tandem-teachers from the LGTC with Team V
Sandra and Mr Khamsavay
Text by K. Gnommilavong
Photos by K. Gnommilavong, S. Uhlig, I. Martin
Let’s celebrate Halloween in Laos
“When witches go riding and black cats are seen, the moon laughs and whispers, ‘tis near Halloween” (author unknown)
A witch with a black cat riding on her broom in the moonlight. Source: www.pixabay.com
Historical background
Halloween, an American holiday celebrated once a year on October 31, has its roots in ancient Celtic traditions, when humans wore costumes and lit bonfires to guard themselves from ghosts. Nowadays, Western people stopped believing in ghosts, but still keep the tradition alive for entertainment and profit-making purposes, for example by re-enacting activities like trick-or-treating, or carving Jack-o-lanterns – these are hollowed pumpkins with a scary face lit from within by a candle to create a lantern effect. All this is often celebrated within the scope of a party, which sometimes involves quite a bit of preparation and expense.
A creepy Jack-o’-lantern for Halloween. Source: www.pixabay.com
Besides, parades like the “Village Halloween Parade” in New York City can be watched and spooky adventures like “haunted houses” or “mazes” can be visited during the season of fall for entertainment. Consequently, as with many Christian feasts like Easter, Pentecost (the American English name for the British “Whitsuntide”), or Christmas, old pagan festivals lost the meaning of their original purpose and today rather entail commercial and community-centered aspects. “Today, Americans spend an estimated $6 billion annually on Halloween, making it the country’s second largest commercial holiday after Christmas”.
Due to the fact that all the three of us from Team V of the LGTC are assigned to the American accent, as some of us used to live in the United States, and as we also experienced Halloween ourselves either in the USA or Germany, we decided to collectively hold our lessons on October 31 under this theme.
The celebration at the LGTC
All scary people together
The welcoming
Dressed up as witches, we received our guests in the meeting room in the Electrical Section building, which we prepared in advance by decorating it with orange pumpkin balloons and some snacks for everyone.
Nina, Sandra and Ariane together with Souk
Sandra, Ariane and Nina dressed up as witches with Siphanda
Some of the teachers who appeared on time were lucky to personally get frightened by us as two of us were hiding next to stairs. When we reached the large number of twenty-five, we officially started the party by creeping through the room in a “witchy” way to the Halloween song “It’s Halloween night”. The teachers were really amused by our appearance and the performance, so that the majority of them took out their cell phones to take pictures or videos. Afterwards we continued with another scary song “The time warp” of the musical “Rocky Horror Picture Show”, encouraging everyone to join in, to start the party in a fun way, all together.
The performances
Prior to our Halloween party, each class (Beginners A + B, Elementary, and Technical English) had prepared a contribution to entertain the others. On the night, we projected lyrics/texts on the wall so everyone was able to participate and join in if they wanted to. For “Beginners A” this meant performing the song “New York, New York” by Frank Sinatra full of ardour. “Beginners B” contributed the famous song “San Francisco” by Scott McKenzie, which was supported by all the Halloween guests. The fun camp song “Hey, my name is Joe” was the “Elementary” classes’ contribution . They did a great job “pushing the button with their left hand, right hand, left foot, right foot and finally with their tongue”! (sitting on a chair with your legs stretched up in the air can be pretty exhausting after some time…). Because we were not, they were not ashamed to act like children, either. Following this, the teachers of the “Technical English” class performed the nursery rhyme “Swimming, swimming in a swimming pool”, underlining words with matching motions. With each repeat, they dropped a word and used only the motion.
It’s time to play games
“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing” (George Bernard Shaw)
After the four very enjoyable and amusing renderings, it was time for some group games. We started with a balloon race, for which two groups had to stand in two separate lines to compete against each other. They then had to pass on a balloon without using hands or feet. The team who finished passing on the balloon faster than the other group was rewarded with candy. This game was followed by the TPR game “fruit salad”, which is “a method of teaching a foreign language in which the teacher asks the students to do something in the foreign language, and they must react with a body movement or action”.
