by I gave my first proper English lesson last night. This is so satisfying, dammit. I can see myself doing this for a while.
Last night I brought along maps of the world, Burma, New Zealand and the UK. On the map of New Zealand I pointed out the North and South Islands. My student said “what?” and seemed to be pointing at the stretch of water between the two islands. “That’s called Cook Strait.” He looked blank. I wrote down the name. Still blank. I then circled Mount Cook and wrote the name again in large letters. “See that word Cook again? See how it’s the same word? It’s also the same word as what you do when you make dinner. See?” He was well beyond blank at this point. What the hell’s he going on about now? He’s just lurched from travel to food. What’s next? Motoring?
It’s fair to say I didn’t make a great start, but before long we were, um, cooking with gas. He told me about his region on the west coast of Burma called Rakhine, the farmers who work in the rice fields and the fishing boats. Sometimes he was hard to understand: his farmer came out as pama. It seems that both Burmese and his local dialect lack the fricatives f and v. We talked about dates and birthdays: he had no problem with numbers. I encouraged him to say the th sound (his native language has that) in words like fourth and tenth; I wasn’t going to let him get away with saying four and ten. I also tried to emphasise the importance of saying the s on the end of plurals like shoes. Apart from that we really just had a chat, and I think we all enjoyed that. His wife’s English is a little better than his and at times she would step in and interpret for him. At the end I showed him some pictures giving him suggestions for topics to talk about next time, and asked him to pick two. He picked sport (he likes football in particular) and the doctor.
This living situation is still hard – I feel constant pressure – but the relatively short timeframe and the things I enjoy such as marimba, and now the English teaching, are keeping me going.
