Last week I checked my last “customer” out of the FuTong Clothing shop and stamped their passports…and all I could do was smile.
This semester each ETA spends four hours working in a Kaohsiung City English Village. English Villages simulate real life situations for using English. The English Villages have real looking restaurants, airports, airplanes, subways, supermarkets, etc. This way students can practice buying a banana, while holding a banana- it makes English seem more practical and also fun. All students in Kaohsiung City public schools get to attend an English Village once for two hours. While at the English Village they travel in groups of eight or nine go to eight different stations. They get a stamp in a “passport” and after completing each station they receive a stamp in their passport. They are also scored secretly at each station. At the end the winning team gets pinned by the foreign teachers (Kevin and I in this case) while celebratory music plays in the background. The marching music at the end is my favorite part- partially because it is so obnoxious, mostly because it means EV is over. Most stations have English games (matching vocabulary, etc.), but two stations have a foreigner, who simulates a real life dialog with the students.
The dialog goes like this:
Student: How much is this ____________?
Clerk (me): The _______ is __________ dollars.
Student: Ok, here you go.
Clerk: Thank you, have a nice day.
Student: Thank you, you too.
What is important to realize is that while each fifth grader gets to have one conversation with each foreigner, the foreigner teachers get to have the same conversation with different fifth graders over 64 times in one English Village day and over 6656 times over the course of one year.
Understand why I was happy? hehe Below are some pictures of the FuTong EnglishVillage staff and I after our last EV.
Gigi, Vicky, myself and Eddy
Each EV has two managers, volunteers and usually the school’s military workers helps out too. (all men have to do one year of military service in Taiwan).
This is a picture of Kevin and I. Ordinarily Kevin is my EV “buddy”, but he already departed Taiwan to start a masters program in China. This was our farewell “EV buddy” shot.
As I close this post I would like to say that although I do not think my skills or my BA degree in English was utilized to its full potential, I would like to highlight the benefits of having a foreigner at English Village. Although I did not do innovative work with the students at English Village I believe that having a foreigner at English Village does generate an interest in English for students. I have had really fun groups of kids at EV, who are really excited to practice English and be in the new environment.
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