Thereby, we used Halloween vocabulary like “witch, ghost, spider” etc., which are often used in Western cultures to symbolize “the uncanny”. As this vocabulary was already introduced in the regular English lessons, we did not need any time to explain the vocabulary again.
The “balloon race”
Passing on the balloon
Another highlight of the festivity was probably the game “musical chairs”, played with songs like “Thriller” by Michael Jackson or “Ghostbusters” by Ray Parker Jr.
The culmination of our little party was the famous so-called “Chicken Dance”, which was so much fun that we played the song back again. Blissfully happy faces and bright eyes – both Germans and Lao.
Our Lao teachers definitely proved that games work at every age – no matter how old you are. “It is never too late for a happy childhood”!
Lany (Beginner A)
Viengkhom, one of the English teachers
Text by S. Uhlig & A. Kummetz
Photos and videos by J. Adelberg, S. Uhlig & A. Kummetz
Teaching experiences in Laos
Two months have passed since I left Germany and said goodbye to my parents and friends for five months. A lot has happened since my „First Impressions“ blog post and I collected many new experiences while teaching and living in Laos.
My two main tasks are teaching my English-tandem teacher Ms Bounpheng at Ban Phang Heng primary school and teaching the “Mopsies” (preschoolers) in the morning, since Jessica, who taught the preschoolers before, had to leave in mid-November.
During the first month I observed Ms Bounpheng’s lessons and offered linguistic and methodological help when she needed it. In our tandem-teacher lessons we practise vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation together. In the afternoon I do the “Activity Time” with the children in the yard of the school. We sing, dance, and play games in English together. My fourth task is managing the Lending Library, where the teachers can borrow diverse teaching materials and also all sorts of novels for their free time.
As Lao teachers (and students) do not read books in their free time much, however, we put this down to experience – this is our own intercultural misconception. To start with, there is not much free time because they have second jobs in the evenings (for example teaching English in private evening schools), or they have to attend to housekeeping (e.g. washing clothes by hand) and family matters. When they do have free time, they do not spend it alone reading, but for spending time with family, or relaxing. This will in 90% of the cases be TV, Facebook, or Utube – there is the real world out there to discover!
We therefore donated the novels – which had been donations by students and staff of the University of Education Karlsruhe – to the English Department of the National University of Laos, but do not know at this stage whether the offer if more appropriate there. We now understand more fully what it means that “the Lao people have an oral tradition” – they are not used to reading.
Teaching techniques
The other teams already did a lot of work, which you can see when you observe the English lessons of the teachers these days. To counteract the usual frontal teaching techniques, they now use many techniques that they learnt from the former teams. I am always very happy when Ms Bounpheng does „Singlish“ with the children because they have a lot of fun when they can move and do something different than just sitting and copying from the board whilst using the English language.
There are many reasons why the teachers cannot use all the techniques that we are taught to use in Germany.
First: There are around 35-45 children in each class in primary school, which makes it really hard to create material for everyone, as the school cannot cover the printing costs (there is therefore no photocopier for the teachers). It also makes it totally impossible to take differentiating notes of the children who are slower and those who work really fast.
Second: The size of the classroom is limited, so you cannot move around as much as in a German classroom. This makes it difficult to establish different working scenarios like partner or group work because the children always sit in the same place and are not used to moving around. If you try, you lose a lot of time and especially in the lower classes it leads to chaos because nobody knows what to do. Lesson learnt: Establishing a new routine or working format cannot be done at the same time as introducing new language material.
The limited size of a Lao classroom
Third: Lao children are not used to speaking alone, with a partner, or in a small group – they are used to speaking with the whole class, repeating what the teacher says. It remains unclear how many children actually understand what they are repeating. Tests and grades accordingly assess rote reproduction, not necessarily understanding. They also only learn individual words (and not chunks of language), which is why it is not realistic to expect them to speak by themselves or have simple short conversations. As they are seldom asked to speak individually throughout their schooling, they continue to be shy of speaking well into adulthood. When they are forced to say something individually, you can hardly hear what they say because they speak in a low voice and there always seems to be noise outside (mostly construction work or noise from other classes, while doors and windows are always open). We noticed many of them lose this alleged “shyness” instantly when the teaching technique changes to a more communicative approach.
