chuckacinco

I went to Pattaya this weekend. Friendship Market has Siam Fisheries Brand Anchovies in vegetable oil. 290 Baht for a 500 gram jar. There was a smaller jar available.

I was contemplating the savings - Usual 550B VS. 290B =  Savings of 260B (compared to 110 Baht per 100 grams from the tray at the supermarket in the Emporium). However, the bus trip, the hotel, the "entertainment," not much savings but what a great excuse to get out of town.

Dinner?

Fried boneless chicken breasts, a long baguette loaf of chewy fresh bread.

For the dip. A variation on the Bagna Caude recipe - Butter + Garlic + LOTS of Anchovies fried until the anchovies melt and the garlic is very slightly browned. A loaf of chewy fresh bread. Dip the chicken breast in the garlicky anchovy sauce, dip the bread in the garlicky anchovy sauce. MMMmmmmmmm.

chuckacinco

I'm off from work for a week. I'll head down to the Friendship and see it they have another jar.

Thank you for responding.

Chuckacinco

290 Baht for a mayonaise size jar. Keep your eyes peeled for the Siam Fishery Brand.

When the anchovy mood is upon me, these are my favorites...

• Right out of the jar onto wheat crackers
  
• When making Aoili (heads and heads of garlic fried until golden in olive oil, add a giant fistful of anchovies) serve over good pasta, mop up with chewy bread bought at half price at Merriots on Sukhumvit.
  
• Antipasta - with the usual greens, cheeses, pickled peppers, olives, salamis, a whole side platter of anchovies to eat plain with good bread. Lots of good olive oil.

My wife calls anchovies "Falang Pra Ra." I have tried eating the Esarn anchovy equivalent and it is not the same as the anchovies in oil. I'm down to the last bit in the jar. Writing about anchovies might make me break down and buy the imported.

Darrel, let me know how the search goes. I'll keep my end up as well.

Chuckacinco

I was in the same spot quite a few years ago when I had to do the same thing. It was at Matayom Wat That Thong on Sukhumvit 65 (the big funeral temple and the associated school). I had 80 students sitting on the floor in one of the unused funeral halls. It was an hour and a half three times a week “conversation.” The students were the whole range of Matayom from 1 to 6. What a disaster! I tried small groups with small modeled conversations and then visiting each of the small groups to check. Didn't work.

What I did do instead was a series of cloze exercises that ended up working well. Actually working better because of the open space and the large number of students. Basically it involves taping some information on the backs of students (have a female student tape the information on the female students) and giving them time to fill in the cloze spaces or answer questions. They need to read quickly off each others backs like a game and I was surprised and pleased how much English they used. That they had different questions or different clozes stopped them from copying. I would get 20 or 30 minutes. These information gap activities can be as complex or as difficult as you see fit. This can be ANYTHING but for example you could copy the Wikipedia bio of Lady Gaga and other popular stars and tape them on the backs of the students. The students would have to read and copy information like "When was Lady Gaga born?" Where is Lady Gaga from?" Like that. I would guess you have enough experience to see how you could really mix this up with more and more bio (or whatever) and more difficult questions. Keep the fun going and sit back and watch the chaos.

So that's one way. The second way was using a giant boom box radio (the acoustics were terrible) and playing a simple song like Phil Collins' “Groovy Kind of Love” where they had copies of the song and filled in the clozes (clozes?). The bad acoustic will make them guess the words which is the best part of the lesson. We check the answers, reward the winners and then we sing.  All of them. Some English there too.

From these initial classes, eventually I could do more standard English stuff but given the circumstances I thought this worked.

Good Luck

chuckacinco

I really enjoyed the success story at the end. Get out of the power struggle.

For me, so much of the discomfort when I have been in a situation like this was based on the misplaced idea that my competence as a teacher was in question. I don't believe that teaching those that do not wish to be taught to be a requirement for being a good teacher.  There are many books on classroom management and many teaching forums. I would recommend English Teacher Ning as one of the many quality teaching forums.

As a teacher I would resent that I would be in a position to have to enforce my subject on an unwilling audience. I have taught in Bangkok for 20 years at a wide-range of schools. I have never won a power struggle despite being physically large, stern looking, and prepared to teach a specific lesson. I have had success "calling the Thai teacher" but felt like I was copping out. In the end, the middle way of what you are doing sounds good.

In the end, my lesson was how much my ego wanted to control rather find an alternate strategy (what you have discovered). Relax and do the best you can do. I honestly feel in a very short time you will have won them over to a workable (but not perfect) solution. My discovery of finding compromise and trying something new took longer than I'd care to admit.

Please post again. I would love to hear how this works  out.

chuckacinco