Should I teach in Cambodia? - A year in the Khmerde part 1

Living and working in Cambodia certainly has its pros and cons. When I announced that I was upping sticks to teach English in Siem Reap for (at least) six months, my friends' reactions fell into three main camps. "Cool, Angkor Wat!", "Oh my God be careful, you will have to live on dog meat, snakes and beetles", and "Where exactly is Cambodia again?". So was it a ridiculous decision (especially given that I'd never set foot in Cambodia before) or the beginning of something great? Here are my reflections after completing the first three months.

A stone's throw away

The main deterrent to living in Cambodia is the developingness of the country and all the problems that come with it. Things we take for granted back home, such as reliable power and water supply, waste collection, public transport, and healthcare, are either sketchy or non-existent. The water (for those connected to the city water supply - not all houses are) will often run out for hours at a time, especially during dry season. Power cuts are frequent. Waste collection is sporadic and it's a common sight to see families burn their garbage in piles along the river. The only waste you can reliably get collected is metal; locals will trudge the residential streets with a hand cart picking up tin cans and scrap metal to sell for recycling. Cambodia has no public buses, trams or trains and the roads are badly maintained. You can generally get anywhere you need to go in town by simply finding a willing motorbike driver or tuk tuk, but you will generally pay however much they think they can get away with, and they all mysteriously disappear at the first sign of rain. Private bus companies run regular buses for longer distances, but the dilapidated roads and the recklessness of the drivers mean they're not for the faint-hearted. The most serious concern is the lack of quality healthcare. Going to hospital here is not recommended. Fortunately there's a reputable pharmacy where you can buy most medicines without a prescription, but for anything that's not self-diagnosable or self-treatable, the consensus is be careful and hope for the best...

Then there's the climate. Cambodia, like the rest of South-East Asia, benefits/suffers* from a tropical monsoon climate (*delete according to preference). During the dry season, the sun is relentless, and fair skin will burn quickly even on the 'coldest' day. The dust is equally relentless, and it will stick to your feet, get in your eyes, make its way into your lungs, and magically coat every surface in your house each day even if you keep the windows closed. Temperatures peak just before the start of the rainy season. As I write this, the rainy season just broke yesterday. The temperature prior to that peaked at around 37°C. The rain brought a welcome relief from the heat and dust, but it also brought an awful lot of rain. The sky went black, the heavens opened, thunder and lightning rolled around the sky, lampposts fell, the dust turned to mud, and small roads flooded. The tuk tuks disappeared, and the only people around were motorcyclists shrouded in plastic ponchos driving at speed through foot-deep puddles. On the first day of the rainy season. This doesn't bode well. The tropical climate also means mosquitoes, which are probably the single worst thing for reasons I don't need to explain.

Then, there's the food issue. Do you have to eat dog in Cambodia? If you stay on the beaten track, no. In Siem Reap you can eat pretty much any cuisine you feel like. Pizza and pasta are readily available, as are cheese and pickle sandwiches, fish and chips, burgers, tacos, and chicken korma. If you do your grocery shopping in Lucky Mall or Angkor Market, you can get most any Western comfort food, although fancy items such as breakfast cereals and cheese will set you back several dollars a pop. At the time of writing I have yet to find a box of muesli that costs less than $6, but old habits die hard and I can't stop buying it. Those on a lower budget are best avoiding the supermarkets and heading into the local markets where you can pick up vast quantities of fresh fruit and vegetables for very little money at all. However, the local markets are not for the squeamish. It's normal to have to pick your way through the pungent rivulets of God-knows-what that runs off from the stalls where the sellers squat with bare feet on the same surface as the unrefrigerated, fly-covered meat and fish which I have not plucked up the courage to even think about buying.

Off the beaten track, it may be wise not to question what you are eating. Firstly because you might not like the answer, and secondly because the locals might find it hilarious to lie to you so that you will eat it, and then tell you the truth after. A friend of mine who was volunteer-teaching in one of the villages was invited to eat with some locals. After eating a good quantity of what he described as the most delicious stew he had ever eaten, he asked his host what the meat was. The man put his hand into the stew, fished around for a while, and pulled out the recognisable skull of a dog, hairless, but still complete with skin, ears, and eyeballs. On another occasion, the same friend was tricked into eating some part of a duck that does not normally appear at Christmas dinner. The moral of the story: if you're squeamish, faint-hearted, or vegetarian, stick to the beaten track and shop in Lucky Mall. But where's the fun in that?

