addendum to teaching English at Dipangkorn (so far)

The word list for the Dictionary Contest was as follows:

skipper, gobble, shatter, bunker, gravel, retrieve, anchor, foliage, viand, raven, mellow, wonky, effort, differ, outgrow, pucker, illusion, assure, horrid, daunt, nail, unbend, rustic, organ, coup0le, wangle, pensive, lush, berth, firm, rake, wale, magnate, climate, pander.


Also, I just came from a very interesting presentation by an organization called We Love English 2010. I'm not sure whether they were selling anything (curriculum?). It was a very polished, and well-received, attention-grabber. The auditorium was packed with students: all of levels 4 to 6 (soph to senior) and the top sections of levels 1 to 3 (grade 7 to 9). Even though I was probably the most proficient speaker of English in the room, I was by no means the best at answering the questions. Action-packed games, with prizes, included rapid-fire math problems--in English, about as fast as I could have pronounced the words: forty plus fourteen multiply by six divide by three divide by eight and multiply by seven. Many hands were in the air as soon as the speaker was done, and usually with the right answer. If not, the MC dismissed the wrong answer with a flourish, and swept on to the next eager contestant. Then grammar questions--fill in the blank and explain the part of speech. Then knowledge-testing: what color is the rose associated with AIDS day? (yellow), with what royal animal was Prince William recently shown? (horse), what was the major factor in Michael Jackson's death (overdose), who is the current minister of Foreign Affairs of the United States? (Hillary Clinton), what was the name of the hamster-fortuneteller in the recent World Cup? (Paula), what was the major site of confrontation between the Red Shirt protesters and the army? (??? couldn't understand the answer) The whole room was at fever-pitch, with deafening noise and kids straining to raise their hands more visibly than their neighbors, though they maintained their general grid pattern, sitting on the floor. And then the MC shifted to his finale--a dirty-dancing contest among student-volunteers. Three boys and about 20 girls came forth, MC-eliminated to a group of three girls. They never disrupted their school uniforms, but it was very clear that there were very sexy and nubile young bodies in there--I was blushing. Jiaranai grinned at me, said "not in America, eh?" Not in a million years.

So that's the way English is taught in Thailand, and it's clear some of the students have absorbed a lot.