�How to Perform a Play in English without Knowing English�.� That was the name of the presentation I gave today to an auditorium full of Education students.� Ok�it wasn�t the official title, but it was definitely the title in my head.� I was asked to give this presentation for the Student Development Class.� In case you�ve forgotten about Student Development Class, it�s a surprisingly expensive required course in which students take turns singing karaoke.� They also write and perform plays in English once a year, hence the presentation about how to perform a play in English without knowing English.

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Now, I know it isn�t impossible to give performances in languages you don�t actually know.� I used to accompany vocal students at NAU who were always singing in Italian, French, and German.� But those students took diction classes where they learned the pronunciation of those languages.� They didn�t learn how to sing in French by sitting in on a 2-hour lecture about French by a French person who doesn�t speak English.�

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As I�m sure you can tell, I went into this presentation with a bad attitude.� My attitude got much worse as the event unfolded, however.� Before I go into that, I should clarify what I knew about the presentation before I went into the auditorium.� I knew that I needed to fill a length of time ranging anywhere from 10 minutes to 2 hours with a talk about �English�.� I couldn�t talk about pronunciation, because Daniel was covering that.� I was brainstorming for weeks, and I couldn�t come up with anything useful.� You just can�t learn a language by listening to someone talk about the language for a couple of hours.� Eventually, I settled on talking about nonverbal communication.� I wrote some notes on the subject and could really only scrounge up about 10 minutes worth of material.� The jist of my talk was this:� Last semester, I couldn�t hear anyone�s lines because the audience screamed and cheered through most of the performances.� Make sure your actions are good enough that no one needs to hear or understand your words.� (Don�t worry!� I made it sound nicer than that!)

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So this afternoon I asked what time I needed to give my presentation.� The answer was �sometime between 3 and 6�.� When I went into the auditorium, there was a table with 3 chairs and microphones.� There were also 3 name cards.� From far away, it looked like 2 of the names were in Thai.� The one in English was Daniel�s.� I was really offended that they asked me to do this presentation and then didn�t set up a place for me.� This led to angry venting (in my mind, not out loud) about how I�ve been working for KKU for 7 months and my name still isn�t on the office door.� We were sitting to the side of the stage waiting to be introduced when Sarantip told me that we needed to speak for 2 hours.� This information just made the anger inside boil up more, but I managed to keep it in and say �I�m sorry.� I can only talk for 10 minutes.�� When we were all asked to take our places on the stage, I saw that one of the name cards was actually for me.� It was just written really small in funny font.� I felt silly for being so angry.

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The presentation was pretty bad.� It�s disheartening to look out at a bunch of blank, uncomprehending faces in your audience.� It feels like there�s no point to speaking.� And really, there was no point.� I didn�t have anything useful to say, and the students didn�t understand me anyway.

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I try to avoid writing about my frustrating experiences in my blog.� I don�t want to sound unhappy or negative, and I certainly don�t want to dwell on things I don�t like about working here.� But I have to say that I really hate these events where I�m expected to talk for hours on end about nothing, and with no preparation.� I like to think I�m a flexible person, but I�m just not that flexible!