Show 861 Monday 20 October
Watch today’s show at YouTube or BlipTV.
Hi, I’m Sarah. Welcome to The Daily English Show.
I just had a really nice weekend. We went to Sapporo to go to the JALT and CALL conferences. And I’m glad I went – I met some really nice people, some of the presentations were interesting and I got some free stuff too. Check it out: a free bag, some books, a free pen – I love free pens – and some coffee from Laos. Two teachers gave a talk about how they’d taken some of their students to Laos – and then they imported some coffee to do some fund-raising. And they gave me some which was very nice.
One of the people who I enjoyed meeting at the CALL workshop was a guy from Thailand. He kindly agreed to do an interview. This is the fourth time he’s been to Japan and I asked him why he came this time.
This time, ah, two main purposes, ah, I came here to represent Chiang Mai University, ah, concerning the agreement of the joint exchange program between, ah, my university and, ah, Sapporo Gakuin University. Ah, I came here with seven of my students and one professor. They are not here now, they are probably in town shopping. And the second thing is to give a talk here, ah, at CALL conference at SGU.
STICK NEWS
Kia Ora in Stick News today a man in England has been busted for dangerous driving thanks to a video he posted on YouTube.
A 28-year-old guy was speeding on his motorcycle when a motorist saw him, wrote down his registration number and called the police. The police went round to the biker's house to have a bit of a chat. The man asked the police if they'd seen his video on YouTube. The police - who hadn't seen the video - then went and checked online and found it. In the video, the biker is speeding and doing stunts like wheelies and burnouts. Police estimate he was driving up to 210 km/hr. The man was sentenced to 12 weeks in jail. The judge said he had carried out "lunatic and grossly irresponsible maneuvers at considerable speed."
And that was Stick News for Monday the 20th of October.
Kia Ora.
conversations with sarah
#533 What’s English education like in Thailand?
Step 1: Repeat Sarah’s lines.
Step 2: Read Sarah’s lines and talk to Wichian.
Sarah What’s your name?
Wichian Ah, Wichian. My name is Wichian.
Sarah Where are you from?
Wichian Ah, I’m from Chiang Mai, Thailand. That, that … Chiang Mai is like in the north of Thailand.
Sarah Are you an English teacher?
Wichian I am an English teacher, but mainly I teach, ah, linguistics courses. I mean in our English department we have three different programs for students to choose. We have English communication, we have linguistics and we have literature. But I do most courses in linguistics. But also sometime I teach foundation English for them.
Sarah What’s English education like in Thailand?
Wichian I mean, English programs in Thailand, we … all of us begin learning English since, ah, let’s say, we were seven or eight years old, and then, ah, ah, through … until we finished university. Let’s say, OK.
But what we have found and we are unhappy about is that in Thailand, in Thailand most people are really scared of speaking English, even communicating in English with foreigners, OK, despite the encouragement from the government from, you know, from our national curriculum, that English is one of the global language that we need to communicate with other people around the world.
Again probably, you know, in most high schools in Thailand, English begins with learning grammar. And a lot of students are really scared of making mistakes, in terms of grammar, when they speak, when they actually use the language. And that, that’s really the problem.
Sarah In Japan, students have trouble with things like the pronunciation of l and r. What are some things that students in Thailand have trouble with?
Wichian Some of, let’s say some of the phonemic things that do not exist in Thai language. In terms of pronunciation, like, ah, for example, sh, like in shut, OK. Like, ah, ju, for example, OK. In English language you do have something like voice and voicing. But in Thai language we don’t have something called voicing, OK, everything is like you know when we say we say do it in voiceless kind of things. So that’s, that’s particular one of the problem.
In term of grammars, again, the order is pretty different. Ah, say, in English language, for example, you put adjective before noun, but in Thai, the opposite. OK. And, ah, ah, ah, some Thai students got problem with that to, when you put like a to between verbs, because in, in Thai grammar we tend to have what we call the serial verb construction, that mean you can put one verb, two verb, three verb, four. You know, sometimes four, up to six verbs put together, being put together. But in English you cannot do that. So, so, Thai people sometime get stuck with that.
And sometime the other way round, because they learn English too much and they say that I have to put to all the time, between the two verbs, in the English language. So sometimes when they write a conversation in English for example they tend to put to between like could to and a verb, in English. So we have … those are some of the problems we have, yes.
Sarah Do most students in Thailand have access to the internet?
Wichian Yes. Yes. Internet is not really the problems, there. And, ah, people now, especially teenagers, they got access to the internet. And actually I could say that they were born with that, they are from technology age, so technology is no problem for them.
Except we, we probably have problem with people from remote areas, where internet access is not yet available for them.
Sarah Do you have any advice for people who are studying English?
Wichian Well, to me I think, you have to be brave. English is not your own language. It’s not my language. It’s not our mother tongue. The best way to do English is, you know, to try to find more and more opportunity to practice, especially … or it can be anyone, it doesn’t have to be native speaker of the language. It can be anyone speaking English, even though English is their second language. That just, you know, the great opportunity to do that. If you have such a opportunity to practice that every day then your English can be really perfect. Yeah, be brave and get more chance to practice.
links
today's news
today's STICK NEWS pictures
Sapporo Gakuin University
Sapporo Gakuin University - Wikipedia
Chiang Mai University
Chiang Mai University - Wikipedia
CALL Workshop
music
show start
artist: Boom Tschak
album: Indietronic CCBit.
track: More Chocolate, Please
from: Former Yugoslavia
MySpace
cws start
artist: Wolfgang S.
album: Indietronic CCBit.
track: Dynamite
from: Belgrade, Serbia, Former Yugoslavia
artist site
MySpace
qa start
artist: ioeo
album: triptracks
track: triptrack2
from: Saint Raphael, France
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site
qa bgm
artist: Antony Raijekov
album: See U
track: Be Brave (feat. Norine Braun)
from: Sofia, Bulgaria
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site
Did you notice a mistake in this script? Please leave us a comment and tell us! We really appreciate people pointing out our mistakes.Thank you.
Have you translated this script - or part of it - into your language for English practice and published it on your blog? Please leave a comment and a link so other people can read your translation. Thank you.
Posts