My first weeks of teaching
I noticed early that it is very hard to work on pronunciation issues because the Laotian language is so different from the English language. It has another sound inventory and is a tonal language. Word and sentence stress as well as intonation are different, too. Stress and intonation interference sometimes makes it hard for Westerners to understand Lao English, more than any possibly wrongly produced sounds. „Rice“ [raɪs] is pronounced „li” or “lice“, for example, because their vocal tract is differently trained than ours (the tongue is a muscle after all) and there is no spoken “r” in their language (but it is still written). “Liver” [ˈlɪvə] therefore may mean “river” [ˈrɪvə] or [lɪvə], and “daily routine” may be spelt “dairy routine”. We still understand the meaning from the context of the conversation.
A little more difficult is the fact that in Lao no consonant sound is allowed after the diphthongs [aɪ] and [ou], so not pronouncing a consonant after those sounds is a clear interference from the mother tongue and therefore difficult (but not impossible) to un-do. We then simply guess (other si, li stock, ri, piappo, compi, hou, sou). There are no two consonants following each other in Lao, either, so words like “hand” or “left” or “old” are very difficult for our learners.
Also, words with a „th“ are difficult, and this is a difficulty they share with German learners. Our learners’ motivation to improve is remarkable, though, and they say it is good that they have some practice with us every day. Ultimately, the pronunciation problem turns into a concentration problem, and then it starts to get easier.
We, the teachers from the Western world, also finally arrive at the understanding that “correct” pronunciation is a Western concept and, at the end of the day, unimportant for users of Global or International English: They understand each other perfectly well. There is a problem only when a Lao person works in an international context with Westerners – or is a teacher. It makes more sense at this stage to focus on other skills.
After the last weeks of teaching, Ms Bounpeng and I therefore came to the conclusion that it makes more sense to focus on reading and speaking because it takes a long time to change long-established patterns which were learnt since primary school and carried over to to university – and we should use our precious time together differently. My main goal, after all, in teaching my tandem-teacher is to have „real“ conversations with her and to talk about things that she is interested in. So we read many short stories together and picture books, which is a good way to practise reading out loud and speaking about interesting subject matter, and then sometimes we summarize the story and write it down. From time to time, we also try to play role plays or I tell her stories and she answers questions about it or summarizes the plot. The goal is to increase her own speaking time.
“Hours of coverage”
Additionally to these teacher lessons, we have two “hours of coverage” per week in which we create material or use the Talking Pen to prepare lessons together.
The “Talking Pen” has different features, but the main one is to record yourself while speaking, e.g. to say words going with a flashcard or a page of a picture book. You save your recording digitally on the pen and then copy this onto a sticker that you physically stick on the flashcard or pages of the picturebook. Then, by touching the sticker or page with the pen, it replays to you your recording of that word or sentence, as often as you need it.
Last week we prepared a lesson with the picture book „Monkey Puzzle“, and in the following week we held a lesson about it in class 5 together. Ms Bounpheng read the book aloud in front of the class. Every animal in the book was portrayed by one student and they did the movements and sounds of the animals when they occurred in the book. The children had a lot of fun and enjoyed being a part of the story, and understood it. The next day Ms Bounpeng taught the other class 5 alone as we did it the day before and I could see her improvement immediately and how she implemented it. Her reading was a lot better and she was more self-confident than the day before. When I notice things which she could do better next time to activate the children more, we talk about it after the lesson and often I can see that she manages to transfer this to her next lesson already! These are rewarding moments for us both.
The “Mopsies”
In the “Mopsy” lessons I teach easy basic English to the preschoolers in a playful way.
There are nine groups in the Sikeud primary School, which consist of nine to ten children of class A and B. In total I take care of 85 preschoolers. The groups have a 20-minute English lesson per day, in which we want them to have a first contact with a complete different language than their own.
