Trung, Nhi and Y

Yesterday was a relatively uneventful day, however I did reconnect with Rob, who had hosted the benefit we both had put together in June for the English-language students in Siagon. I met him and a couple of his friends at Bill's Hideaway Lounge in Dallas for a couple of drinks while we sat and watched a cabaret show. I was asked if I would perform a half-hour cabaret set next monday, which I was happy to agree to.  It's a cute space and they have a baby-grand piano. Now I have to come up with something! Anyway, I promised Rob that I would finish posting Nigel Veal's descriptions of all the folks that are being schooled in Siagon as a direct result of this benefit and the generosity of his friends. So here are the final three:

• "Trung. Email has now become an important extension of my teaching at intermediate and advanced level. Over the past few months I have built up a large collection of grammar and reading comprehension exercises. Students also sometimes send me their written work to correct by email. One example is Trung, whom you [Eddie] know well. Although I see him in the park most evenings, it was difficult to find a suitable time and place to give Trung private tuition. Then I discovered that he spends a lot of time during the day logged onto his computer so I asked him if he would like to receive email exercises pitched at his level (which is pre-advanced). He jumped at the opportunity. The first exercise that I sent him was completed and returned withing 5 min. I correct it and sent him a 2nd exercise which was, again, returned immediately. We now exchange emails several times a week. On the rare occasion that he doesn't understand something, he can ask me in the park. I'll also try to find a suitable weekly time slot to give him one-on-one conversational practice. ..........................................................................
• "Nhi is the other student you know who now receives regular private tuition from me. Initially she started to study with Vinh on Saturday evenings but it wasn't ideal because Vinh tended to monopolize the conversation and with Nhi's limited vocabulary, she had difficulty following. So now I teach Vinh on Saturdays and Nhi on Sunday. She comes to my hotel where we study in a quiet corner of the reception area. Nhi is keen (almost impatient) to learn. She realizes that proficiency in English is the key to obtaining a decent job in this city. After studying for an hour or so at my hotel, we go to drink fruit shakes and then relocate to the park for conversational practice and gentle exercise. Usually we complete a walk of 6 or 7 circuits around the perimeter. I am a firm believer in the peripatetic method of teaching prescribed by Aristotle, and Nhi certainly seems to learn a lot this way. Walking also seems to deter other people from joining or interrupting us. ..........................................................................
• "Y (a one-letter name pronounced like a long E) is the new night-time receptionist at my hotel and she has become my late-night student. That is to say, I teach her for an hour around midnight practically every night before I go to bed. Her level is intermediate buy she is trying hard to expand her vocabulary and improve her speaking skills. On her first day in the job, with no suitable books to hand and a long night of boredom ahead, she was pouring over a travel brochure and jotting down the words she didn't understand. She asked me to explain these words, half of which were misprints. As an alternative to the badly-translated brochure, I produced my Vocabulary in Practice text and a story book. Now, every night we do one vocabulary exercise and read one story. I also test her on her new vocabulary from the previous day. Y's nocturnal boredom is temporarily banished, and for me it's quite a pleasant way to end the day."

-- Nigel Veal

Vinh, Phuc and Tuyen

I finally rented my apartment!! Yay!!! I have a tenant for 12 months. Now I have much more freedom to do some more traveling. This weekend I got a last-minute deal to San Juan, Puerto Rico and am leaving tomorrow morning for 4 days with my friend Aileen. Perhaps my next entry will be from the beach! Anyway, here are Nigel's introduction of three more of the English language students from Siagon. --Eddie

