If Thais teach their children this way.....omg! Thai vs foreign teaching models

[connda]

I'm self-taught as far as the Thai language goes, but I decided to go to a Thai language school here in Chiang Mai in order to fill in the gaps in my speaking skills and listening skills. And I started at Level 1.

What I've noticed in the classes that I've taken is that every teacher teaches the same way. It's very linear and one-dimensional. In the first preliminary classes that approach worked well enough. Basically their approach is to literally follow the book exactly as written, perhaps supplementing words and phrases with similar words and phrases not presented in the book. At this stage it was all rote learning. Gaa gai. Kaa kai. Really nothing wrong with rote repetition when you're trying to grasp the basic sounds and practice them.

But as we moved to higher levels, you'd think that the rote repetition and following the written course material verbatim would change to an emphasis of putting students in groups to develop and practice words and sentence structure, and to use other activities to reinforces what is taught. But here is the structure:

1. vocabulary: teacher says word, class repeats; teach says word, class repeats until all words have been spoken.

1a. vocabulary: teacher has entire class repeat all the word together

2. sentence structure: teacher explains sentence structure example out of the book and translates

2a. sentence structure: teacher writes sentences on the board changing some of the nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives; prepositions to give a few examples.

2b. sentence structure: teacher has students write a sentence using the example sentence structure. Each student then says their sentence and is corrected as necessary until all students have said their sentences.

3. Example sentences: teacher says and translates example sentences verbatim. Student repeat verbatim.

4 Example conversations: teacher says and translates example conversations verbatim. Student repeat verbatim. Students pair with partner with one student being "A" and the other being "B". Complete the conversation and switch roles. teacher than has each pair of student say their conversation once.

5. Send class home to do homework.

next class

6. Correct homework and say sentences. Teacher corrects

7. Listen exercise where you look at pictures or lists of sentences. Teacher says story. Students write in fill-in-the-blank (a,b,c,d) to put things in order. Teacher corrects.

8. Any questions?

Next chapter: Wash, rinse, and repeat.

I'm bored out of my ever loving mind. I've hung in there for a number of months now, hoping beyond hope that something would change, that there would be at least one dynamic instructor who teaches outside the box. No such luck.

I believe all of the instructors have degrees from Thai universities in Education. If this is how Thai school children are taught, ouch!

Any individual in this forum who has even a rudimentary background in teaching, if you have taken a 80 or 120 hour TESOL course at the worst company offering that course, you're light-years ahead of what is being used in the Thai language school I am at (well, not much longer -- my mind is numb and I don't think I can go back. I drive a 120 km round trip to go to this school, and its no longer worth wasting the gas money).

I'm really disappointed. It seems like the 'rote teaching methodology' is completely embraced and perpetuated. One of the puu-yai should go take the CELTA course just to get an idea of what teaching techniques are at the disposal of educators, because imho they don't teach 'how to teach' in Thai university.

Amazing Thailand. Back to self-study.

[IMA_FARANG]

I understand what you are saying but you must realize a good student will learn in spite of the teacher.

Poor students won't learn anyhow.

To paraphrase: you can take a good student to the river of knowledge and he or she will soon enough start to drink.

Others won't drink even if you throw them into the Lake.

Edited May 11, 2015 by IMA_FARANG

[connda]

I understand what you are saying but you must realize a good student will learn in spite of the teacher.

Poor students won't learn anyhow.

To paraphrase: you can take a good student to the river of knowledge and he or she will soon enough start to drink.

Others won't drink even if you throw them into the Lake.

That's true, but even average students can be inspired to rise above mediocrity. And get enough students to innovate, and the system changes. But here, the intelligent students flee in order to find a place to excel, and the rest remain behind to game the system.

For myself? I don't 'need' a formal teacher at all. But it would be convenient to have one though, and one who was capable of teaching outside of the boundaries of, what seems to me to be, self-perpetuating Thai institutionalized educational mediocrity. So my guess is, those who remain behind aren't the sharpest tacks in the box. But they will rise to the highest level of their own incompetence. The Peter Principle 101. Nothing like clones grovelling for status and prestige at the footsteps of an archaic, nationalistic patronage system.

[gerryBScot]

Connda thanks for sharing your experience. I believe you've hit the nail on the head. Now you can see why the level of English is so poor. One of the issues in language learning is that your experience of learning your own language has huge impact on any other language learning you do in your life. From the perspective of a Thai student the methodology you describe is probably not too problematic as they are immersed in the language so I am sure that what they learn has much relevance to their day to day lives. However if you take the same approach to teaching English then no surprise that it doesn't work and no surprise that your toiling the other way round. The obsession with learning vocabulary especially outside of any sort of use or context is truly bewildering. I did some training for my Thai teacher colleagues and I decided to do a 'dictionary' exercise - I am known in school as generally being against using dictionaries except in specific circumstances. I really want students to learn how to use context and graphics to try to work out what a word means. So I gave my colleagues a print out of the Apple dictionary definition of the word 'deliver'; it provides six distinct definitions and one idiomatic use. I think they now understand why in many instances it is pointless teaching vocabulary without context.

Many years ago I did a night school course in Thai language in London at the School of Oriental & African Studies - the teacher was an American post graduate student who was an oriental language specialist as well as being a great guy. When he was replaced by a 'Thai' Thai teacher the following year, who set about the task just as you have described it, most of us dropped out due to exactly the same reasons as you.

The point about good students learning regardless of the teaching is an irrelevancy. Good teachers want everyone to learn and understand that everyone in fact can learn and can improve their learning. Good teachers also want to inculcate in their cares the notion of life-long learning and understand that at the best of times learning is patchy and uneven and is often characterised by periods of confusion and doubt. No real surprises there - the burgeoning field of neuroscience has already shown that 'learning' actually changes the brain's structure.

Wake up Thailand and get with the programme!

[dragonfly94]

Schools are redundant it's all on you tube!

[timmyp]

However ineffective you think the class might be, I'm pretty sure it's better than you learning on your own, unless you really know how to study a language that isn't related to your native language.

I have seen loads of people in Japan and Thailand who took the self-study route, and their language level is a joke. There are exceptions, but those who are successful through self-study are people really know what they are doing when it comes to language learning. If you're not one of those people, I highly recommend you go to school, even if you think the methodology isn't effective.

There are other schools in Chiang Mai if you don't like the approach of your current school. I find AUA in Chiang Mai to be effective (note that it is totally different from AUA in Bangkok and elsewhere).

It's nice when the beginning level can be fun, but really, language learning in the beginning is just a bunch of memorization and drilling. That's just the not-so-exciting hump you have to get over before you can start expressing yourself.

[peterkroll]

This is how in Thailand language teaching is done ... and in China, Vietnam and anywhere in Asia. Only in Singapore things did start to change.