A fabulous story from a teacher who met the ESL-SPIN team at CAMTESOL:

“After attending the CamTESOL conference in February, I returned to Vietnam to volunteer my services as an experienced English teacher. In previous years, I had successfully used the Sing with me! resources with my own students, so I knew they worked, but when I attended Sharon and Carmel’s workshops at the CamTESOL conference, I decided to purchase my own copy and take it back with me to Vietnam.

Vietnamese students of all ages loved the songs. I trialled them with Secondary, High school and University students, even informal sessions with groups of keen learners, but they were a particular hit at Nguyen Nha Centre for people with special needs, in Quy Nhon, central Vietnam.

Voice is critical when learning a new language and I couldn’t think of a better way to develop sounds than through singing. It is so much fun, and using a combination of conversation, rhythm and music seems to free the inhibitions of students learning a language. This is particularly so when working in a group.

In this case, we had the physically disabled sitting on one side of the room and the blind on the other. We managed to direct the blind across the room to those in chairs and still shake hands and use gesture to assist our words when practising “So how are you going?” We had a ball!

In the end I donated the resource (and my new Bose speaker) to the centre, as the students loved to sing and I couldn’t think of any better way to continue as we started!”

Thanks for the great feedback, Jules (and thanks to the centre for permission to use the picture). It’s always so rewarding for writers to hear how their materials have been used….