Although packaged food does offer excellent advice.

So if you can get past the food, the climate and the developingness of Cambodia, what is there to like?

An obvious pro is the low cost of living. This is arguable, as the individual cost of living varies wildly depending on your lifestyle, and "low" is relative to how much money you have, or earn. Expensive options certainly exist in Siem Reap. If you want to spend your entire paycheque on a flashy apartment, gourmet meals, and membership to a fancy gym, then that's entirely possible. At the other end of the scale you can rent a basic room for $80 a month, eat local food for $1-2 per meal, buy a used bicycle for $30 and cycle everywhere. Wine is relatively expensive but beer is cheap. A 20-litre bottle of water costs me 75c. It doesn't break the bank. Once you have a rough idea of how much things should cost, you can haggle with confidence and avoid paying over the odds for anything. Hint: if you need a quick ride somewhere as a solo passenger, don't get a tuk tuk. Approach the guy on the street corner with the shoddiest moto and it should cost half as much.

A pro particular to Siem Reap is that it has a lively nightlife and plenty of opportunities to meet people. It's a fairly small town and it's said that amongst the expats everybody knows everybody, but with the constant flow of tourists and backpackers, there's always a chance to meet new people if you feel like it. However, the nightlife area is mostly constrained to the triangular area around the Old Market, and if you want to get away from the noise and the lairiness and the elephant pants and overhearing people comparing which countries they've "done", you don't have to go very far for some peace and quiet. Tourists and expats are well-tolerated by the locals. Tourism underpins Cambodia's economy, so it's possible to be cynical about the locals' friendliness, but generally I don't feel any hostility or resentment directed towards Westerners here. Obviously unsavoury characters and petty crime exist, but as a sweeping generalisation, the Cambodians you meet in the street are genuinely friendly and inquisitive and happy to talk with you.

Speaking of sweeping generalisations, my last point is that Cambodian students are great. In my three months teaching here, I've found them to be respectful, enthusiastic, co-operative, and very keen to learn. The students can be a little shy at first and need encouragement, but once they know one another and the teacher, their mischievous streak starts to come out. However, classroom management is never difficult and discipline problems are virtually unheard-of. They love games and have a bizarrely unpredictable sense of humour, and often find things completely hilarious for no apparent reason. For example, a story I told about the time when I got a parking ticket back in the UK had an entire class hooting with laughter. In my overall experience, the Cambodian character is generally gentle, sensitive, warm, kind and funny.

Overall I'm very happy with my decision to spontaneously pack up and move to Cambodia. It warms and inspires me, and continually answers the questions "How many people or things can you fit on a motorbike?"¹ and "For what proportion of the day is it culturally acceptable for a Khmer woman to wear pyjamas?"². It might not be for everyone, and I'm sure this won't be forever. But here and now, there's nowhere else I'd rather be.

If you have any questions about living and working in Siem Reap just post a comment and I will be happy to answer.

And it's beautiful.

¹A family of five with or without a dog, three monks, a six-foot neon shop sign, a massive plasma TV, or twenty-five live ducks suspended by their feet

²100% of it

What's good about teaching on your birthday?

This is what's good about teaching on your birthday.

A few of the students were late coming back from the mid-lesson break and I was ready to lecture them on timekeeping. Then they came back with this completely adorable personalised cake.

All is forgiven, late students.

British Royal Family Tree (free printable worksheet)

This is a printable standalone worksheet that contains all the information learners need to complete the British Royal Family tree.

For the "research project version" with no accompanying text, click here.

Lead in with pictures of members of the British Royal Family, eliciting their names and relationships to one another, and then hand out the worksheet. Students can complete it individually or in pairs.

Follow up with a quiz to revise family words, for example: Who is Prince Harry's aunt? Who is Prince Philip's mother-in-law?

Click here to get the FREE pdf

(Links open in Google docs, no sign-in required, you can then download, save, and print as required.)

No, not, neither, none: revision for intermediate ESL students (free printable worksheet)

By special request from my students I made a revision sheet for no, not, neither, and none.

No, not, neither, none

No means “not any” and is used before nouns.

There is no water on the Moon.

I can’t write.  I have no pencil.

Snakes have no legs.

None means “not one” of a group of things, or “not one part” of a whole thing.

