Behind the Blog – Tales of a TEFL Teacher

Kids in class

My ‘reader’ recently emailed me, but what is it really like there? Behind the pictures and tourist trips, what is happening to you? In the two months since I left the UK there has been interest, fun, perils and pitfalls. Life has settled in to ‘living here’ and as there are no literal hills to climb, I figure I’ll just have to write about the metaphorical ones.

I’m no longer a tourist. I’m working, teaching English. Language schools appear on nearly every street corner. It would appear everyone wants to learn. If they don’t learn in school, they learn after school.

Before I came I had thoughts of delightful days teaching totally engaged kids in said language schools. But, for better or worse, my CV shows I am an ‘experienced’ teacher and so can teach here in the state schools and colleges.

Typical primary school

If nothing else it is interesting. There are all the issues of English schools – in Vietnamese!

“Just speak to them”. I was told. They don’t need to learn grammar, we can teach that. And true. These kids know their grammar. Their notebooks are full of it. Pages and pages of sentences written in immaculate handwriting. Verbs conjugated and prepositions inserted.

Wow, I thought, their only 11… how easy will this be.

I read a bit, from their book. Blank faces. With the help of my heaven sent class room assistant, they read a bit. Pronunciation not too bad. Questions. To them, from me, on the text. Blank.

Teenagers ride motor bikes to school

The penny was dropping. This is why they want the unsuspecting ‘native speaker’. Most of the kids can write the lines and read the words, identify the subject, object and verb – but don’t understand a word.

So speak we do. It can be a haphazard affair. Just like in England school kids don’t always want to be there, but somehow, in a haze of chalk, I muddle through. With the help of games, music and the internet, if I’m lucky, a few sentences are strung together and minor conversations made. By the time we get to ‘goodbye teacher’, there has been a little learning and a lot of laughter.

And Language Schools. I teach there too. Evening classes of young people or adults, wanting to further their already ‘good’ English skills. But at weekends there is an unspoken initiation route. You have to work your way up. Up the ages. Through classes of Kindy Kids. I dance through my weekend mornings to ‘The Wheels on the Bus go Round and Round’, play Simon Says, Follow My Leader and What Time is it Mr Wolf? What amazes me is these kids learn. They learn fast. After only a few weekends they know colours, numbers, parts of their body. Their clear, young brains absorbing everything that comes their way. I am in awe. So quickly their English outstrips my feeble attempts to learn Vietnamese.

And so, dear reader, this is what it is like ‘behind the blog’, on most days. Thank you for reading.