New to WAYK in Thailand

[R Florey]

Hello, my name is Roy, an American, who has been living in Thailand teaching English for the past three years.  I wanted to find some better ways to teach my students (800 high school juniors and seniors, 50 per class with very weak and confused English) and came across WAYK.  I have been watching the videos but am a bit confused as to how to move from stick rock red pen black pen to more language.  Do I just keep adding verbs and nouns?  Can this be done in large crowded classrooms or is it better suited for my smaller tutoring groups?  

And then I got to thinking, I barely know any Thai.  I am going to see if my wife can teach me and then take what I learn to my class.

In the long video, he talks about hundreds of techniques.  Where can I learn more?  

Thank you Corey for suggesting this.  I have been reading the messages and getting ideas.  I tried rock stick with my tutoring classes this morning and it seemed to work but then I got confused about the signing.  Ah.  So much to learn.  Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

I am also fascinated with language hunting.  I live in the north where there are several hill tribes as well as Chinese and Burmese, not to mention the northern dialect of Thai.

[Benjamin Barrett]

Welcome to the list, Roy!

Here's my take on WAYK. Everyone's is a little different :)

One of the concepts is to teach the grammar with as few vocabulary items as possible. Along the way, you can take diversions from this routine to introduce nouns or verbs, but you try to mimic first language learning by keeping vocabulary to a minimum. I think language researchers say children acquire core grammar with an active vocabulary of about 50 words.

In English, you probably want to sets of objects, one countable and one non-count. A glass of water doesn't work well in a classroom, but a piece of paper and a piece of chalk are two that might work for the non-count. Oh, maybe a third set of objects that are always plural, like glasses and jeans.

To transition from the basics requires some thought on what you want to get at (the grammar points). A good progression is:

This is an X
Is this an X/Y?
give, take, want, have
full, empty (including more/less)

I've never used WAYK with English, but others can probably suggest other good sets.

You don't really need to know Thai. It's nice to explain the techniques, but people, especially kids, will pick them up if you make WAYK fun. For example, I usually teach TQ: How Fascinating! without any explanation. I just do it and laugh and then encourage the other person to join me. After two or three times, they start doing it spontaneously.

The wiki at http://wiki.whereareyourkeys.org/ has a lot of techniques. It's not up right now, so I just e-mailed the wikimaster.

Disclaimer: I've never done a large group. One way is to split 50 students into 10 groups, then have one student from each group come to the front. Split those 10 students into two groups of five, one group playing WAYK and one group watching. (The other students can watch from their desks). You do a set until the students are good, then switch the watching and playing students. When all 10 students know the set, you send them back to their groups to lead while you walk around assisting. It takes a bit of time to get started, but then it takes off.

The sign language aspect can be confusing. I see it as working like this:

1. It blocks the learner from thinking in their native language
2. It provides muscle memory, so you kind of recall as you make the signs
3. The teacher can prompt the learner, signing with the learner so they don't get lost and feel comfortable in the environment

You can use whatever signs you like as long as you're consistent enough for the learners. Evan's idea was that since you're signing, why not sign in ASL and learn that as a bonus. Just Google "what is ASL for X" to find great ASL vocabulary websites. I think the wiki has some, too.

I highly recommend doing a couple of sessions with someone familiar with WAYK to learn a language you don't know. In person is best, but Skype works, too.

I'm envious about your surroundings! I've read part of Scott's "The Art of Not Being Governed" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zomia_%28geography%29) which you might find interesting.

HTH
Ben Barrett
La Conner, WA

Learn Ainu! https://sites.google.com/site/aynuitak1/home

[R Florey]

Thanks, Benjamin.  I appreciate your thoughts.  Teaching this to a large, and generally unruly, class would probably be more difficult and more frustrating than productive.  I tried it with a young lady I tutor yesterday who speaks moderately good English, having her learn the signs and such.  And then, just for fun, I had her show me the same in Thai.  We had much fun doing that so I plan to continue with my wife and other students in small groups.  If I can learn Thai and show them it is possible, that would be a great way to motivate them to learn English with me.  They all know that Teacher Roy mai poot pasa Thai.  

