Me Teach English? That's unpossible!

Most Peace Corps volunteers in Mongolia right now are here to teach English as a foreign language (TEFL). I'm a Community Economic Development volunteer, but during training they told us that no matter what your title is your coworkers would want you to teach them English. The trainers had us prepare a short lesson on a basic English topic to teach to a class. I chose introductions as is "hello, my name is" and "how are you?". I wrote down all the words in a conversation, one each, on pieces of paper and copied them. My students were older and they could read all the words. The hard part was getting them to come up in front of the class and practice. Apparently it's because it's not how they did it when the schools were taught "Russian" style. I though I took care of that by liberally sprinkling my dialouges with comrade and decandent westerner. It worked out fine, but I still didn't know what to expect when I got to work.

Sure enough, during my first week they asked me to teach English. I'd heard about other volunteers organizing once weekly classes, but my office is pretty small and I didn't think that would work. Meanwhile, I'm supposed to have a counterpart who speaks English. When I asked which person that was one of the Mongolian's pointed at my counterpart who then started giggling. This continued for a while and I thought she really didn't speak English, but it turns out she's just shy and wanted me to help her with speaking.

I borrowed a couple TEFL books and copied a few pages I thought she could use and gave them to her to read. I wasn't sure what level she was at, but she understood everything and read better than she thought. Now the hard part is getting her to pronounce "f's" and "th's" which aren't really used in Mongolian. That's something I can correct without holding a class. Needless to say, I have more respect for TEFL people now. Just don't tell them.