The importance of listening

My morning run takes me to the river.  Not just any river mind you, but the Mekong, which flows through or creates the border in many countries in South East Asia—China, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam and of course Cambodia. We walk to it in the early evening as well, when the riverside is filled with families, street food and boats.  This photo is of last night, a near full moon, and a ferry filled with motos, ready to cross to a nearby island. 

On my run this morning I saw kids: on bicycle, on their parents scooters, sometimes 4 young kids to a scooter (they were maybe ten years old, driving a scooter, helmet less--cute or reckless, you decide) all going to school.  Public school hasn’t started yet but there are scores of private schools in even the poorest provinces.  I could write a book on the reasons for this, and perhaps I will explore the question on why people with very little money will put their kids in private schools (I encountered the same thing in Mexico) in the future but I’m not going to explore that in this entry.  Instead I want to talk about listening.

Just seeing these kids made me think about my own teaching and also got me thinking about the relationship of that to my own experiences in Cambodia this past month.   Today marks my one month anniversary here, and although I have yet to set foot in a classroom, I have learned a lot.  I have learned a lot because while waiting for my project to start I spend much of my day listening.  I am in the receptive stage of Khmer language production, which means I have a few vocabulary words, and a few pieces of grammar to stick 'em together, but I can’t get the utterances out fast enough, and lack the confidence to speak.  So I listen: I listen in the markets, I listen in the streets, and I listen to my neighbors.

But I’m not only listening to Khmer.  I am listening to English, accented by French, German, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, and Australian among others.  Kampong Cham has a small ex-pat community, mostly NGO workers, and a few involved in some form of desperate private enterprise that I can’t quite figure out.  These folks tend to congregate at a few waterfront restaurants and bars that cater to this crowd.  When I go, and talk to them,  I notice that some are good listeners, and some are good talkers, and unfortunately, rarely does a person exhibit both qualities.  I have met some people that never ask questions, but rather use conversation as a platform for their own ideas, opinions, and ramblings about their projects, their world-view, and themselves.  In thinking about language teaching these people remind me of the most valuable lesson about teaching in general and teaching language in particular that I hope to impart on my students (future teachers):  students should be speaking about 70% of the time in a classroom.  Not idle conversation, but conversation about things important to them, with the structured guidance of a teacher.  A good teacher asks questions, and then gives time and creates an environment in which students answer and construct meaning out of their responses, and listens to their students to assess their progress.  A poor teacher is one who speaks most of the time, barely leaving room for their students to participate and learn, and therefore has nothing to listen to, and can only assess a students progress through tests.  Witnessing these ex pats that talk and talk and talk and feeling my frustration at not having a chance to participate, has been the best preparation I could have for my own teaching, by noting their omission of listening.  So, I urge myself to not fall into the trap of only talking about my project, and myself, when around these folks, but rather to ask questions, and listen.  Sometimes the best lessons are right in front of us.