'Twas the Week Before Christmas

I had a few days to sit around bored after Nancy headed back to the US to be with her dad, who is in the final stages of cancer, and then the Christmas parties began. From 15 December through Christmas Day, I think I will have averaged one party a day. (Fortunately, I've only been attending them, not planning them.) I've been decorated as a Christmas present by a group of students, sat cross-legged on a mat listening to teammates tell the Christmas story, and been a guest of high government officials. This afternoon when I got together with the VTF team, I remembered that we were feeling a little frustrated in October that student relationships seemed to be developing so slowly. It's been encouraging to see how that's changed.

Lately we've been conducting finals and finishing our freshman classes. My freshmen this semester are the minority kids who are here as kind of an affirmative action group -- "positive discrimination" is the official term. Their English is about at the high beginner level so it's pretty overwhelming for them to have a teacher who speaks to them mostly in English.

Two weeks ago, we gave the freshmen 10 conversation topics. On 9 January, they'll come to class and randomly choose one for their final exam. They'll be expected to talk about it in English for 3 minutes and answer questions for 2.

They're pretty worried about it, as you might be if 60% of your course grade was based on 5 minutes. To get them ready, I've been pushing the "G.L.U.E." approach: Get what you need; Learn what you get; Use what you learn; Evaluate it. Friday was "G" day for the topic, "Describe a typical Vietnamese house." After going over some vocabulary from the book and getting some practice in class, we took the 5-minute walk over to my house for their "lab." I had them stand in the rooms and describe the room and its furnishings to their partner. If they used Vietnamese, they were exiled to the entryway for one minute. I think there were only 3 exiles, including me!

It was a lot of fun for all of us and, hopefully, helpful for those who will get that topic on their exam. An added benefit is that they now know where I live. We'd like to get more students to visit, but it's hard to break that ice because they're not used to that kind of access to their teachers.

Hope your Christmas is (or was) merry and blessed.