The Lost Art of Letter-writing

As Yuletide approaches, we are told by the boss to ignore any other holidays and focus on Christmas. First order of business: to teach the students how to write a letter to Santa. We had two lessons to do this, but we were supposed to only take ten minutes per lesson. Sure.  Most of my students are under the age of ten and have never heard the English name for Santa. In fact, many of my students had no idea who Santa is. So, the first lesson was spent showing them Christmas. The only convenient book was a pop-up book and I don’t care how old you are, you are always more fascinated by what pops up than whatever else is going on.

In the next lesson, a sample letter was written out for them that already said “Dear Santa, My name is____________.” This was the first snag…

The trouble with Asian English education is that the students memorize language for a certain situation, but they never learn that sometimes the language can be used in another situation. For example, if I am in class and I ask a student “What is your name?” The student will reply in a robotic voice, “My name is [Peers].” But if you ask outside of school, on a test paper, or on a letter to Santa, it might as well be Cantonese.

Confused student impression.

Therefore I got a bunch of “Teacher, what!?!” I said, “Write your name.” And they do their best pug impression and go “HUH?” I go write my name on board. And they go “Ohhh!” Eight out of ten students will write their name, but the other two will write my name. Ok. That is finished and fixed.

Now onto line two: “I have been really good this year.” Oh jeeze, now we have “I’ve ben rely gob tis yen” Ok so fix that as many students are saying “Teacher! Teacher! Finished.” And I am saying “No! Check it!” And of course they don’t. Now, the class is over time and hasn’t finished the last lines of the letter.

Next lesson: for the more advanced students they wrote “May I get some toys?” The little kids just finish off with a “Merry Christmas!” (mainly because I cannot be bothered to go any further). Amazingly enough, this has also gone over time. The addition of a school-wide Christmas bingo game in which my first semester English kids are expected to read and say “decorations,” “ornaments,” and “gingerbread,” when they cannot even tell the difference between the words “orange” and “red” adds more confusion.

Their homework was to write the letter into a nice card for Santa and to have their parents go onto Google maps to find their mailing address. Oh the age of electronics where nothing is ever snail mailed anymore! Now the students have their card (which they’ve somehow managed to mess up by attempting to copy incorrectly, but Santa is forgiving), and their addresses. The TA teaches them how to address the envelope. She writes her name to show that the students need to put their names on the return address. Of course, several students write the TA’s name instead of theirs. Then they start writing the return address at the bottom of the envelope, at the stamp side, or wrapped around the entire envelope. Ok, so they cannot judge distance yet with their writing.

Next we glue Santa’s address to the envelope. The TA freaks out because many people haven’t written “To: Santa” even though the printed address is addressed to Santa Claus already. Time to put on the postage! It usually costs about $13 to $18 NTD to mail a card to the US and the UK. But these kids had one $1 stamp or six $5 stamps. All the stamps are the lick kind, but the kids are fighting over glue sticks to glue the stamps on ALL OVER the envelopes. I show them that all they have to do is lick the stamps, but that concept seems foreign and disturbing to them.

A student started handing out stickers for the other kids. All the children grabbed the stickers and sealed up their envelopes with the cards still lying on the desk. I can’t wait to teach them Christmas carols.