• "Vinh, who is 20 years old, is a really likeable young man with high ambitions: he wants nothing less than to speak English like a native speaker. Needless to say,he is a long way from achieving his goal but he works hard and has an impressively large vocabulary. He is tremendously polite and respectful, always addressing me as "Sir" even though I have often invited him to call me Nigel. He first studied with me in Nguyen Du Street. Then, when my class closed, I agreed to teach the family of another student called Anh in their home. As a friend of Anh's, Vinh was invited to join this class although as the only non-family member he felt a little uncomfortable studying in Anh's house with Anh's mother, Anh's aunt, Anh's cousins, etc. He told me that he didn't feel as free to express himself as he had done in the old class. Moreover, whereas Anh's family are well-off, Vinh comes from quite a poor family and he explained that he couldn't really afford the tuition fees. I agreed to teach him for free by sending him email exercises to complete during the week and then meeting up with him every Saturday evening for conversational practice. The arrangement is working well.  Vinh has a love not just of English but of knowledge,which means that I oftenteach him about other subjects like history, geography and science. He remembers everything and often refers back to a fact that I taught him months ago.He has a problem differentiating between certain sounds, notably B's and P's at the beginning of words and -g and -ck at the end of words. His obsessive desire to pronounce every word correctly often leads him suddenly to interrupt me in mid-flow:
  

"Pluck, pluck, pluck. Is it right, sir?" he asks. (He is trying to say "plug".)
"No, you pluck a chicken. You plug in your computer."
"Pluck, pluck, pluck. I pluck in my computer. Is it right, sir? How many percent?"
"No, you must pronounce the g - guh, guh. Plug."
"Pluck, pluck, pluck. What about ploo, ploo?" (He is trying to say "blue") "Is it right, sir? Oh, I am feeling very ploo today." ..............................................................................

• "Phuc is an advanced-level student, aged 21. Eddie, you may remember him because he often comes to the park in the evenings but always leaves around 9pm. This is because he lives in a pagoda with four other students and five Buddhist monks. Curfew time is 9.30pm and he must return before the gates are locked. Phuc has few financial transactions in his life. His accommodation and meals are provided free of charge as long as he remains a full-time student and does not undertake anypaid employment. He must also do his share of the domestic chores in the pagoda, including cooking, according to a strict rota. Recently, he discovered that I am sometimes free on week day mornings, so he asked if he could come to my hotel twice a week to study with me. He is preparing for his advanced-level TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) exams and even I find the articles in his course books interesting. He also brings with him each time a list of new words gleaned from his wide reading, the definitions and uses of which he wants to understand more clearly. Teaching at Phuc's level is my forte. It is also enjoyable, not least for the purely selfish reason that it actually stimulates my brain! .........................................................................
  
• "Tuyen is a very gaunt-looking young lady in her early 20's who lives on the other side of Siagon with her mother who has cancer. Her younger sister is studying at University buy Tuyen, it seems, has drawn the short straw, because she must be home to take care of mom 24 hours a day and do the home-based selling job that her mother used to do before she became ill. I teach her almost entirely by email because she lives so far away and has no free time to attend lessons. However, every 4-6 weeks she insists on making a 3-hour bus journey to meet up with me. Between times, I send her email exercises and she sends me her answers for correction. Invariably, a short message is attatched: "You are my good teacher. I admire you, I want to consider you as my friend but I'm afraid you don't agree...The more exercises you send me the more happiness I get." and "You are the kind teacher in my mind. I try my best to study English but sometime I have some problem and i can't find the person who can help me." Tuyen is a sad, lonely girl who is wracked by self-doubt and lack of confidence. She is fearful of the future (especially regarding her mother). She has told me that studying English late at night is the only real pleasure she has in life."

