hi,

i am heading to mae sai for 6 months starting in a month. i will be working for a border charity helping burmese kids, and one of the things i will be doing is teaching them english. now, heres the thing......

i speak no thai (will start asap on the basics), and they speak no english.

they dont know the roman alphabet

they range in age from 6-16 and i will be teaching them all at the same time.

!!!

so: any advice on teaching the alphabet/absolute beginners would be great.

and any advice on phrases/language essential to me to learn would also help. i am tefl qualified, but havent actually taught since i did the course....

thanks so much in advance,

dom

You are to be admired for your commitment. I almost did a week or more of that, but it didn't work out.

Try to remember what you learned on your TEFL.

Remember, in teaching the English alphabet, that it has four styles (upper and lower, printed and cursive), and the names of the letters are not the sounds. But to keep it simple, you might start with only lower case block letters.

I would have a huge alphabet running the top of your classroom, or make one out of paper. Teach them the ABC song; they might enjoy that. Try to put a word under each letter that clearly uses that letter, and underline where it is in the word. If they have the same sound in their language (and the Myanmarese have many languages), I would let them write in that word IF they can then pronounce the English word. Not that it would mean the same thing, of course; just that they would both have the same sound.

Of course, the vowels have many sounds, and you might make a separate board for vowel sounds.

Good luck. I wish I could have done my little stint at the border.

Peace Blonde is right – you’ll have to start with the very basics. Use lots of flash cards with big colorful pictures of apples on them etc.

Best of luck.

Total Physical Response. - meaning - you got to put some action in teaching new words/situations/informations for them understand. If you don't know little Thai... TPR helps.

thanks all - i guess a good start would be to be able to spell huh...

"where the hel l do i start?"

As already mentioned, for total beginners of English, Total Physical Response. They don't need to know the alphabet.

http://www.tpr-world.com/ to buy the books and materials

and http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/me...ology/tpr.shtml for a brief explaination of the technique. Get lots of pictures and props.

Go for it!

Post removed by poster.

Peace Blonde is right – you’ll have to start with the very basics. Use lots of flash cards with big colorful pictures of apples on them etc.

Best of luck.

Another observation P.B.

Thai will be useless for these children as they are Burmese and Thai will only confuse them further, being a foriegn language to them.

Communication via physical means as S.B. suggests and imagination with lots of T.L.C.

Also small alphabet a,b,c,d. ect. is a good start as lots of simple words begin with these sounds.

apple, bat ect. with the key word being simple

I was involved with Burmese orphans around Mae sariang and although it,s hard and heart breaking sometimes, it sure is worthwhile and rewarding.

Be wary of the Thai/border police who can sometimes be unpredictable.

Remember, officially, you,ll need a work permit which the charity should have sorted out to prevent potential problems coming into play.

( we had to do it on the quiet because we didn,t have any official documents, which was pretty dumb really )

Good luck and keep us informed of your progress.

marshbags