Cambodian Teacher’s Diary
Day Three: The Grammar Lesson
The grammar lesson. This is your chance to show them what you know. Not to mention your ability to communicate what you know with more than cut and dried rules, examples on the board, and endless exercises. The objective is a brief explanation that enables them to feel confident in using the target structure correctly.
I’m not very radical in my approach to grammar. I tend to accommodate (to a certain extent) Khmer students’ predilection for a conventional teacher-centred grammar lesson. But I try to keep it short, a ten-minute presentation, and then push them to a more communicative style with some controlled ‘practice’ and then extensive production in speaking. Old school PPP.
I relish the opportunity. Give clear, concise explanations. Dispense with any questions. With that, you’ve won their respect. They should become more receptive to new activities and approaches. They should become less tentative or focused on sizing you up. They should concentrate instead on their own learning.
Today, they are timid. No questions. Typical Khmers. I use the opportunity to exaggerate my self-satisfaction to a ridiculous extent and give them a laugh. So I’ve explained everything perfectly clearly? Wow! I’m good!? Hopefully, this also challenges them to be more active.
Khmer students are often so bashful that the only way you can tell one of them has a question is that he or she is whispering it to an equally confused classmate. There are many methods to check comprehension, but you can never really be sure they all get it unless they’re confident to speak up.
Most are pussycats. But sometimes you get a test. A cocky kid. Or a smart one. For example, I once had a class that was doing second conditionals. I’d taken over from another teacher who had run into serious classroom management problems. The situation had become so unbearable that management just decided to change the teacher.
Within the first fifteen minutes of meeting the class, one student tried to test me – the one I’d been warned about from the original teacher. ”So how many conditionals are there,” he asked. Then he wondered, ”So how are the second and third conditionals different, then?”
Ask me genuine questions? I’ll humbly do my best to assist you. Test me? Forget it. Testing – that’s a challenge. And it’s not to learn something; it’s to demand a show of my competence. If you know the stuff, which isn’t hard at lower levels, then it’s not a bad idea to put on a show of force. To bludgeon them with complexity.
Five minutes wasted talking about the structure and function of the third conditional, invoking terminology and grammar that was way over his head, served to make the point. Thereafter, he was a pussycat.
Terry Avon