Zomia.  Fascinating!  I was reading that wiki.  It doesn't mention that some tribes were eliminated if they didn't agree with the government over growing opium.  Some tribes are allowed citizenship and others are forced to live on their reservations.  Like many of the American native tribes, the hill tribes used to move every few years, doing their slashing and burning.  Now they can only stay within their designated areas.  I live three hours north of Chiang Mai and have to take a bus to get there.  Along the way we are stopped by soldiers and anyone lacking a Thai ID card (other than us obvious foreigners) are turned back.  My Thai students are mostly from farm families and have little motivation to learn English.  I think the ones who really need it are the tribes so they can communicate with the UN and other international bodies.  

I like your ideas.  I will continue trying this on my own and see where it leads but a Skype meeting would certainly be fun.  

Roy

[Stefan]

Ben,

expanding on 3: the signing also really helps in "scaffolding" a grammatically correct sentence (especially in the beginning), giving the signs in the right order, with the learners filling in the sounds.

4. the learner can use the signs to trigger forgotten words from others, without breaking the flow

the idea with the mass-teaching set-up sounds great, would love to try that :)

Roy, I'm in Hong Kong, so similar time zone, although I don't have too much time, if we can find a spot I'd be happy to do some sessions, for example using German or Cantonese :)

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[Benjamin Barrett]

Stefan,

Interesting. Can you explain the scaffolding idea a bit more? Do you mean it gives a structure that the learners lean on at the beginning?

Best regards

Ben Barrett

La Conner, WA

Learn Ainu! https://sites.google.com/site/aynuitak1/home

[Stefan]

in some languages, the word order is important and/or obscure in some situations. for example, in German, word order changes when it's a question, or a relative sub-sentence (sorry, not great on official grammar terms :P ). So when they struggle with that, but have a grasp on the words themselves, I show them the signs just in time when they are producing the sentence, guiding them through it. Often I will only show the signs for the key words that they have problems with. I think that's generally a good thing: to find a balance of signing only so much that people don't get lost, but it's still a minimal challenge (meaning, they are still actively participating). did that make anything clearer? :) otherwise, I'll try again ;)

[Benjamin Barrett]

That is a great technique. Thank you for sharing!

[R Florey]

Hi Stefan,

Yes I would like to take you up on that.  Let's try an evening sometime this week if you can, or I can find a time during my school day.  Do you happen to know Mandarin, as well?  We are considering moving to Taiwan for a year or two and would like to learn some of that before we go.  

You can find me on Skype at roy.florey1 or write me at roy_f...@yahoo.com.  That offer is open to any of you.

I am a barely trained teacher with a TEFL, approaching 60 after spending my life as an auditor in the US.  Auditing paid much better but teaching is far more fulfilling.  

[Joel Thomas]

Welcome on board. There's a lot of material out there, I've tried to collate some of it here and here. I don't have much else to add at the moment except to wish you every success. Please keep us posted!

[R Florey]

I was talking to some of my students and fellow teachers about Where Are Your Keys and I kept getting a funny look from them.  Then I remembered.  Key in Thai is s**t.  I think I will call this Where Are Your Shoes.

[Stefan]

hehe, a colleague of mine recently got funny looks when introducing himself, "JoJo", to a group of 100 10-year-olds. sounds very similar to http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/words/60385/ it turns out.

yahoo once had the great idea to greet you in a random language. I first noticed it when they greeted me with a big "Bok, Stefan!" one day. very small under it it said "'bok' means 'hello' in Czech. well, it also means shit in Turkish (I'm from Cologne in Germany, so fluent in street Turkish ;)

On Mon, Sep 8, 2014 at 1:55 PM, R Florey <flor...@gmail.com> wrote:

I was talking to some of my students and fellow teachers about Where Are Your Keys and I kept getting a funny look from them.  Then I remembered.  Key in Thai is s**t.  I think I will call this Where Are Your Shoes.

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[R Florey]

If I am having a native speaker teach me using WAYK, does that person also need to sign?  How do I communicate with them about want, have, take, and such if they don't understand me?  

I am also going to try this myself in one of my classes next term.  Thai schools end their first semester in a few weeks and I don't want to get this going until we start up again.  Some classes seem like I could get them to play, participate or watch.  Most of my students can barely speak English and I want to show them they can if they have a pattern to follow.  It was actually the path I was on at the beginning of the year but didn't have anything as formal as WAYK.  

 

[Benjamin Barrett]

I wonder if Stefan has some good ideas for creating a fun atmosphere in a way where you can still control your unruly classes. WAYK really should be game-like, but it does require a learning intention by the learner. I find WAYK to be incredibly engaging.

I haven't heard back from the wikimaster, Alan, on the WAYK wiki. Does anyone know if he's on vacation?

