How can I teach my Cambodian friend English?

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sfuqua
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Re: How can I teach my Cambodian friend English?

Postby sfuqua » Wed Jan 18, 2023 1:54 pm

I think I've seen it a few times, that she can make rapid progress in the early stages. These are only anecdotes. People can do amazing things and there is no reason to give up before you get started. :D
I think that the whole discussion could easily get bogged down without some good definitions of what "reading" is.
I don't know what the limitations are for another human being are. I don't know about her motivations and expectations.

Starting her PhD work 5 years from now, doubtful.

Struggling through Harry Potter and Stephen King, but enjoying them, some day.

Following directions and filling out forms, certainly, as long as she doesn't quit.

But of course, I am basing this on anecdotal evidence.

I guess I am optimistic because I have known some absolutely brilliant illiterate people. And I have known some absolutely brilliant hostesses, bartenders, and the like.

I guess I'm just excited about the challenge she faces and the potential it has to enrich her life. :D
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sfuqua
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Re: How can I teach my Cambodian friend English?

Postby sfuqua » Wed Jan 18, 2023 2:25 pm

If she can text on a phone in any language, that gives you a place to start :D
If not, that gives you another activity.
I'm just trying to think of "nonclassroom" activities.
Google Translate pronounces things. It might be able to translate to a language she can understand...
Last edited by sfuqua on Wed Jan 18, 2023 2:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: How can I teach my Cambodian friend English?

Postby Irena » Wed Jan 18, 2023 2:54 pm

sfuqua wrote:I think I've seen it a few times, that she can make rapid progress in the early stages. These are only anecdotes. People can do amazing things and there is no reason to give up before you get started. :D
I think that the whole discussion could easily get bogged down without some good definitions of what "reading" is.
I don't know what the limitations are for another human being are. I don't know about her motivations and expectations.


An adult can definitely learn to decode written text in a new script. The problem is that, typically, adults plateau at that decoding level (letter-by-letter), which in practice feels like very slow reading speed.

An adult may be able to make seemingly fast progress initially. After all, adults are smarter than children. The problem is that plateau. You race to the plateau and then - you stay at the plateau. Apparently, there are exceptions, though. It's just that those exceptions are just that - exceptions. It's also not clear how those exceptions succeeded. Maybe they are just wired differently from most people. Maybe they put in an enormous amount of time and effort into reading, and that did the trick. Or maybe they were very young adults (such as 18 or 19), and their brains matured just a tiny bit more slowly than is typically the case (and so they retained that type of brain plasticity a bit longer), and that's what did the trick. I don't know.
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Re: How can I teach my Cambodian friend English?

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Wed Jan 18, 2023 3:41 pm

Remember this isn’t just a new script, which most of us know is painful enough. This is her very first script. I would put a lot of effort into really owning the alphabet. Make it multi-sensory. Write the letters, trace the letters, cut out and paste the letters. Make the letters out of play dough. Make the letters out of pipe cleaners. Write the letters in wet sand. (These are all things parents are told to do with kids who struggle to learn their letters.)

You don’t have to start with A. Teach her the letters in her name. In your name. She can have a quicker win with an emotionally relevant set of letters.
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Re: How can I teach my Cambodian friend English?

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Wed Jan 18, 2023 4:08 pm

Also, Duolingo ABC is a completely free reading app that’s pretty slick.

Khan Academy Kids is a very nice free preschool app that includes letters and numbers.
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Re: How can I teach my Cambodian friend English?

Postby sfuqua » Wed Jan 18, 2023 4:09 pm

Irena, I agree completely. :D

If she can look at fluent reading as a direction, not a goal that she can fail to achieve in a certain timeline, who knows how far she can go?

I just love teaching, and it sounds like this might be a fun challenge for a teacher. :D
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荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
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Re: How can I teach my Cambodian friend English?

Postby leosmith » Wed Jan 18, 2023 4:51 pm

Irena wrote:
These effects are generally smaller in ex-illiterate adults than in literate adults who learnt to read and were schooled at an early age, but it is currently not possible to determine whether this arises simply from reduced reading experience or is due to reduced brain plasticity in adulthood or other sociocultural factors (BOX 1).A few ex-illiterate adults do become fluent readers and spellers, reading in excess of 50 words per minute. However, a common observation is that reading in late-learned scripts often remains dysfluent. Furthermore, literacy does not have the same impact on the face recognition system when it is acquired in adulthood compared with when it is acquired in childhood, suggesting that the adult ventral visual system cannot be as flexibly reorganized: literate individuals who learnt to read at a young age showed reduced activation to faces compared with illiterate adults, whereas there was no statistically significant difference between illiterate and ex-illiterate adults. Furthermore, even after adjusting for variations in reading score, ex-illiterate adults still showed a significantly smaller reduction in face-evoked responses than did schooled literate individuals of matched social origin.
Right. Also, note how low the threshold for fluent reading is: 50 words per minute.
I re-highlighted this. 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.

Imo, sociocultural aspects are almost certainly the culprit behind the lower reading speeds. Somewhat related, 95% of adult beginners fail to reach high levels in language learning, but I wouldn't try to blame that on lack of brain plasticity or spend too much time worrying about it, especially in a language learning forum. If Pim (the Cambodian) is sufficiently motivated I'm confident that she will reach decent reading speeds. Let's focus on the positive.
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Re: How can I teach my Cambodian friend English?

Postby leosmith » Wed Jan 18, 2023 4:57 pm

sfuqua wrote:If she can text on a phone in any language, that gives you a place to start :D
If not, that gives you another activity.
I'm just trying to think of "nonclassroom" activities.
Google Translate pronounces things. It might be able to translate to a language she can understand...
She can text, and she needs to talk to her customers every day (she's been avoiding it, but we'll see about that). Google translate has audio for Thai, so yes, that works.
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Re: How can I teach my Cambodian friend English?

Postby Kraut » Wed Jan 18, 2023 5:11 pm

It's a classic.
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Re: How can I teach my Cambodian friend English?

Postby Irena » Wed Jan 18, 2023 11:42 pm

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.
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