--Nigel Veal

The Maids at Le Trung Hotel, Chi, Greeny, Minh and Chau

As most of you know, when I went to Vietnam last March, I made friends with several Vietnamese English students in Siagon, who would hang out in a park and look to meet foreigners so they could better their English skills. And you know that I met up with an English guy named Nigel Veal that was starting an English language school. When I returned to the States, I organized a benefit in Dallas, in the home of my friends Rob and Steve. Rob gathered all his friends together and we raised $900 to send to Nigel so he could teach 12 young men and women aged 18-29 for about 6 months, at no charge to them. The next few blog entries I will post some of their stories as told by Nigel. Meet the first 6 students:

• "The maids at Le Trung Hotel. Three months ago,an American Vietnamese lady who was staying at my hotel asked me if I would consider giving free English lessons to the two maids who clean the rooms. Neither could speak more than a few words of English and I don't speak Vietnamese so I knew it would be a challenge. Anyway, I agreed and I now teach them just for an hour, three or four times a week, when they(and I) finish work at 9.00 or 9.30pm. Hotel maids work very long hours for little pay, although meals and basic accommodation are provided. The older girl, Loan (pronounced Long)is 26 and has worked here for six years. The other maid (whose name is unpronounceable for me but sounds a little like Nar) is just 18 and joined the staff earlier this year. They come from the same part of the Vietnamese countryside where they have large families with many siblings. Both girls send the larger part of their meager income homeeach month to help support their younger brothers and sisters. We study on the top floor of the hotel where the maids have their quarters. Teaching at elementary level is not my specialty but I have some good books and have devised some simple but effective teaching strategies. We are making steady progress. The goal is modest: to help them acquire a basic knowledge of English which would enable them to communicate with foreigners. This, in turn, might open the door to better job opportunities in the future ..............................................................
  
• "Chi (pronounced Tea) is a shy, kind and caring girl, aged 26,who desperately wants to improve her English. Her level is pre-intermediate. I met her originally in the park and she visited my old class in Nguyen Du Street on several occasions. She works with very young children (2-4 year-olds) in a kindergarten but finishes work at 4pm and comes to my hotel at 4.30pm for an English lesson four times a week.Because the hotel reception area is generally quiet around that time, it is easy to find a suitable place to sit and study. Sometimes she stays until the car from the Korean school comes to collect me. On other days, when it isn't raining, we go to the park to study. My immediate focus is to help her increase her English vocabulary which is currently quite limited.I am therefore teaching her from an excellent series of books called Vocabulary in Practice. Her approach to learning is very methodical. She needs to understand clearly the meaning of each new word before moving on to the next. A few months ago, Chi experienced a personal tragedy when her elder sister, who suffered from a congenital heart defect and learning difficulties, dropped dead suddenly on Vung Tau Beach when the family were on a Sunday outing to the seaside. Chi has told me (though I am of course paraphrasing her words) that she regards learning English as a kind of therapy in helping her come to terms with this traumatic event. .........................................................................
  
• "Greeny, Minh and Chau are 3 advanced students (20-22yo) whom I teach at their home 3 times a week. Greeny and Minh are sister and brother, and Chau is Greeny's friend. Unlike the other students mentioned here, they can afford a modest tuition fee s they study with me at a subsidized rate. They always pick me up at my Hotel by motorcycle. Greeny and Minh live in a ramshackle house in one of the most densely populated districts of the city with practically every inch of the sidewalk taken up by vendors. The congestion inside their house is even worse. 10 people live there, including their parents, 3 aunts and a cousin and her husband and young child. Greeny's father runs a 2nd hand shop with old bicycles of which there are 70 in the house competing with the humans for space. There is no evidence of beds. When it rains, water leaking through the roof is collected in strategically-positioned buckets. Despite this, it is a homely place and the walls are a shrine to Greeny and Minh's academic and sporting achievements. Greeny and Chau are full-time university students, although Chau (who is very pretty) earns a little money from occasional modeling work. Minh graduated last year and now teaches Tae Kwon Do. (Both he and sister are black belts.) All 3 have an extensive vocabulary and knowledge of grammar although Minh in particular struggles with his pronunciation. We study from a wide range of books (mine and theirs). I help them with their TOEFL reading and listening comprehension exercises and correct their written assignments, after which we play competitive word games. Our lessons are always full of noise and fun."
  

-- Nigel Veal, Siagon