In the meantime, the wiki can be seen on the Wayback Machine. See http://wiki.whereareyourkeys.org/Main_Page, with a link to techniques on that page.

As for Scott, he specifically says in his preface that his theory applies no later than 1945. It's been heavily criticized, as he and the wiki mention, but his idea is useful regardless of its application to Zomia. Somewhere, I have a book on the Isan, which I recall enjoying a lot. I will try to find the title.

As you probably know, Thai has a lot of variations, including intelligibility with Lao (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_language, http://www.ethnologue.com/subgroups/southwestern-4), so you'll probably find a lot of variation depending on where you are. People might be sensitive to those differences so that the national version is high-prestige (like Japanese) or just blow off the differences as unimportant trivia.

Keep us all in the loop with how things go! Joel's got a great blog and Arne Sostack has an online WAYK device (http://inthehat.dk/). Also, the WAYK website is supposed to have a huge makeover in the near future that should be exciting.

Best regards
Ben Barrett
La Conner, WA

Learn Ainu! https://sites.google.com/site/aynuitak1/home

[R Florey]

As you progress to more nouns and verbs, does the signing start to disappear?  Every time I talk to someone here about doing this, they come up with another word and I think, wait, stop, I need to find the sign for that first.  

I tried this with a couple of my students today and I think I can make it work.  I looked around and could see that every student comes with a notebook, a red and black pen and a backpack.  I could use phones but I don't know if everyone has one.  I also prefer to keep phones inside backpacks.  

I showed them a film these last few weeks that is a short story of a boy and girl in high school.  She is deaf.  It is a sweet story and when signing was being done, a number of students signed along.  My thought is to have everyone set up their desk with the props and then walk them through the process as I understand it.  I will set up a camera to record what I do.  

[Sky Hopinka]

Hi Roy, welcome to the group!

To answer your signing question, yes, the signs do start to disappear.  Usually after proficiency is reached with the Who/What/Where/When/Why/How Many level of language is reached, and concepts within those levels are reached or touched upon.  But, whenever this is a hiccup or speed trap in the language, it's always good to go back to signing to help provide a safety net for the student. 

You mentioned watching the videos, so that's a good start.  The videos on the vimeo page are not really well organized, but the video that I think is a good place to start with understanding the Techniques and Travels with Charlie is the WAYK at AICLS Conference, and it has a Lotus at the end with Dustin Rivers.

https://vimeo.com/30338923

I've also attached two documents.  One is the basic Universal Speed Curriculum (Universal Speed curriculum vers 06 word  02 06 2012) that broadly runs through the concepts of early novice levels of language that are in Travels with Charlie, and the second document (English USC) is what David and I were working on in China to teach English a few years ago.  That one was a work in progress and there are issues with it.  It is still very much an incomplete draft but I hope you can take something from it in your approach to teaching. Also, some of the TQ names have been adapted for the Chinese learners, like instead of Craigslists we have Vocabulary Lists.  

I hope these resources help, and again welcome to the group!

Sky

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[R Florey]

Thank you, Sky.  I doubt many people here in my small town would know Craig's List either.  I was going to do something similar.  

[R Florey]

10 Nouns.  Evan mentions in his videos that I only need ten nouns to learn any language.  Is that documented somewhere?  For English I would include To Be, To Go, To Do and To Have. 

[R Florey]

I said nouns and I listed verbs.  My bad.  I can't think of ten most common English nouns.  

[Joel Thomas]

I think the point is that ten nouns are enough to create setups and target conversations to cover all fundamental grammatical concepts.

On 11 September 2014 17:53, R Florey <flor...@gmail.com> wrote:

I said nouns and I listed verbs.  My bad.  I can't think of ten most common English nouns.  

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[Sky Hopinka]

How fascinating! To second what Joel said, these nouns can be anything as long as they support the grammar you're trying to teach. 

That being said, you won't know what those ten nouns are right off the bat. A cup, a stick, and a pen work for a good while. A cup and a dollar work well with teaching concepts of mine and yours. A thing that Evan likes to do to establish a cup is his is lick it. It is now TQ:Obviously his cup. 

A dollar works well with want/have/give/take, but not in all languages. The idea being mainly to find an object that your student or the group would really like to have. Which is where TQ A Few of my Favorite Things comes in. The ten nouns could vary student to student, with that idea being to find objects and things they like and like to talk about. 

A thing to think about with English is how soon would you want to introduce a/an and finding objects that would fit within your plan. 

