How can I teach my Cambodian friend English?

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Re: How can I teach my Cambodian friend English?

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Thu Jan 19, 2023 12:23 am

Irena wrote:
leosmith wrote:Not only is it not possible to determine these lower reading speeds are due to reduced brain plasticity, remember that brain plasticity is the same argument we are given as to why babies are so much better than adults at learning languages. But babies aren't nearly as good as adults at learning languages.


Babies cannot speak, but small children are unquestionably much better than adults at some aspects of language learning, such as developing a native-like accent. Children are also much better than adults at learning in an immersion setting. But yes, adults are better at learning from textbooks, provided they have access to those textbooks, plus a sufficient level of education to make effective use of them.

leosmith wrote:Imo, sociocultural aspects are almost certainly the culprit behind the lower reading speeds.


Yeah, that's what people like to think. Trouble is, children who come from the same sort of sociocultural background do learn to read just fine, given a chance (i.e. decent textbooks and teachers). Adults - not so much.

Check out chapter 3 of this document:

https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000368404

It's funny or depressing, depending on whether one needs to learn a new script or not. Here's a snippet:

I experience this phenomenon every day. In 27 years of work at the World Bank, I learned about 10 languages for work in countries such as Cambodia, Nepal, Bangladesh, and the Arab world. Despite attaining a high level of oral proficiency in most languages, I read haltingly in all the scripts that I learned after the age of 18. World Bank missions to countries using these scripts usually lasted 1-3 weeks, but my speed quickly regressed after a trip. Under the best circumstances of practice and engagement I could read the Devanagari script in Hindi and Nepali at 60 words per minute around age 50. At age 67, after about 6 years of significant reading and advanced language self-study, I could only read Arabic at 30 words per minute and improved only marginally. This speed is around 10% of educated native-readers' speed.

Since 1992, I have interviewed and given informal reading tests to dozens of educated people who, as adults, learned Lao, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Amharic, Tibetan, Bengali, Japanese, Thai, Russian, Armenian, Farsi, Greek and other languages with scripts different from those studied as children (Abadzi, 1996). Of particular interest were advanced and fluent speakers who should easily understand written text. However, I never encountered anyone who had learned a script past age 19 and claimed completely effortless reading.


That was fascinating. It also really made me appreciate Korean. As new scripts go it’s one heck of a lot easier than the examples used in the text. Remind me never to learn Arabic or Hindi!
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Re: How can I teach my Cambodian friend English?

Postby Irena » Thu Jan 19, 2023 12:33 am

Lawyer&Mom wrote:That was fascinating. It also really made me appreciate Korean. As new scripts go it’s one heck of a lot easier than the examples used in the text. Remind me never to learn Arabic or Hindi!


I've heard people say that Hangul is pretty easy! Very methodical, apparently. (Though I've never tried to learn it myself.) As for Arabic or Devanagari: yeah, if you must learn one of those as an adult, then may Allah or the entire Hindu pantheon help you. :shock:
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Re: How can I teach my Cambodian friend English?

Postby sfuqua » Thu Jan 19, 2023 1:45 am

I'm not sure how the paper adds anything to the discussion other than to say in a highly technical fashion that she has a lot of work to do, and that if she gives up, she won't get anywhere.

Is it hard,? Yes.
Do many/most people fail? Yes.
Are adult learners different than children? Of course.

Can a bright, determined student get somewhere? That's up to Pim.

Do adults learn some things better than children? Certainly.
Do adults learn everything better than children? Certainly not.
Will she probably always have weaker literacy than she would have had if she had learned to read at 5 years old? Probably.


I suspect that, if there actually is any disagreement here, it is over whether the glass is half empty or half full.

I'm betting on half full. :D

I know a 70-year-old guy with no background in Asian scripts, who is learning to read Japanese right now, even though it is obviously impossible for someone his age.
He needs to finish this post, so he can study his Kanji :lol:
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Re: How can I teach my Cambodian friend English?

Postby Irena » Thu Jan 19, 2023 1:56 am

sfuqua wrote:Can a bright, determined student get somewhere?


"Somewhere"? Of course. The question is: how far is that "somewhere." Apparently, 60 words per minute is quite an accomplishment, and if she ever gets there, then she'll have every reason to be very proud of herself indeed.
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Re: How can I teach my Cambodian friend English?

Postby Iversen » Thu Jan 19, 2023 9:13 am

sfuqua wrote:I'm not sure how the paper adds anything to the discussion other than to say in a highly technical fashion that she has a lot of work to do, and that if she gives up, she won't get anywhere.


Actually there are a couple of things which may complicate matters. Point one: as I have written before it would strategically be smarter to learn to write for the first time in a language you already know. It's a different situation from Sfuqua's because Sfuqua already knows what it is to write and also how to learn foreign languages, and therefore Sfuqua is able to do both concurrently with Japanese (good luck!) Point two: the Cambodian friend actually is living outside her native country, and it might have been easier for her to learn to write her native Khmer (which has its own alphabet) while she was there than to learn to write Thai now, whatever her level - but in Thailand the logical choice is Thai because that language surrounds you. Thirdly: she may have expressed a wish to learn English (written and spoken), not to how to write in Thai or Khmer. So if that's her goal then interpolating written Thai may not be seen as a a help, but more as an unwelcome diversion. But I still think that would be the most efficient strategy.
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Re: How can I teach my Cambodian friend English?

