talkshop

I am teaching English to the caddies in the golf club. Sounds like a piece of cake especially when Singaporeans are quite well versed in both Mandarin and English. But I can assure you, that the situation is quite the opposite. The first thing that hit me in the face was phonics aka 音标. The alien language that you see in dictionaries following the word you are looking for is it. It is used to help you pronounce the word properly according to whoever created the dictionary.

For a start, things got off at this kink. The mental pressure on the caddies were uphill as well. We had our fair share of communication issues, plus the fact that I am not an English trainer by profession, it makes it doubly harder to get my point across or convince them my method of conversation pieces are correct.

When I speak to my boss, they are unable to understand our conversation, except the first and last word: Hello, Byebye. The teaching methods are greatly different in Singapore and China. I would be a fool to think that I can apply the singapore method and achieve Singaporean results. However, I try to reconcile the two by going through words and phrases they need to understand and familiarise in order to move their English levels upwards.

Despite the weird and awkward moments, I am glad to be part of the teaching industry, its quite gratifying to see your students or cute caddies in my case, learning and using new words in their daily life. It is my hope that I would be able to prepare them soundly for the HSBC Championships, something they can take away and converse with foreigners and famous foreign golfers on and off the course.