Hope that helps!

Sky 

On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 9:53 AM, R Florey <flor...@gmail.com> wrote:

I said nouns and I listed verbs.  My bad.  I can't think of ten most common English nouns.  

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[Benjamin Barrett]

I haven't used WAYK for English, but maybe three sets of nouns would be adequate: one countable, one non-count and one of things that are always plural, like glasses and jeans.

[Stefan]

Ben: for German, I've used items of the three grammatical genders, to cover that. So yeah, I think the idea is not to limit it to 10, but to realize that you can get a hell of a lot language from very few well-chosen items.

Roy: about the signing, I think I forgot to finish my thought earlier, while doing "complete" signing in the beginning, to establish some core sentence structures, I quite quickly reduce this, only signing pivotal elements of a sentence. When I realize players are weak on another element, I give them the sign for this at the right time, and if that's not enough, the sign + the sound. Always trying to find a balance there. Ah, just realized I already wrote something like that earlier in the thread, ha! bad memory :P

S.

[Stefan]

Well, I'm not that good at keeping large groups focused, but one idea that comes to mind is to get them by their curiosity. Establish a strong presence (something I'm slowly becoming better at), and giving them the idea that being in the circle is a privilege. Then encourage them to switch into the circle. Probably important never to give the impression that it's something you "should" do (thinking about school thinking in Germany when I was small, not sure how that works in Thailand).

That said, I never managed to create an opportunity to do WAYK with bigger groups, but would really love to do so. My biggest group at the moment is five, which is great fun, but they are adult learners that come by their own will.

I vaguely remember some Youtube documentary about a great teacher that got the kids immersed in some detective story or something for the whole year, unfortunately can't find it. He used an acronym like SMART or so…

[R Florey]

First, thank you to Caylie and Stefan for taking the time to teach me WAYK via Skype. Sorry my Thai internet isn't terribly reliable, but I came away with a head full of ideas.  Full, but not drowning.

One of the things I have the most problem with in Thailand is getting students to use articles like A and An.  I just use the sign for A and make them say it. I have practiced with a couple of students in school and tonight I worked with two middle school boys.  They quickly got bored with what is this and make me say yes and no, so I moved to me, my, mine, yours, and so on.  That started to get them tired as I teased one boy by telling him he looked like melting butter.  That got a good laugh.

I am coming at this with cross purposes.  I want to teach English and I want to learn Thai.  I have a break coming up, so my wife, who was able to get trained by Stefan today, will work with me to teach me Thai.  When school starts up again at the end of October I am going to try WAYK at school.  I teach 14 classes, two of them twice a week, so I have 16 different times to teach.  The English is only slightly better in some rooms but, on the whole, mostly terrible.  The better classes are better behaved and motivated, though, so I will experiment with them first.  My Monday classes always have to suffer with Teacher Roy trying something new on them.  By Wednesday, I usually have it perfected.  

I looked around my students desks as they sat there and I started observing what things each student has.  They all wear uniforms, carry backpacks, and then they each have a little bag with blue and red pens.  They carry white out, as well, so I might use that some time.  Then they also have notebooks.  Basically they have a simple collection of common items.  I will choose four and have them put them in a square on their desks.  From there, I will demonstrate and get them to respond.  I will add money later but Thai baht instead of dollars.  ;-)

There has been very positive response to the ASL so I will start with that.  I teach juniors and seniors who have had over ten years of English but still can barely put a sentence together.  I think this method will get them started and they get to learn grammar along the way.

I will keep you posted on my progress.  

[Cory Faris]

Roy, I'm glad you're giving this a try.  It will take some work to figure out how to implement WAYK the best for your groups.  One change I would suggest is to not use the ASL sign for the letter "a".  That doesn't mean anything to them and is not obvious enough.  Instead, I use my index finger to designate that I have one.  I have my palm facing me rather than away like you normally would.  Just my suggestion to make it more "Obvious".

[R Florey]

The next statement should be said in your best valley girl voice.  Oh my god!

My wife and I had an online lesson from Stefan Friday and Caylie gave me a lesson the day before both via Skype.  Prior to that, I had tried a bit of WAYK with some of my students and with my wife.   Now that she watched it, we had our second lesson this afternoon.  The first time, we got a little mixed up and started skipping around too much and I got lost.  This time, we were able to get through to yours, mine, etc.  At first, she had to get past the fact at how totally ignorant I am of her language despite being married to her for nine years.  Once we did that, we had so much fun.  I can now say this book is mine, is that book yours? and whose bag is this?  That was my epiphany.  She saw me picking up the language and, having real objects in front of me, I was able to connect the words to the discussion.  The signs brought it all together.  I knew almost no Thai grammar.  I now know that when I ask whose book is this, who is the last word.  I kept saying things using English grammatical rules and got the strangest looks from people.

