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16th August, 2010
KOTA KINABALU: A group of students from the United Kingdom were impressed with the level of English among some kampung kids in Tambunan and hoped they had stayed longer to help boost it up.
The group was in Sabah for four weeks recently and as part of their homestay itinerary in Kg. Monsok in Tambunan, they had the opportunity to visit SK Monsok and to provide English lessons for the school children.
27-year-old Louisa Boldon, leader of the Outlook Expeditions, a UK- based company which has collaborated with the Tambunan Village Homestay over the last three years, said although she enjoyed the 8-day homestay tremendously she would have loved to spend more time teaching the local children English.
“The children started to relax and use English around us a bit more after a while. I would like to spend more time in schools to see how the lessons were run and deliver some English lessons to students,” said Louisa, who leads a group of 11 students from the all-boy Wilsons School from Wallington, United Kingdom. Louisa also teaches BTEC vocational courses back in the UK.
Another group leader, Jamie Parkinson, 28, said he had plenty of opportunity to communicate with the children and he believed this had helped improve their English.
“The children’s spoken English is quite good compared to their written English. I think it would be particularly useful for us to go into the schools and to teach some English lessons – that could have been valuable during our stay in Kg. Monsok,” said Jamie, who teaches A-Level students science and biology in the UK.
Students Jacob Boitel-gill, 16, and Tom Gower, 17, said they were pleasantly surprised and impressed by the children’s level of English.
“During our visit to the classroom we went through some English stuff with the kids,” said Tom.
“Their grasp of English was a lot better than I expected so they ended up teaching us more Malay than we taught them English. Two members of my host family were quite fluent in English. I was able to interact with the locals in English and able to learn some Malay at the same time.”
Jacob, who said his host family spoke very little English, admitted that he was impressed by the children’s level of English which he thinks was of “good quality”.
“If I had to do it again I’d spend more time with the lessons, teach the children English to enable me to interact with them to see more of their side of life,” he said.
Visitors of the homestay programme stayed in homes with varying degree of facilities during their stay in Tambunan. Some stayed in houses equipped with modern facilities while others stayed in wooden houses with the host families.
Louisa and student Jacob stayed in houses which they said had modern facilities that were quite similar to what they had back at home in their country, including shower with hot water, flushing toilet, and TV.
“Maybe it would have been better for me and the boys to live in more basic houses to represent a completely different way of life to what we have back at home,” suggested Louisa.
Tom and Jamie, on the other hand, stayed in houses with basic facilities like a squat toilet and cold shower but took it rather well. “It wasn’t a massive culture shock to me except for the shower (which didn’t always work) but otherwise I was satisfied with the facilities,” said Tom.
Jamie said the facilities were not “as basic” as he thought they would be. “The house I stayed in was a wooden house and you could see dogs and cats and chicken walking in and out of the house – that was a fantastic experience – I think the boys (they have never been to Asia) who stayed with me coped with their new environment very well and did not have any complaints.”
Meanwhile, when asked what they would love to see included in a homestay programme in the future, Jamie said although the community aspect was very good more building activities could have been organised for visitors.
“We’ve got to interact with the community a lot but I think perhaps we could have spent more time on building activities, we could have helped build more stuff for the local people,” said Jamie.
Jacob, too, thinks that the group should have been involved with more building projects. “We helped build a shelf and notice board for the school during our stay. I wish we had built more things and done more activities with the schoolchildren,” he said. As for Louisa, she said she particularly enjoyed the part where the host families organized a get-together where everyone brought food.
“One evening they let us cook for them which was really nice. More evenings like that would be good as it was easier for us to interact and be with the community when we were all together with the other locals who were able to speak English,” she said.
“I’d also like to see two contrasting villages to see how they are and to see what experiences to be gained from living in two different places,” she said.
Tom said the people were very welcoming and he would like to see more of the surrounding areas. “We had one trip to the market. It would be nice to have a second organised trip to Tambunan or to some other local area.”
The best part about the homestay programme, according to the visitors, were becoming part of the community and forming friendship with the locals and children.
“We really felt part of the community very quickly, perhaps within a day or two. When we left it was like leaving home and it was quite upsetting,” said Jamie.
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