Not the questions that you actually want

As a teacher, it is normal to be bombarded with questions from the students.

But some questions are not the one that we would like to listen to.

I’m teaching English to two classes, one is an advanced class and the other one is a lower intermediate class. The one I’m about to talk about is the latter. Not many of them can really understand English actually. As a teacher, I’m supposed to be helping them to acquire the language so I hardly give them translations of what I have said. So during the first week, I only talked to them in English. I know this is quite hard for them but as people say, no pain, no gain. After finishing the lesson for the day, as I was putting my things back into my bag, the class monitor asked me, ‘Cikgu, cikgu tak tau cakap BM ka?’ (that is like asking a doctor whether he knows how to do a surgery). I don’t know how to reply to that so as a simple answer, I smiled.

During my lesson, I like to walk around and give them a personal explanation as I know most of them are too shy to admit that they do not know. So as I was explaining to one of my lower intermediate students, of them suddenly said, ‘ Burma, Burma’. I was like, what is he trying to say. So I asked him back, ‘what Burma?’ and he answered ‘ Vietnam, Vietnam’. Only after that I knew that he was asking me whether I come from Burma or Vietnam as I hardly speak in BM with them. I don’t know whether to take that as compliment or an insult. So again, I smiled to him.

Do I look like this Vietnamese?hehe