TEFL Tinmouth Vermont

Tell an American you teach english in Georgia—the country, not the state—and you'll be met with one of three reactions. You'll get a “you mean the state, yes? Atlanta-Georgia?”, a “...wait, you mean... Russia-Georgia? The former Soviet state? Wasn't there a war there recently?” or, most often, a blank stare. Of course, if the person is familiar with world history, they'll be far more likely to know of Georgia. [Note: To be fair, not all Americans are dense! I use the example simply because I'm American.] Georgia has its own language and script, which are unlike any others in the world. Fewer than ten million people worldwide speak the language, which, to a foreigner, sounds like an angry mix of German, Russian, and Arabic. I've spent the past six months teaching english as a second language to elementary school students, as well as a few adults, and while it's stressful at times, it's very rewarding. Usually, I have a Georgian counterpart in the classroom, and we divide teaching duties such that I take over the conversation and comprehension aspect and my co-teacher does grammar and usage. This means I correct pronunciation quite a bit. Quite often, I've found that my co-teacher hasn't learned the right pronunciation for certain words (one example is the phonetic difference between ‘cheer' and ‘chair'), and I've had to re-teach everyone involved. While this is frustrating, it's good practice for me. Georgians tend to get vowel sounds mixed up in english—it's most often the ‘short a', ‘short e' and ‘short i' sounds that are substituted for one another. [I was wished a “veri hapi barsday” by some of my students when I turned 22.] One of the major difficulties that Georgians have with english, as evidenced in the above spelling of ‘birthday' as ‘barsday', is pronouncing the ‘th' sound. (It doesn't even pay to try to explain that there's a hard ‘th' and a soft ‘th' in english!) In my classes, I have students stick their tongues as far between their teeth as they can, and say “Th-h-h-h-h-hhhhhh.” It's popular with all levels, and, as long as everyone else is doing it, students don't feel so silly. Another is the ‘f' sound. It simply doesn't exist in Georgian. Instead, it's replaced with a soft, slightly aspirated ‘p' sound—even in english cognates. (Georgians who were alive during Soviet times use the ‘f' sound, because it exists in Russian; however, because Russian language is no longer a required school subject, many younger Georgians do not use the sound.) Thus, ‘phone' becomes ‘pone,' ‘fantastic' becomes ‘pantastic,' ‘Facebook' becomes ‘Pacebook,' and so on. In this case, as with the ‘th' sound, I have my classes say “fffffffff” together. In the classroom, I use tongue twisters like “Red leather, yellow leather, red leather, yellow leather” for the ‘th' sound and “If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, how many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?” for differences in short e's and i's. Tongue twisters are simple to learn, easy to practice, and sometimes take a long time to master; thus, they're good for all ages. For me, learning Georgian pronunciation has been difficult, so I can understand and relate to my students. There are extraordinarily subtle differences in Georgian sounds, and mistaking a soft sound for a hard sound can drastically change the meaning of a word. The differences in dialects are occasionally problematic, as well. Experiencing this, though, has helped me explain differences between British and American english, and has helped me teach both. Even though British pronunciations are preferred—and closer to Georgian—many people already speak like Americans due to Hollywood films and American pop music. While teaching in Georgia has been, to put it succinctly, an adventure, and while I cringe—or attempt to not laugh—at some of the pronunciations students give me for words (especially those that are mispronounced and come out as curse words in english), I've enjoyed every minute of it.