Thank you all so much.  You are building a true believer in WAYK.  Make is simple.  Make it obvious. I am going to tempt fate and try this with my classes tomorrow.  Two of them are pretty good with English and one is not.  Yesterday, I was able to take a high school boy through this is and what is this and, for the first time, he was able to ask me a question.  

Next lesson.  Want, have, give and take.  There are three ways to say want in Thai.  This should be fascinating!

[R Florey]

Hello again.  Sorry if I am filling this space a bit, but I wanted to share something with you today.  If you have ever taught in Thailand, you know it is quite rare to get students to ask for anything other than to go to the bathroom.  They are taught to not ask.  Today, I tried WAYK for the first time in a class.  Since this is coming up to finals week, many of the students were missing.  My core group was there, though, so I told them to take out a black pen, blue pen, notebook and pad.  I taught them the hand signs for this, is, what, you, me and a few others.  I got them to talk to me and then to ask each other.  They went so fast with me, I ran out of ideas.  My brain may have been a bit heat-addled as well.  One student stood up and said with big eyes, "Teach me more!"  In three years I have never had a student ask me that.  I am going to spend my evening learning more signs and be ready to do more.  

[Stefan]

加油! :)

[ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/加油 ]

On Mon, Sep 15, 2014 at 6:09 PM, R Florey <flor...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello again.  Sorry if I am filling this space a bit, but I wanted to share something with you today.  If you have ever taught in Thailand, you know it is quite rare to get students to ask for anything other than to go to the bathroom.  They are taught to not ask.  Today, I tried WAYK for the first time in a class.  Since this is coming up to finals week, many of the students were missing.  My core group was there, though, so I told them to take out a black pen, blue pen, notebook and pad.  I taught them the hand signs for this, is, what, you, me and a few others.  I got them to talk to me and then to ask each other.  They went so fast with me, I ran out of ideas.  My brain may have been a bit heat-addled as well.  One student stood up and said with big eyes, "Teach me more!"  In three years I have never had a student ask me that.  I am going to spend my evening learning more signs and be ready to do more.  

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[Benjamin Barrett]

Hooray! That's the WAYK bug.

[R Florey]

The adventure continues with Where Are Your Keys. Today I introduced it three of my classes to it having them place a red and blue pen, notebook and bag on their desks. I taught them the hand signs along with the words and they all learned it very quickly. We all had fun.

One set of signs I taught was want, have, give and take. We played a bit with I want your pen, may I have your pen and so on. I had them practice asking and answering yes or no.

With that success to start with, I went home and had Nee teach me the same in Thai. That is where the fun really began. I asked how to say I want. Well, you don't just say I want, you would say may I have or may I borrow unless it is a command. If I want to order some food, I say Kaa. If I want to demand something I say dtone gan. And I I just want to say I don't want something I say Ow. Mai ow for don't want. But I don't ask for something saying Ow. And I would really say Kaa yuum to borrow, if I plan to give it back, and....now I think I need a beer.

We never got past the blue pen.  I used blue because no one carries black ones.  

One of the challenges of this game is that it has some ethnocentricity about it that I have to change.  Simple things like switching the rock and stick for something more common to my students' lives.  Also, as you can see, a simple want, have, give and take can send both my and their minds off ion a magical mystery tour.  I was glad to see my students enjoy it.  As I have large classes, I decided to have each row ask the person next to them to tell them yes.  And then on the way back to tell them no.  With so many, it was difficult to oversee.  I heard more English in my room than I had in three years so I think I am on the right path.

I came into teaching because I was laid off from a very good paying job in the US.  When I found people my own age with the same background who had been out of work for two years already, I decided to head to my wife's home country and try my luck teaching.  I will never go back to my old career. This is where I belong.

[Arne Sostack]

Hello!

It's great that you're having fun, and the kids too!

