Presented below are the strands and learning standards for my area of concentration, Foreign Languages, prescribed by the Basic Education Core Curriculum:
Strand 1: Language for Communication
Standard F1.1: Understanding and capacity for interpreting what has been heard and read
from various types of media and the ability to express opinion with proper
reasoning.
Standard F1.2: Possessing language communication skills for effective exchange of data and information and efficient expression of feelings and opinion.
Standard F1.3: Ability to present data and information and concepts and views on various matters by speaking and writing.
Strand 2: Language and Culture
Standard F2.1: Appreciating relationship between language and culture of native speakers and capacity for use of language appropriate to occasions and places.
Standard F2.2: Appreciating similarities and differences between language and culture of native speakers and Thai speakers, and capacity for correct and appropriate use of language.
Strand 3: Language and Relationship with Other Learning Areas
Standard F3.1: Using foreign languages to link knowledge with other learning areas and as foundation for further development, to seek knowledge and widen one’s world view.
Strand 4: Language and Relationship with Community and the World
Standard F4.1: Ability to use foreign languages in various situations in school, community, and society.
Standard F4.2: Using foreign languages as basic tools for further education, livelihood, and exchange of learning with the world community.
As I was getting more and more experiences in Thailand, I experienced it myself the struggle of being a foreign teacher, who knows very little about the Thai language, exerting all the efforts that I could possibly give just to make my students speak and understand the English language piece by piece. It was difficult to get them hooked, especially knowing that they have somehow a degree of resistance in utilizing the language they really consider it as something new, something different, and something very unusual to them. Then I have learned that it takes a very well blended mixture of passion, commitment, and relation. I worked a lot to show my students and make them feel that I love what I was doing and I was very willing to help them.
Considering the fact that I my questions are only limited due to language barrier, I tried to contextualize my examples. I let them become my human visual aids, make use of their own daily activities as examples, allowed them to hand me some of their things that might be used as a material or as an example, and gave them activities in line to their own experiences and preferred activities.