In the first weeks, Jessica taught six groups which consisted of 15 children, but the groups were just too big to teach effectively, as Prof Martin had cautioned in an email, and the experiment did indeed promptly ruin her voice and was far too exhausting. It is clear that 5-year-old children are energetic, noisy, and cannot behave in an orderly way yet, so teaching this can of worms is a wonderful experience, but very tiring at the same time, no matter in which country. Additionally, in Laos, this apparently is the first time the children get into contact with any rules whatsoever, or education. The very young ones are left to be.
We therefore divided the groups from 6 into 9 and found that this was more manageable. We have two rituals which we do in every lesson – in the beginning we sing the “Good Morning” song and at the end of the lesson we „rap“ the “Goodbye” song.
„Good morning, good morning, good morning to you. Good morning, how are you? I am fine, thanks, and you?“
„1,2,3,4, clap your hands once more. Stamp your feet, wink an eye, time to say goodbye.”
The children also learnt how to say their name and to name different body parts like hand, foot, ear, eye, nose, and to sing the song: „I“ve got 10 fingers, I“ve got 10 toes, I“ve got 2 ears, 2 eyes, 1 nose.“ This means they also learnt the numbers up to 10 in English.
Last week I taught the “Hokey Pokey” song, which requires that the children know which hand and foot is the left one and which hand and foot is the right one. Not easy for a child of five, as you can see in the video – nothing to do with English! We will use coloured bands around the wrists and ankles next.
Now that Jessica has left I will not co-teach her “Mopsies” in Ban Sikeud Primary School any longer but start lessons in Ban Phan Heng Primary School with the preschoolers there so that they also get their turn.
The next weeks
Over the next weeks I will follow the „Mopsy“ book by Leonora Fröhlich-Ward and Gisela Schmid-Schönbein and my aim is to show the children that English or a second (or third, in the case of the children from a minority ethnic background) language can be a lot of fun to learn and that nobody needs to be afraid of learning it!
Although I have a constant timetable of 20 teaching hours, every day is a little bit different in Laos. This is an aspect that I really like because there is always something new and exciting which does not make each day one and the same. I am happy to stay until February and to get to know everything a little bit better day after day and hope to improve and change some things with many little steps.
Last, but not least, I have come to understand that I can learn at least as many new things about teaching as my tandem-teacher and pupils can learn about learning, or English.
Text by L. Herrmann
Photos and videos by V. Golla, L. Kringe & L. Herrmann
Letters from Laos – Hello, I’m Moukdala
Hello, my name is Mouk!
Well, Hello everyone who is reading now. My name is Moukdala. I’m 26. I live with parents. My place is at a countryside. But i love it becuase it’s a quiet place. I graduated from the University of Laos to be a English teacher in 2012. In the first year at university i learned in general subject like Mathematics, physics… I studied how to teach how to be a good teacher in the second year. And i was lucky in that i got a job in 2013. I work at LGTC. I work at secretary office and i also be a teacher. I teach English. I know my English is not very good but i still want to be a teacher. I study and teach at the same time. I also teach BHS students. I want to teach my students to know as much as i know. And lucky me again i moved from secretary office to Cooperation Development and IT office this year(2017). We cooperate with many companies sometime we send a document and we received documents in English that why I have to study English as much as I can and I can’t stop to study English becuase I like English.
Akina and Mouk
It’s not only at a school that you can study English, right? I like to watch English movies and Thai subtitle. I try to find free English movie with English subtitles but i can’t find it.
I like to listen English song. It also can help me to improve English especially is Listening. I like to chat and talk with my German teachers.
From my german teachers (team III, team IV and team V) I learned how to prepare a lesson plan before I teach. And how to teach vocabulary: first time I say the words normal, second time louder, third time quiet. I use real object and hold up and tell them what the name of the object is. I think the students can remember easier if they see the real object. It is not bored for them if I use the real object ( for identifying things). Sometimes I also use Flashcards like for animals or fruit. My dream is to be a good teacher like them. I’m very lucky that i’m the one of the students in the Technical English class.