It is a pronoun which can be the subject or object of a sentence.

None of the mangoes looked good enough to eat.

None of the bread was eaten / We ate none of the bread.

It can also be used as a short answer.

Q. How many bananas are left?  A. None.

Neither means “not one” of two things.

I had two projects, but I completed neither of them.

Neither of my parents wear glasses.

Not makes a verb negative.

I do not like dogs.

I have not been to China.

There aren’t any students in the classroom.

My breakfast disaster

Fill the gaps with no, not, none, or neither

One day I got out of bed and went into the kitchen to make breakfast.  I had (1) ____ slept very well, so I wanted to make coffee first.  But when I looked in the cupboard, there was (2) ____ coffee left!  Then I looked for tea, but there was (3) ____ of that either.  So I opened the fridge to look for something to drink, and guess what?  There was (4) _____ milk and (5) _____ juice.  There was (6) ____ even any water.  There were two bananas left, but (7) ______ of them looked good enough to eat.  Who had eaten everything in my fridge?  It was (8) _____ me!  Getting annoyed, I went to the shop near my house but (9) ____ of the staff were there.  Finally I went to a café and ordered banana pancakes and coffee, with (10) ____ milk and (11) ____ sugar, just the way I like it.  Later I told my friends about my terrible morning but (12) ____ of them were interested.

Click here to get the worksheet FREE

Link opens in Google documents and you can then download, print or save as required

Telling tales #1: Adverbs and adjectives

If verbs and nouns are meat and bread, adverbs and adjectives are sauce and pickles. To get my students to spice up their narrative sandwiches I decided to go way back to basics and practice placing adjectives and adverbs. This worksheet could really be adapted for any level by providing more complex sentences and encouraging more sophisticated vocabulary. Sky's the limit!

Start by brainstorming adverbs and adjectives. Students can show you what they already know, and you can take the chance to feed in new words.

Students progress to adding adverbs and adjectives to simple sentences.

Happy sandwich-making!

Click here to get the worksheet FREE
(Links open in Google Docs and you can then download, print, or save as required)

Tips for teaching early morning lessons

My earliest lessons are at 6am. The advantage is that students can fit in a class before school or work, and at least they are not tired from a stressful day at said school or work. However, as you can imagine, both teacher and students can feel a little bleary at that time in the morning and it takes a little time to get the gears oiled. Here are some ways to get the cogs turning at early o'clock.

Gauge the mood
Take the time to ask the students how they are today. Of course this is nice to do at the start of any lesson, but especially important at the start of the day when people can feel a little fragile (or tired, or cold, or hungry...). When you know how the class is feeling, you can judge which kind of approach to take to the lesson and how much encouragement they are going to need. A sleepy class will need more warming up, but if they are already bright-eyed and bushy-tailed they will be happier to jump straight in.

Make some noise
To make sure your learners are awake and have their minds fully in the classroom, do something that will make some noise. I find that a shouting dictation works well: give half the students something to dictate to a partner who is on the other side of the classroom. The classroom will get noisy as the students compete to make themselves heard, so it will get vocal cords warmed up and alleviate some of the early-morning reluctance to speak. Another option is to play some lively music. There are too many uses of music in the classroom to go into here, but for example, you can play an upbeat song and set a straightforward gist task, or simply play some music that sets the scene for the lesson and discuss it afterwards (how does it make you feel? What words or images does it make you think of? etc).

Get moving
Plan kinetic activities that either get the students out of their seats, or get them moving things around. If you have young learners, a few rounds of "change chairs" or Simon Says can do the trick. If you have adults or a more serious class, you can still incorporate kinetic elements into most types of activity. A matching exercise will be more stimulating if students have to find the answers posted around the classroom; an anagram puzzle will be more of a waker-upper if the letters are cut up and have to be manually rearranged. Anything that breaks the students out of sitting still will help.

Inject some colour
A bog-standard, run-of-the-mill black and white photocopy will not get your students woken up. If you have the luxury of a colour printer or copier, use it to make your visual aids more interesting. Alternatively, source colourful images from papers or magazines. Also, simply printing handouts onto brightly-coloured paper will make them more eye-catching and can help to focus attention. You can be nice and use pleasant colours, but obnoxious neon colours also work particularly well.

Passive vs active voice (free printable worksheet)

When I first introduced the passive to my pre-intermediate Cambodian students, their initial reaction was to look at me as if to say, "You're telling me English has another tense? Why, teacher? Why?"

