More Info on the Dorm and My Classes in Cambodia

Here is some additional information about what I did in the dorm. Hopefully this also will be useful to future leadership residents.

I held some classes with the girls on US history and American women's history. For that, I met with the beginner, intermediate, and advanced groups separately one time a week. I also held a development class once a week that was open to everyone. In this class, we worked on things like writing personal statements for grad school applications, fixing cv's so they would work for the US and other places outside of Cambodia, learning track changes in microsoft word, and finding scholarships and grants.

In addition to those more formal classes, I held smaller sessions with some groups of girls who wanted to work on other things like studying for the IELTS (we would focus on different things like listening, speaking, and reading), working on writing skills, etc. For these, I tended to meet with them two or three times a week.

I found some online radio stations like radio BBC that you are able to stream, pause, and rewind. I did that with Savada, Raksmey, and Tevy to help them get used to hearing English and Australian accents in case those come up during the test. I would play a little bit and then stop and ask them questions and then rewind and listen again if they didn't know or didn't get the answer right.

For some of the intermediate students (Channy, Rina, and Soma) I had one person each meeting find an article online (before class!), use track changes to define words they didn't know, and make a copy of that sheet for each person in the group. Then, I had them take turns reading the paragraphs to work on pronunciation. After that, we went over all the words to make sure they understood them.

I also purchased a lot of books while I was there, and I used some of these books in class. For instance, I worked with some of the girls (Kimleang, So Dany, and Menghun) on reading those books. They each picked one of the classics (like alice in wonderland and the secret garden). Then when we met I had them practice reading for pronunciation, summarize what was happening (this was good to work because they are not good at quick summaries!), and go over a list of vocab they didn't know (I also had them practice using some of the words in a sentence).

It also is good to focus on pronunciation with some of the girls - things like pronouncing the letter "h" versus "a" and the letter "x" which is very tricky for them. The beginners needed some work on the words the, this, and that - the "th" sound. I worked on this some with them in the bathroom, looking in the mirror to make sure their tongues came out while making the sound.