The “Technical English” class during a workshop
Mouk fills out a lesson plan
And now my writing is nearly finish. Hopefully my short story is of interest for you and in the future i will get a new experience at somewhere in abroad and i will let you know again. 🙂
Thank you for taking the time to read this. Good bye ??
Text by M. Keomixai
Photos by S. Uhlig & I. Martin
The origin of National Teachers’ Day in Laos – A journey into the past and a celebration in the present
Public holidays! For most people in the Western world, the deeper meaning of such a holiday is no longer present. To be honest, we usually simply enjoy the extra day off. Few holidays are really celebrated with a big party, whereas in Laos one gets the impression that celebrations are welcome on every occasion. One such occasion was the 23rd “National Teachers’ Day“.
A few weeks in advance, the term “Teachers’ Day” came to my attention at school. After lunch, from 3 – 4 p.m., when the so-called “Activity Time” is offered to the children, preparations were in full swing. The pupils memorized poems and rehearsed various dances that were to be performed at the celebration.
When the holiday would finally take place and on which day the regular classes would accordingly be cancelled, we, Jessica and I, were told just two days before – almost unimaginable in Germany but normal here in Laos. With a personal invitation from the director and a big thank you from us, we made our way home and let our curiosity for the first participation in a festivity like this grow.
Celebration at Sikeud Primary School
On the morning of the celebration – holding the doorknob of the front door in our hands – we were surprised by a really heavy rain that can only be experienced in a tropical climate zone. Within a minute the whole yard, the meadow, and the street were under water.
Even if the way to school does not take long, we probably would not have got far with our bicycles. But before we could come up with a plan or ask for help, Mr Viengkham (the driver of the AfC Foundation) appeared in the yard with the AfC van and picked us up at the door with an umbrella. Dry and clean we arrived at the school and the celebration could finally begin.
Benches and tables were already set up in the small “dancing hall” of the school, where there is also a stage. Teachers, guests, and grade 4 and 5 pupils with their parents were waiting to start. At a table on the stage there were five seats for some guests of honour like the director and her predecessor. Across the room the rest of the benches were set up, the first of which was also reserved for special guests, amongst them Jessica and me.
After we had taken our places, the director began with a welcome speech. Following this, several other speakers followed suit. The content of the speeches was unfortunately largely lost on us. We were able to pick up a few words, for example numbers. What they actually were about we could only guess. For the closing speech, Mr Kongphang Phetphouthone, a teacher from our school, stepped forward. His speech was very long, compared to the others, so my interest in finding out more about it was particularly great. In addition to various topics such as “the role of a teacher in school” and “the appreciation of the teacher”, Mr Kongphang talked about his own career and also told the story of “the first teacher in Laos”.
After some effort, I figured out what the speech was about and decided to get more information about Mr Kongphang and the first teacher in Laos, Mr Kham.
About Mr Kongphang
Mr Kongphang was born in 1970 as the son of a soldier. His mother was a housewife und he had two older sisters and one younger sister. At the age of 19 he finished high school. From 1991-1992 Mr Kongphang went to a pedagogical school and became a teacher. For the next 18 years he worked as a primary teacher. To expand his knowledge, he attended a college for another 3 years and finally started working as a teacher at Sikeud Primary School. There he teaches maths, Lao language, sports, art, manners & conduct as well as biology. Mr Kongphang’s wife is a primary teacher, too, and she works in the same district but at another school. They have two daughters who are 20 and 9 years old.
Mr Kongphang Phetphouthone in his first year as a teacher
Mr Kongphang Phetphouthone in 2017
Why has National Teacher’s Day been celebrated here in Laos in the first place and how exactly did it come about?
Schools as we know them have not existed for very long in Laos (see articles on Education in Laos Part I and Part II on this blog). For this reason, trained teachers are a relatively new phenomenon. After France occupied Laos in 1893, not much emphasis was placed on education or a school system. Although the French began to implement their own education system in Laos eventually, it did not answer to the living conditions of the majority of the people, which is why the Pathet Lao implemented a parallel system. Up until then, most of the pupils and students were taught by the monks in the temple, who were no trained teachers, either, but were well-read and willing and able to share their knowledge.
