I’m in a Vietnamese language Meetup with the vague goal of getting together once in awhile to practice conversation. What tends to happen though is everyone feels awkward and ends up speaking English for about 80% of it. I could really use some suggestions for driving the process forward. Most of the people who show up know basic vocabulary and pronunciation, but there’s a wide variety of skill levels. Also, some can read, but not speak well, while others can speak, but not read well.
Ages ago, I was in a similar club for German speaker in Chicago.
You mention some are not good at reading, but this is a group to practice speaking, so who cares if they can read it well or not?
Regarding what to do in the group, I would suggest simple introductions to each other, and then throw out some ideas:
Travel discussion with photos?
Perhaps tell some folk tales and/or poetry?
Listen/sing some songs in the language - perhaps by popular stars from “back in the day” or current singers today?
Share recipes or cook together, speaking only the language.
Let each person plan perhaps a 15 -30 minute activity each meeting, so you have a variety of things to do and talk about?
There is only so much “organization” you can do in such a group - let it evolve naturally, otherwise you are forcing people to do something they might not want to do and will then stop showing up.
Have fun!
The Japanese language club my daughters belong to has regular movie nights when they show Japanese videos. They also bring in Japanese music and books to discuss. They’ve brought in speakers from our local Japanese-American society, and the university’s Japanese students are encouraged to attend.
If you’re in San Diego, there’s probably a fairly large Vietnamese community you can draw on. If there’s a Vietnamese-American organization in town (and there probably is), they could be a great resource.
For my French language conversation circle in university, a couple of fun things we tried were playing games in French (e.g. Monopoly) and watching French TV shows (The Flintstones/Les Cailloux, Asterix) and discussing them afterwards.
I belong to an American Sign language meetup group – maybe we’re just crazy chatty but keeping discussion alive never seems to be a problem and we have all levels - from native fluency to “started yesterday”. Do people feel like they always have to talk “with the group”? Most people feel less inhibited in clusters of two or three. Have you tried “speed dating” - everyone chats with one person for 10 minutes then switches.
Make it a rule that no English is allowed.
Thanks for all the suggestions!
I like the idea of using pictures to start a conversation. I’m not sure about watching movies though. Either we’d watch with subtitles and people would stop listening, or without, and many people wouldn’t understand at all.
Games sound good, though there are no Vietnamese versions of any game I know of. Cards would work.
I don’t know if it’s the people in the group, or the relative difficulty (and lack of cognates) of the Vietnamese language, but we’re not chatty at all. That’s what I’m trying to kick start. ASL obviously doesn’t have cognates either, so what do you do when someone doesn’t understand a sign or three in a sentence? Do you let them struggle, or translate it for them?