Photo Exhibition: Hoi An

Several months ago, during our Teacher's Away Day trip with our school, we went to Danang, during which we got to visit the ancient town of Hội An, about 28 km away. Proclaimed a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999, Hội An is one of the must-see places on any traveler's itinerary in Vietnam. I already had a chance to visit the ancient town when I visited Vietnam for the first time with my family in 2007, but this second time, I was surprised to see how much revamping had gone into it since. The bridges at the entrance of the town had got renovated, albeit in a somewhat flashy-touristy fashion, and all the old houses in the village seemed like they received a complete round of maintenance work done on them. But as expected, the whole town was packed with tourists, both mainland and internationals, and perhaps a lot more than I remembered during my last trip.

 

Hội An has a rich history which dates as far back as the 2nd century BC, where it was an important trading port for the indigenous Sa Huynh people. The port once again rose to prominence during the 15th century, where it was the most important trade post for the powerful Champa Kingdom (with its capital as Indrapura, close to modern-day Danang); and it flourished as the central port of mercantile and cultural exchange for all of Southeast Asia from the 16th to 18th century, where the Japanese, Chinese, Dutch and Indian converged, and many settled. Thus, there are a lot of foreign influences in the architecture of the town, which has remained relatively intact since the 18th and 19th century, and is the only town in Vietnam to have preserved its traditional architecture and ambiance. The rise and eminence of other trading ports such as Danang, as well as some natural geological changes on the river that feeds Hội An, led to the eventual retirement of the town as the region's trading and cultural powerhouse, but to an amazingly preserved heritage site complete with old-world character and charm.

Here are some photos that I took during my recent trip.

When the unthinkable happens...

Yes, the "what if..." situation of two cars heading towards each other in alleyway traffic does happen... So what do you do in this sticky situation? The only thing that can be done, of course! One car (and admirably, Vietnamese drivers do not go so much in the way of bickering with each other about who should be the one to back up) reverse-drives all the way until the alleyway widens large enough for two cars to pass by, or into another alleyway...

Running dictation!

A spinoff of the normal dictation exercise is to have the text printed out and posted outside the classroom on a wall. Teams consist of one writer and one or two runners. The runners must run outside and try to remember as much of the text as possible, and go back to their stationary writers, and try to dictate from memory as much of the text as possible. Teams repeat this sequence until the writer writes down the whole text verbatim.

A very simple and easy-to-prepare activity, yet a very enriching experience, providing practice in speaking, listening, communicative skills, problem-solving and team-working.

What I like to do is to add a component at the end of the dictations where students have to utilize the texts they've reconstructed to try to solve a problem. In this class for teenagers, the lesson was about animal parts as well as different usages of animals by humans. I had prepared a few different texts describing an animal, along with its characteristics, and its job. After reconstructing all of the texts, each team had to match the animal to the correct picture from a collage projected on the screen. The first team to have all of the correct matches wins!

My "beeped" experience in Vietnam

For a high-level fully-integrative classroom activity, I often like to do "beeped" dictations. I dictate a text while students try to write down everything I say; but in the "beeped" version, I leave out certain words and say "beep" in replacement, where students are instructed to draw a line in the place of the word, and at the end they must try to figure out what those blanked words were. This activity is superb because it engages and synthesizes many different language skills: listening, writing, analytical, grammar. And if it's a group format, they must collaborate in teams, communicate in English, and do a lot of problem-solving.

For the last class of one of my pre-intermediate adult classes, I decided to use this activity as a final skills-consolidation activity and also as an opportunity for me to share my experience living in Saigon as a way to say goodbye to this class which I was really fond of.

In groups of 3, five teams in the class listened to me dictate a small story broken down into four separate parts. Each part was read three times each, with small breaks in between where students had to share their notes and collaborate with each other in order to reconstruct as much of my dictated text as possible. At the end of the whole dictation, they are given ample time to put their heads together and try to deduce the missing words. The missing words could be grammar words (testing their knowledge of the different verb tenses they had learned) or vocabulary words.

At the end, a member from each team is invited to the board to write down their final words which their team had agreed must be the missing 23 words from the dictation. Then, we go through the whole dictation together on the projected screen, and as a class, we take up the missing words one by one while also addressing the validity of the students' guessed words and why they could or couldn't be correct. The team that has the most correct words wins!

In sum, this is a perfect wholly-integrative exercise which greatly challenges students and allows them to utilize their language skills through independent thinking as well as team-working. It is also very rewarding at the end when teams exclaim in pride at their successful words and have fun with the competitive spirit.

Goodbye class photo: ICP3-D1305J

Goodbye to another pre-intermediate adult class! I really loved the vibe of this whole class! Studious, intelligent, enthusiastic and cheerful! This group was great because they exhibited two great characteristics that blend together to create the ideal student body: inquisitive and expressive. The students in this class were very interested in the lessons and in learning, as well as took learning into their own hands. They posed questions for matters they sought a deeper understanding for; they embraced and exercised the lessons and concepts that were presented to them; they were not afraid to express their thoughts, perplexities and opinions; they delved into communicating in English in a fearless and capitalistic way. What great students! I will miss this group dearly! And I know they will go very far with their English language-learning as well as other educational endeavours!

Goodbye class photo: ICP1-D1307E

Goodbye to this convivial pre-intermediate adult class! Consisting mostly of teenagers, this group was always fun and jolly and loved to interact with the teacher. This meant that at the beginning of each class, when I would go about my routine of assigning students in pairs to discuss a topic question, the students would chant along with me "you two, and you two, and you two, and you two..." as I went around the class putting students in pairs. Soon I got embarrassed of the fact that their chanting along with me made me feel like a predictable systematic teacher, so with the subsequent classes, I would try to change the phrasing of this segment. "You two together, and you two together.. and you two together.", or "One and two, one and two, one and two," or "Both of you, both of you, both of you..." were amongst the permutations I had to come up with in order to evade the class copying me... With each new permutation, the class would giggle.

The student who stood out to me the most was Mr. Ha, a married journalist with a child. Always in good humor, his participation and dedication in class always motivated me as a teacher and reminded me that all of my efforts were always worth it.