Mr Kham, who was later to be recognized as the first teacher, was lucky enough to be educated at one of only two existing schools in the country at the time. In 1905, he graduated and enjoyed a two-year teacher training at an educational school. On 7 October 1909 he was finally officially recognized as a teacher. From that moment on, he taught in many different places – mostly in temples. Monks, as well as children and adults came to learn from him. Only a few Laotians could read and write then, which is why almost all age groups were represented in his classes.
Mr Kham’s great commitment and the change he brought about led to the date of his official recognition as a teacher being used as the occasion to mark a national holiday in 1994. October 7th has been celebrated for 23 years now and it offers the opportunity to honour all the teachers in the country and pay them respect for their important work. This was expressed at our school at the end of the celebration with beautiful bouquets, awards, dances, poems, and homemade gifts from the pupils. We also received a bunch of flowers and were – in spite of the fact that we did not understand anything – positively surprised and thought to ourselves: “Such a celebration in honor of teachers should be held in Germany as well!”
Teachers were given certificates for special commitments at school
To show appreciation, pupils handed over bouquets to their teachers
Fifth graders performed a traditional Lao dance on stage
Fourth graders recited a poem
All teachers are honoured on Teachers’ Day in Laos – Hanna and Jessica with their bouquets
Mr Kongphang with his pupils in the past and today
Text & photos by H. Glass
Busy hands, busy brains – Hands-on science lessons at Ban Phang Heng Secondary School
The best way to activate children’s brains is by having them move their hands. Conducting experiments in science lessons and experiencing things physically helps to gain a better understanding of materials and might avoid the potential gap between theory and practice.
Already Aristotle recognized the importance of experiential learning (learning through experience). In 350 BC he wrote: “For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” Since the 1950s, thanks to psychologists like Piaget, Lewin, and Dewey, this idea became very popular in Europe as well as in the United States.
We, Rebecca and Veronika, started to sensitize the science teachers of Ban Phang Heng Secondary School to this idea with our workshop during our first stay with Team IV in spring 2017. We showed them ways to teach that go beyond writing facts on the board or simply explaining things orally. Besides showing the teachers where to find or how to create additional material to enhance the course books, we also made them familiar with the school’s new science laboratory.
The availability of a science laboratory (a kind donation by Mr Marion and Ms Monika Schellberg) is remarkable and no regular part of a Laotian school. This would not be obvious for every reader, as is the fact that its usage was also not a simple given: It first had to be introduced to the science teachers. Additionally, we invited them to join us for “Activity Time”, during which Rebecca and I conducted experiments with the pupils with everyday material so they could observe us. We assume that they quickly grasped the sense and value of it, meaning that a different place of learning can bring variety and allows new possibilities for teaching and learning. Since then they have started teaching in the science laboratory more often. At first, the teachers mostly showed experiments in the front to their pupils, but step by step this changed to letting pupils conduct experiments themselves. This progress was one of the outcomes of working together with our tandem-science-teachers, Mr Sackbong, Mr Phit, Ms Khamsee, and Ms Chanmany.
One of my responsibilities in our work on site is to observe the science teachers’ lessons and then to give them feedback on their teaching to help them improve it. I show them different approaches and give them methodological ideas for other, novel ways of teaching. This task is anything but easy as their lessons are obviously held in Lao, which I do not understand. I follow their lessons as best I can with the help of the few Lao words I know, by the pictures in the course books, and formulas or drawings written on the board. Also, the science teachers’ English skills are still very limited, as they only started learning English a short while ago with us. These two factors pose quite a barrier in communicating with them. This is one of the reasons why they also do not always tell me in advance what they are going to teach. Nevertheless, I manage, and I saw some highly interesting lessons by Ms Khamsee.