They're definitely warming to it now... I think.

The Oxford textbook that we use tends to jump in at the deep end with grammar points. While the passive may be a breeze for speakers of languages that form it in the same way (eg. French or German), it will understandably take a bit more work for speakers of languages that have no such thing.

To bridge the gap, I made a handout that explains how the passive is formed and what it is used for.

It progresses to some guided practice in the present tense.

Click to get the worksheet FREE

Link opens with Google documents, you can then print or download as required

Present perfect continuous: a no-prep mingle activity

When teaching a grammar point it's important to think "When do I actually use this structure in real life?". The present perfect continuous often appears in ESL textbooks in contrived contexts such as "Why are your eyes red? - I've been crying!"... which honestly I don't think I've ever said in my life.

Being in a new town and a new job, I've found myself having the same conversation over and over. Within a few minutes the conversation generally runs to "I work at the language school - Oh, how long have you been working there?"

Teaching this usage of the present perfect continuous prepares students to have a natural, normal, real-life conversation. What could be better?

Procedure

First, have each student take a small piece of paper and write the following items. Stress: not your own name and workplace but a made-up one.

Name Place of work Small number

Example:

Sopheak Hospital 3

Take the papers in, shuffle and redistribute. Model the conversation:

"Hello, what's your name?"

"My name's..."

"Where do you work?"

"I work at the..."

"How long have you been working there?"

"I've been working there for X years!"

Now the students mingle around the classroom to practice the questions and answers using the cues on their paper. To give a motivation for speaking to everyone, challenge them to find someone who works in the same place as them. Obviously this may or may not happen depending on what the students have written, but they will have to speak to everyone to find out!

Happy mingling!

Do you need to be confident to be a teacher?

I think most people are neither complete introverts nor extroverts, but fit somewhere along the scale and share characteristics with both. I'm typically somewhere in the introvert camp (maybe about 35-40, where 0 is completely introverted and 100 is completely extroverted). It definitely used to hold me back. How can I do X, Y or Z career when I'm not as out-there as everyone else? Luckily I've found that with teaching, confidence is gained with experience, a little introversion actually helps, and techniques can fill in the gaps.

You don't need to have a booming voice.

As long as all the students can hear you, you don't need to have a deafening voice. This will vary according to the size of your classroom and the ambient noise, but normally your speaking voice needn't be a shout. When you need to get the class's attention, shouting can add to the noise and doesn't always help. Use alternative attention-getting techniques such as clapping, shushing, or raising your hand and clicking your fingers.

You don't need to be able to talk for half an hour straight.

In a modern EFL classroom, the teacher is not a lecturer but a facilitator. Yes, some speaking is required, but too much TTT (teacher talk time) is seen as counter-productive. The teacher is not in the spotlight all the time. Your job is to get the students to do as much of the work as possible!

You don't need to know everything in the world.

Students will ask you unexpected questions. Sometimes you won't know the answer off the top of your head and that's fine. There's no shame in having to look something up, and willingness to do some research sets a good example for your students.

Some introversion can be a good thing.

Quiet puts forward that introverts have a longer concentration span and are a more able to work alone than their extroverted counterparts. Teachers certainly need the self-powered perseverance to create a good lesson plan and source materials. I would say that a degree of introversion is actually essential for a teacher.

On the other hand, you do need some people skills.

It's important to be able to empathise with learners and establish a good rapport with them. The learners need to have some respect for you, and this may mean that you have to be assertive at times. Luckily, you can learn techniques to keep control without feeling like you're acting out of character. Ultimately, a gentle personality combined with effective classroom management can create a calm, productive classroom environment.

In all, don't be put off teaching just because you've been labelled as 'shy' by other people. By focussing on the learner and having enthusiasm for what you do, you can be an effective teacher whether you are naturally outgoing or not.

British Royal Family Tree - research project (free printable worksheet)

This is a research-project type worksheet where learners are provided with the family tree template and then use the Internet to fill in the information.

Click here for the standalone version with accompanying text.

Lead in with photos of Royal family members and elicit a small section of the family tree to the board. Then let the learners loose on the computer room, or their smartphones or iPads.

Early finishers can colour in the title or decorate the blank spaces, then display the completed trees on the wall.

Click here to download the FREE pdf.

(Links open in Google Drive and you can then download, save, print, and use as required)