Postby rdearman » Thu Jan 19, 2023 9:34 am

leosmith wrote:I’m in Thailand now, and I have a Cambodian girlfriend. She has been working in Thailand for 9 years and speaks the language well. But she does not read or write Thai. In fact, she does not read or write any language, not even her native Khmer. She wants to learn English, not just conversing but also reading and writing. So my plan for her is to
1) learn the alphabet/basic pronunciation
2) do a basic phrases audio program that also has text available
3) have her read and write out the phrases in 2 while reviewing them in an SRS
4) converse with natives/read/write and text/watch native content/listen to blogs/etc.
4 is easy to find. Questions:

For 1, do you know of a good free resource that has audio and a sample word for each letter. For example, maybe a list like:
A a apple (audio when I click on apple)
B b ball (audio when I click on ball)
etc... it would be nice if there were a picture or a place that I could add Thai or Khmer audio too.

For 2 and 3, can that be covered by Glossika?

Any other suggestions? I’m actually excited about teaching someone who is illiterate, but quite over my head. There are some Thai to English audio resources available locally, but Thais have terrible pronunciation because they make little effort to pronounce things correctly, so I want her to start out with pronunciation.

I have only ever helped my children with reading, so I'm not an expert. But I do know that in school they had a set of graded readers. They learned the new words in school, and the parents helped with reading at home and reminding them of the meanings as required. My kids used a set of graded readers from Oxford Learning Tree until they were in year 3 or 4. (I can't remember exactly it was, a long time ago!)

https://global.oup.com/education/conten ... &region=uk

I remember the stories and they aren't bad! Remember that parents have to read along too. :) I think that she could pretty swiftly move through the graded readers, but it is worth starting out the same as my children, I think. I realise as an adult she will have some advantages, but my children were already fluent and conversational in English before they started reading, so they probably had a bigger advantage than a second language adult.

There are also some resources for teachers available, and you might want to look at those. Specifically for teachers of English as a second language, there is a website called Teaching English. https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/resources I had a look and they had a large selection of lesson plans and tips for teaching English.

You can Google for ESL tips and lesson plans which might help you.
https://bridge.edu/tefl/blog/esl-teaching-methods/
https://www.thoughtco.com/beginning-gui ... sl-1210464
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Re: How can I teach my Cambodian friend English?

Postby Kraut » Thu Jan 19, 2023 7:14 pm

Edge Browser has two Thai voices incorporated.
Simple Translate is a pop-up dictionary that can translate Thai.
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Re: How can I teach my Cambodian friend English?

Postby Caromarlyse » Fri Jan 20, 2023 7:19 am

In the UK, the following manuals and readers are available for adults learning to read (they say to contact them about shipping outside the UK). The phonetics stuff at the beginning might be useful for your purposes, though I guess that the vocabulary might not be the most suitable, given that the programme assumes pre-existing oral fluency. https://shop.turning-pages.org.uk/
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Re: How can I teach my Cambodian friend English?

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Fri Jan 20, 2023 8:35 pm

I found the student manual of a pre-literacy ESL curriculum. I’ve skimmed it and I think you can figure it out just fine without the teacher manual.

http://www.refugeeone.org/uploads/1/2/8 ... t_book.pdf

Minnesota Literacy Council uses/used this textbook, and given their history working with refugees that’s a good enough endorsement for me.
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Re: How can I teach my Cambodian friend English?

Postby leosmith » Tue Jan 24, 2023 3:37 pm

I thought some of you might appreciate an update on this. The bar Pim works in is very loud, as if this challenge wasn’t hard enough already. Anyway, she came down with strep throat or something; not diagnosed – she just went to a clinic, they gave her 6 different kinds of medicine (I’m not joking), and she is much better now. The result was that she was only able to do the 10 min writing per day, not the 20 min listening/repeating basic pronunciation. So I was pleasantly surprised when she came over and we went through the whole alphabet video together. I’d say she got about 90% right. She showed a big improvement over last time, when we only went over a few letters.

The sounds that gave her trouble were the th in this, z anywhere, the word oil, and (sometimes) words ending in s. I think it’s just a matter of practice; her mouth and brain need to get used to producing those sounds. She sometimes nails them, but she often lacks self confidence. I’m trying hard to be a good teacher and encourage her when she does well, as well as being gentle with my corrections. If I have her repeat words too many times she can get discouraged, so I have learned to back off a bit.

I created an anki deck for her to use for the next step. There are 100 sentences that are very commonly used in her bar. The card structure is:

Front = English text & audio; Back = Thai text & audio (auto-generated the audio both sides...I learned a new trick!)

English to Thai: I’ll have her listen to the English and repeat. The Thai audio on the back will let her know the meaning of the sentence. The Thai text was necessary for the audio generation, and I left it there just in case she wants to share the deck with friends. Some time in the future, I’ll turn off the English audio and ask her to read it out loud before listening. Also in the future, I’ll turn off the English text and have her write it out.

Thai to English: After listening to the Thai, I’ll have her produce the English sentence out loud, then check the pronunciation. Some time in the future, I’ll have write it too.

I’m going to start her out with 5 sentences per day, and see how that goes. I’m really looking forward to hearing a Thai (I mean Cambodian :lol:) with correct English pronunciation; it’s rare here, and she will sound quite different from her coworkers.
Last edited by leosmith on Wed Jan 25, 2023 6:00 am, edited 1 time in total.
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