Within the teaching unit of introducing sizes and units, Ms Khamsee took her pupils to the laboratory to work with balances and thermometers. It seemed to me as if Ms Khamsee had not properly planned the lesson and therefore had to be very spontaneous, but she gave the pupils different tasks through which they experienced how one can use weights with different masses to equilibrate the balance. Despite some difficulties, she – presumably not totally conscious of it – gave the pupils the opportunity for experiential learning. From observing what exactly the pupils did I could tell that some groups directly knew that they simply needed to add together the masses of the weights and have the same number on each side. Others tried by putting different weights on the two balance trays until there were equilibrated.
Professionalization as a process – varied teaching needs to be learned
When Ms Khamsee started to introduce the topic temperatures and thermometers, I realized that she was not really sure how to do it. That is why I stepped in to help by instructing her – and she implemented the suggestions directly. Unluckily, the thermometers did not work properly: Each showed another temperature. This caused confusion. Nevertheless, Ms Khamsee and I tried to salvage the situation by letting the pupils compare whether the temperatures of each thermometer had risen by the same number of degrees. This result was satisfactory in this situation; however, for the next class I will have thermometers from Germany ready, assuming that they will be more reliable.
During another lesson I could observe a similar situation. The topic was bases and acids, and Ms Khamsee had prepared a universal indicator and brought some everyday substances, i.e. Pepsi or washing detergent, to show which are basic and which acidic. The basic idea was correct and the motivation was there alright, but the implementation was another matter. Also there were not enough test tube racks and beakers, and then Ms Khamsee ran out of vinegar for the chemical tests.
Everyday substances are bases or acids: That is what the pupils had to find out.
Self-made universal indicator
However, the pupils were engaged for the entire lesson. Each of them had the opportunity to see and do something – to experience the concept in question, which is something seldom seen in a regular science lesson in a Lao classroom.
This showed me that first steps towards a variation of teaching technique had indeed been taken, but that the planning, implementation, and the spectrum of possibilities as well as the laboratory equipment would still need to be improved.
Pupils were very focused during the lesson…
…but also had fun…
…and Ms Khamsee supported them when help was needed.
On the other hand, I also joined Mr Phit during an extra lesson in the afternoon. He invited 10 pupils of grades 3 and 4 and had them make soap. Already in spring, during my first stay at this school, he tried out this experiment, but it did not work. The wrong ingredients were used and there was not exactly a plan of how to conduct the experiement. As it seems, he was dissatisfied with this fact and searched for a solution during the rainy season break. Finally, he had found one, planned the lesson again, prepared all materials and the laboratory in advance and had a splendid lesson.
Mr Phit’s example shows that professionalization is a process which needs time, trial and error, and a lot of patience. Even if one fails once or twice or just takes baby steps, keeping on trying is essential – and all that counts in the end.
This is what one needs to make soap: 100g vegetable oil, 15 g soda, 30 g tap water, and some perfume…
…add everything together in precise amounts…
…stir for 20 minutes…
…fill the mixture in little containers and let it dry for 2 months.
Text & photos by V. Golla
Global Handwashing Day 2017
Global Handwashing Day in Laos
Washing hands is a privilege that should be accessible for everyone. But not everywhere is it normal to wash your hands with soap or even at all. To counteract this hygienic problem the Global Handwashing Day (GHD) was created. The first time it was celebrated was in 2008. Since then it has been an annual reason for big festivities on the 15th of October and this is celebrated by more than 200.000.000 people in over 100 countries.
The campaign was founded by different national and international oganizations, like UNICEF, Unilever, the World Bank Water & Sanitation Program, and the United States Agency for International Development, in order to raise awareness about hand hygiene and the fact that a simple action like washing hands with soap can decrease diseases and even child mortality.
Global Handwashing Day is designed to
- foster and support a global and local culture of handwashing with soap,
- shine a spotlight on the state of handwashing around the world,
- raise awareness about the benefits of handwashing with soap.
Especially in Laos, it is of great importance to turn this into a daily habit as sticky rice is the staple food, which is eaten with hands, as are many other dishes. Many schools in Laos are already joining the campaign and celebrate Global Handwashing Day once a year. The first school in Naxaythong District to join was Ban Sikeud Primary School, supported by AfC. 16 different schools followed its example.
