Warm up
To warm up and get ready for learning Vietnamese the class all stood up and learned three phrases together.
Nhân Chứng Giê-hô-va
Chúa Giê-su
Món biểu tượng
The class then made up gestures to help us remember them.
Lesson One – Introduction to the Vietnamese alphabet, sounds and pronunciation.
The class received a summary of the Vietnamese alphabet and picked out the differences between the English and Vietnamese alphabet.
Michael taught us the difference between letters with diacritical markings and the marks used to indicate tones.
Michael has tried to find the names for the 'wok', 'hat' and 'hook' but there isn't really names for them, just as there is no name for the cross on the letter Q - it is simply part of the letter. We will describe them as having a wok, hat or hook for now, but when we learn the names of the letters this will be unnecessary and we'll move away from this.
The class then learned the tones and what they are called. And, very important, we learned what the word Dấu literally means (mark) and why it is used.
Lesson Two - Communicative Approach - Basic conversation
The Communicative Approach involves learning something, and immediately getting up and using it several times with fellow classmates. In this way we learn by communicating! After some instruction on how to pronounce the short conversation on the handout (BASIC CONVERSATION SHEET) everyone got up and practiced by having the conversation with as many people as possible and writing down their answers. The entire course will prominently feature the Communicative Approach.
Lesson Three - Tones and Pronunciation
The class jumped into learning some Vietnamese sounds and tones. They learned:
A / AI / AY along with Không dấu, dấu sắc and dấu huyền.
You can find the tones and pronunciation sheets complete with practice sentences here.
To access the audio to practice at home, click here.
10 minute Break.
Lesson Four - Numbers
The students received a handout - Introduction to Numbers - and we practiced together 1 through to 20. Michael explained the general rules and principles, and pointed out the irregularities that we've encountered thus far. Eg, Lăm, and Mươi, etc.
We learned some amazing things about the brain, you can read more about that here. Amongst what we learned about the brain was that playing with balloons really helps us learn. So we played with balloons as we learned to count! We have a couple of photos - hereand here. Enjoy!
Lesson Five - More Tones and Pronunciation
For this tones and pronunciation lesson we learned the following sounds:
AO / AU / AM / AN - ANG / ANH / ÁC ẠC - ÁT ẠT
By now we've also learned the remaining tones - dấu hỏi, dấu ngã and dấu nặng.
The
handouts are here. And
Audio is here.
Lesson Six - Culture
Read the culture lesson notes here.
Lesson Seven - Field Service
Field Service Lesson. Everyone was given a small piece of paper with their basic field service presentation (Handout - Field Service Presentation). The different pronouns in the presentation were introduced and explained. Advanced students were encouraged to use this presentation, but to also augment it with more complex phrases from the Our Kingdom Ministry suggestions.
Homework
Homework sheet was handed out. Also, before going through the handout, it was instructed that to learn Vietnamese, and indeed any new language, students must do no less than 1 hour's homework daily.
There was some understandably shocked faces among the students. However it was also explained that your homework should be done in a very similar fashion to how the class was taught. Instead of long drawn out exhaustive lessons, each lesson in class was no more than 15-20 minutes in length. Once time was up, we moved on to the next lesson. This teaching method is called the Speed/Time method. To get rid of the lull of poor concentration that happens in the middle of typical lessons, make each lesson short and productive which increases concentration and retention considerably.
To do your one hour of homework a day, break it up into 4 X 15 minute blocks throughout your day, or 6 X 10 minute blocks. It is so much easier to locate these smaller blocks of language learning throughout your day, and is a much more effective way to do it. Bottom line: You need to do 1 hour's homework a day, and because it's not as hard as you think, you will succeed at learning Vietnamese.
