me and the students of class 2006

One thing that supports my research proposal for PhD application is that it is extremely difficult to teach English when the students do not have enough exposure to the culture of English speaking country.

I was using Cambridge materials for Listening which is highly British. Once, the students were required to listen to a guy leaving a phone message for a girl. He was in a call box and he said he would call again. The comprehension question was “why can’t the girl phone him back?”. If the students could infer what a call box was, it would be no problem at all for them to answer the comprehension question. By the way, a call box is a public telephone booth according to Merriam-Webster dictionary, and one who has seen or read about a call box (either in person, in movies, in novels) knows that a call box usually can’t be called back.

Got it? Well, it’s easy if you have seen or read about it. Even if you don’t know the words, you usually can infer what is a call box from the words call and box: it’s a box to call!

Another aspect of listening skills that I notice is that in order to successfully comprehend what s/he listens, s/he has to have the ability to adjust his/her ‘ears’ to accommodate different accents, dialects and styles. I personally believe that exposure to different accents, dialects, and styles will be beneficial to train one’s ears to adjust his/her hearing. Again, in SoE, where the environment tends to be homogeneous in terms of ethnic groups, media, references, etc., my students struggled to listen to even a sentence because I think they didn’t get used to listening and adjusting to different styles of speech.

So, the keyword is exposure to the culture. The more varied the exposure is, the better adjustment one makes with one’s hearing. The better the adjustment, the better the listening comprehension. What do you think?

In general, I should say that attending conferences is a good way of developing networks, particularly if you’re attending a conference in your field of interest. That was exactly how I feel about GloCALL 2007. I met some CALL practitioners whose names I’ve only read or found in the Internet (like Tom Robb, Jeong-Bae Soon, Deb Healey, Charles Kelly, Vance Stevens) , some colleagues who use CALL in their courses (like George MacLean, James Elwood, Jacqui Cyrus, Anthony Robbins, Andrew Ross, Stephane Charitos, and others) and a virtual friend like Howard Martyn. It’s good to develop and renew contacts with people who have similar interests with you!

me with some presenters including Jacqui Cyrus, Scott Windeatt, Tom Robb,Jeong-Bae Son.

Although it’s quite tiring to present five presentations (some other presenters thought that I was crazy presenting three different topics!), I think I was doing alright. In Hanoi, which was the first city for the conference, the participant attendance was low and they were not very responsive to my presentations. Maybe because almost all presenters were still around, so there were quite a number of sessions that the participants could attend. Some presenters were not attending the Ho Chin Minh City one, so the sessions selected were limited. Hence, I got more audience and more responses. However, I appreciate all comments that I received because in many ways they gave me more insights and ideas of how to further develop my research. If you need the PowerPoint files of my presentation, please email me.

On a more personal note, Vietnam was in a way similar to Indonesia. The weather between Hanoi and Ho Chin Minh City were different. Hanoi was colder because it was in the north and Ho Chin Minh was hot and humid. I was lucky (and I guess just being thoughtful) because I brought a jacket that helped me survived the chill of Hanoi. I stayed at Hanoi University Guest House and I really liked the architecture of the buildings in the campus. They have these colonial style buildings that I just adored! The funny thing was, when I arrived at the Guest House, it was dark already and looking at the hall I thought that it would be a perfect shooting location for an Indonesian horror movie! It looked creepy, but I didn’t sense any spirits (I will tell you about this sixth sense of mine in another post) and the room was new and very clean, with good mattress, a TV set, and a shower. Just like a two star hotel. The feeling of the campus was pretty similar to my campus in Salatiga. Students were everywhere (the dorms were on campus, nearby my guest house) and Internet cafes were just two minutes walk! Hallelujah!

Ho Chin Minh City was another version of Jakarta, Indonesia’s capitol city. The hot weather, the hell-crazy traffic, the way the buildings were located and built reminded me of Jakarta. Maybe that’s the reason why I’m fonder of Hanoi than of Ho Chin Minh City. Hanoi, although the main street near HANU campus was terribly crowded, I still could have a peaceful walk in the campus and people looked similar to Indonesians. I, of course, love the architecture of the buildings in downtown Ho Chin Minh, which again, in colonial style. Remembering home, during those walks to and fro the conference place at SEAMEO RETRACT in Ho Chin Minh, I was sad with the fact that many old buildings in Salatiga (which many are in the Dutch colonial style) was being destroyed everyday, for being replaced with more modern, yet less elegant buildings. Growing up in Salatiga, which used to be the relaxing city for the Dutch living in Semarang during their occupation, I have this soft spot for any old colonial buildings. While travelling, I like to observe the architecture along the way, looking fondly to charming old houses.

Another thing that I learned in Vietnam is how similar they look with Indonesians. There were countless times in Vietnam where people immediately started talking to me in Vietnamese, which I of course replied with a puzzled look on my face and an apology in English that I didn’t know how to speak in Vietnamese. It turned out that my appearance was pretty much similar to those living in villages of Vietnam. When I told this to my students here, they jokingly said that maybe I had the qualities of being ‘villagish’ and backward! ) Well, I don’t mind being a villager and once I lived for five weeks in a village near Boyolali. Even my grandparents were originally not from big cities. Still about appearance, I had this unpleasant experience of getting unpleasant look from a taxi driver because I was sharing a cab with two Caucasian men (they were George and Jim, presenters from Japan, who stayed in the same hotel with me) and looking like Vietnamese but didn’t address him in Vietnamese. Maybe the driver thought that I was some cheap Vietnamese girl, trying to hook up with male westerners, and being so stucked up by not using my own language. Gosh! First, of course I didn’t know how to speak in Vietnamese because I was not a Vietnamese. Secondly, if you can tell a ‘lady escort’ from the way she dresses, my outfit was not even close to being revealing. I remember I was wearing long black pants and a simple silk shirt, carrying the conference bag (which looked like a laptop bag and indeed it carried my laptop). In short, I looked like an office girl. Well, maybe it was my face. People often mistakenly guess that I am a university student or something, age of early 20s. Sometimes I took it as a compliment (being early 20s as opposed to my real age of 33 means that my face is still fresh like those youngsters!), but sometimes it gets annoying too.  

For the souvenir to you, I will post some more pictures when I get the chance. For the time being, please enjoy this video of me presenting in one of the sessions in GloCALL 2007. Thanks to Howard Martyn for taking this video.

*Back to life*