Celebrations in Ban Sikeud Primary School
On October the 13th, 2017, all headmasters of the schools in Naxaythong district were invited to Ban Sikeud to celebrate the event. We, the volunteers of Team V, followed Madame Engel’s invitation and also joined the festivities. Already the day before, a pavilion in the schoolyard was set up and many pupils practised for their performances during Activity Time and in their free time in school. With drinks and sweet snacks the guests’ well-being was to be taken care of.
There were cameras everywhere as about four photographers and also the Lao National Television came. The beginning of the festivities was planned for 8 a.m., but in the end we started at 9 a.m. as the special guests took their time to arrive. One by one, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education and Sports, Madame Kanthaly Silipoungpang , the district Minister of Education, Mr Keo Sanvilay, and our new German Ambassador, His Excellency Mr Jens Lütkenherm, arrived. While waiting for them, the pupils already presented some of their dancing and hula hoop choreographies. After sitting there waiting for over one hour, due to the oppressive heat under the pavilion some of the secondary school teachers were asked to bring huge fans to cool us off. Installing the fans took some time and distracted us from the performance – however, with the cool air it was much more pleasurable afterwards. When finally everything was set up and everyone had arrived safely, the distinguished guests started their speeches about the importance of Global Handwashing Day. As the speeches of the ministers were in Lao, we could not understand much, but even for us it was clear how mind changing this day was for the schools in Laos.
Official poster with sponsors and cooperation partners
Pupils perfoming hula hoop choreography
Special guests: the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education and Sports, Madame Kanthaly Silipoungpang, the German Ambassador Jens Lütkenherm, and the district’s Minister of Education Keo Sanvilay
Next the German Ambassador took his place at the front and started his oration in English. The microphone was adjusted too low by this time (it had been set too high for the first two speeches) and because of the brevity of the speech it was not possible to set it higher. Nevertheless we understood the main points of his speech. He sees handwashing as a benefit for everyone and is happy to join this special day. He knows that the project is only possible with the support of many people and institutions like Child Fund Laos, the German Cooperation GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit), and the Ministry of Education and Sport in Laos. Giving access to sanitation is important, and water, health, and education are intensively linked. He ended his speech with this message about enhancing people’s awareness of the subject: “Let’s all work together to make every day a Global Handwashing Day.”
Washing hands and brushing teeth
After the speeches all the headmasters and Madame Engel were asked to come to the front in small groups to be given certificates. This was accompanied by the sounds of cameras clicking as suddenly all photographers jumped to the front and took pictures. When every headmaster received a golden frame with an important sheet of paper in it, everyone suddenly stood up. The pupils of Ban Sikeud Primary School lined up and in rows of two they went from their classrooms to the water pipes, which are installed in the school yard. They washed their hands with water and soap and also brushed their teeth like they do every day in school. As this ritual happens every morning at 10 o’clock during break time, the children are already used to it and have a certain routine, but this time it was different. The Ministers, the Ambassador, and all other guests stood by and watched, and the photographers as well as the Lao teachers took pictures of them as if they were popular celebrities. The situation was intent because the schoolyard was full of people chatting and taking pictures and walking around. There was even a drone flying above the whole action to record it.
Headmasters and Madame Engel with their certificates
Lao press and Lao National Television
Pupils wash their hands
Global Handwashing Day (GHD) sponsored a very long banner with this year’s motto “Our hands, our future”, on which everyone could place a coloured handprint. As everyone dipped their hands into liquid paint in orange, blue, and green, they had to wash their hands afterwards as a symbolic gesture for Global Handwashing Day.
Banner with handprints
Guests make handprints
This year’s motto: Our hands, our future.
Special guests wash their hands
The festivities were closed with a play by the pupils. The play was in Lao but from the acting we understood that it was about washing hands before meals. In the end, a man from Child Fund Laos came to the front and all children were given little presents like candy, drinks, soap, and toothbrushes. Music was played and they all danced together.
Pupils, teachers, guests
Hands up for Global Handwashing Day
Text by V. Golla and L. Malchow
Photos by V. Golla
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