Here Comes The Judge!

I was invited to judge an English speech contest today for a Tech College far away on the outskirts of town. There were about 15 students who had prepared a five minute speech from memory in English on topics ranging from Global Warming to what they love about their hometown. It was so much fun!

I was informed at the last minute that I was to give a speech and I spoke briefly about the big differences between Thai and English.

As my Thai is getting better and better everyday, it has occurred to me that the biggest gaps between the two are verb tenses, the use of articles ( the , an and a ), and the use of prepositions. None of these exist in the Thai language. Also pronunciation - most obvious being r's and l's. But there are more. I was talking to one of my classes about my love for jazz and they looked very confused and I kept saying "Do you know the word - jazz? " And they kept saying, "Yes." But they were still confused. Finally I wrote the word on the board and it turned out they all thought I was talking about "chess." So now these have become the perfect practice words for the difference between the j and ch sound and the s and z sound. And of course, they still call me Matchew.

The biggest problem still is getting them to be bold in their attempts to speak English. They are so afraid of making mistakes. I have started telling them, "Don't wait to be perfect to speak English, it will take too long. Just try."

Of course, my learning their language has helped me understand how they must feel and I am certainly bold about my broken Thai.