When playing with Nee, at least, I would suggest not asking her to translate (TQ: Save the fairies), but try instead to make an obvious setup (TQ: Obviously and TQ: Setup) so there's no doubt what you want to say. For the pen, I'd give her the pen, and then grab a note pad, pat your pockets and then do the signs and say something rubbish (TQ: Mumble) to indicate that you'd like the pen. Before you'd have instructed her to correct your mistakes (TQ: Correct one thing), and use full sentences (TQ: Full sentence). Oh, and if she's getting into it, she could do TQ: Just in time and TQ: Pull you through it. Don't worry about how something translates, it's more important that you say the right thing.

After you've established a pattern of speech (Let's say you end up with kaa yuum to get the pen), you'd go through "TQ: Prove it" by trying it out with some other things (Can I get a glass of water using Kaa yuum? No? Oh! How fascinating!)

I realize that doing this with the kids might not work at all, but translating up front just doesn't feel very WAYK-y to me, and in a one on one with a "friendly" (as in someone who is trying to understand WAYK on top of wanting to help you)  fluent speaker, you want to push the accelerators :)

Would it be possible to teach in smaller groups, and have the groups disperse and push what they learnt to each other? Like, you teach "want" to one group of five. Then they each go play with 4 others (so after one round, 25 people know "want"). Meanwhile, you teach "have" to another group of five, and they go push that to 20 more, and so on. Afterwards, you mix up the groups to have both "haves" and "wants" and they can make exchanges, so everyone knows "have" and "want" at the end.  I have no idea if that would work at all.

Anyway, I think it's great that you're having success with such a large group. Keep it up, do TQ: Kaizen (continuous improvement), and let us know what you find out!

Arne

[R Florey]

Thanks, Arne.  I only translated for the students once to let them see the difference between the two languages.  These kids have had English taught to them for several years, but it has been so poor, few can speak.  However, most could understand this is and such in the beginning.  The signing slowed them down though they were enjoying it.  Most of what I am covering they know but haven't put it together into coherent conversation.  WAYK, or I suppose my variant, is letting them do that.  I am not much on dogma about any method.  I just do what works and so far this works.

I do work with groups one at a time, walking around the room.  Some got it and others need refreshing.  They enjoyed asking each other questions.

I will try what you suggest with my wife.  Kaa yuum actually means to borrow, not take.  Hai yuum is to loan.  For me, it is opening my eyes to the differences in the language and the culture.

I like the have and want idea.  That could work with some of my classes.  Thank you for the suggestions.  I am going to start a blog about this and post a link to it.  

[Arne Sostack]

Once again, my brain gets ahead of what I'm writing. I meant to say that you had learnt to use "kaa yuum" when asking for the pen. It's great to have your eyes opened, but it's easier to get things to stick if you do TQ: Limit and learn bite sized pieces :)

Looking forward to the blog!

[R Florey]

I have spent the last two weeks introducing my classes to WAYK.  Rocks and sticks don't hold much meaning to them nor does Craigs List.  I also just call it red pen, blue pen because of the meaning of the word Key in Thai.  I modified the objects to what everyone carries, a red pen, a blue pen, a notebook and a bag.  Over the years I have introduced them to various programs that either went well or bombed out of hand.  I was pleasantly surprised to have every room accept and take part.  Even in some of my worst behaved rooms, I was able to get them to play along.  Where it quickly broke down, though, was when I tried to get them to work together in small teams.  I would spend so much time with team one that by the time I got to other teams, they were already doing their homework for another class.  

Where it has worked best is for my students I tutor at home.  One is a 6th grade girl who barely speaks English and we were getting frustrated with because she was not able to retain what we taught her.  I played my red pen, blue pen game with her and got her laughing and remembering.  She has been with me three lessons now and I just have to start What with my hand and she says, "what is this?"  She especially liked telling me NO! when I told her I was going to take her notebook.

These are my observations.  WAYK seems to work better for my students with almost no English.  For my better classes, I found I was going through more and more signs and couldn't keep up.  A good thing, of course.  I now have to make it more challenging for them.  This is the end of their semester and they will be out of school until the end of October.

In the meantime, my wife is working with me on my Thai.  I am able to remember more though I still have a long way to go.

[Arne Sostack]

Maybe when they know more English, the signs are less important, so you could focus on making the obvious setup and "railroading" the conversation? It does seem from what I've seen that more advanced levels of WAYK are much more free-form, which I guess is natural. Often, even if you don't have the exact word you need, you can give a description or some approximation that'll get your partner to provide the right word. E.g. "This woman, she is my girlfriend, but more... We're not married, but we will be." "Oh, you're engaged?" "Yes! We are engaged! How fascinating!"

/Arne