Teaching Inappropriate English Words.

[MartinL]

I'm not a teacher but my wife is, although not a teacher of English.

She's been assisting at an English camp this past week.

The schools from which the kids come are Isaan village schools and do not have a NES teacher. In fact, some of them don't even have a remotely competent Thai teacher of English.

Lunchtime today, she came home and said the English teacher (Thai) had been teaching the kids - from P3 to P5 - the names of body parts and that she'd learnt a new word today - ARSE.

I asked her to go back to the camp & tell the teacher that it wasn't really a suitable word to be teaching to kids of that age and with extremely low levels of English knowledge, which she did. The teacher told my wife that she wanted the kids to be aware that there was more than one word for the more usual "bottom". Fair enough for those learners with much greater English skills but not for absolute beginner P3 - P5 kids.

I know it's only one word so am I being over-sensitive here? Come on, teachers out there, tell me what you think.

Edited May 6, 2014 by MartinL

[star kicker]

unfortunately there are some unprofessional teachers out there.

personally i would never teach students slang as it is the most difficult vocabulary of any language to use correctly and it is very easy to offend/appear ignorant with incorrect use.

if slang were to be taught i would say you would teach in a proficiency/fluency level adult class.

i would complain to the head master/director if my child was being taught slang at school or english camp.

[simon43]

...and that she'd learnt a new word today - ARSE.

You mean as in:

'Please Sir, can I arse a question?'

or

'I can never pronounce my letter arse correctly'

or even

'Those books are arse'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz2-ukrd2VQ

[MartinL]

No, a bit more like this:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcKyWIie3Oc

[schondie]

I have taught some great slang to my former M6 English Program students but "arse" to Prathom students is a no no.

Probably the worst word I have ever taught to Prathom 1 student was "retard / retarded" when one girl used the Thai word to describe her best friend on many occasions in jest.

I saw no problem with this as they kept it to themselves, I knew they would as they excelled at English, as an in-joke and refused to explain the meaning to their class mates.

My first teaching job for an English owned agency and teaching parts of the body (P6) didn't go down too well with the owner when I touched my backside and used "bum". He wanted me to use some antiquated word such as "posterior" in future lessons. What sort of language is that? Victorian?

[attrayant]

Did your wife hear it first hand or from one of the kids? If second-hand, it's possible that the kids already knew the word and one of them said it during a lesson, essentially teaching it to the whole class. The next thing you know the kids run home and tell the parents they learned a new word (gasp) and the teacher is automatically assigned fault. At that age, many kids know quite a few of our naughty words. There is a six-year old in my neighborhood who knows most of them.

These kinds of words should not be on the teacher's lesson plan, however it's possible (even likely) they might come up in discussion and the teacher should be prepared to handle it. This happens to be sometimes with the word "clock" because we know how the letter L is anathema to Thai children. So after hearing "clock" minus the L several times, I stop the lesson and correct their pronunciation and caution them about saying "cock" because it has several meanings, one of which is impolite. That's the end of that and I resume the lesson.

I'm sure that as soon as I walk out of the room, all the smartphone dictionaries come out and the kids teach themselves what I wasn't willing to.

On a related note, I snapped this picture of a notebook from a young girl I used to tutor. I would usually flip through her notebook to see what she was doing in class, and work off of that. One day I saw this:

I was relieved to see a short list of farm animals on the preceding page. But it was a funny coincidence that those two animals happened to come up in the lesson right next to each other.

Edited May 9, 2014 by attrayant

[somchaismith]

^ That's only all in your mind.

[jmccarty]

god forbid they learn to speak like a falang!

[TheDJMecanic]

I was teaching Mathyom kids about a year and the lesson plan was chores around the house and when I tried to get them to say "Vacuum" it came out <deleted> you how ever hard I tried much to their amusement they couldn't say it.

[Neeranam]

I taught my kids the word 'arse' . Not inappropriate at all.

I said it today to my 11 year old - " get off your arse and do the dishes"

Edited May 13, 2014 by Neeranam