Vietnamese Teacher: Answer the Children

How to play: you are at the front of a class — a different one every level, from a kindergarten at the first to a university lecture hall at the last — and the questions come at you. A pupil puts a hand up, stands at their desk and asks you something in Vietnamese — about the school, when the day starts and ends, the timetable, the homework, a test, the exams, a subject, a mark — and three things can be wanted of you. Sometimes you have to say what they asked, in English, so the four options are English. Sometimes you have to answer them, so the four options are Vietnamese. And sometimes a pupil cannot yet form the question at all and asks you how to ask it, so the four options are Vietnamese questions and one of them is quietly an answer instead. What every period is really teaching is the QUESTION: ai and gì, ở đâu and đi đâu, mấy giờ and khi nào and bao giờ, tại sao answered with vì, như thế nào, bao nhiêu against mấy, and the four ways of asking yes or no — each of which is answered with its own word back, because Vietnamese has no all-purpose yes. Every line is spoken aloud, with the pronunciation guide and the English written underneath at the easier difficulties. A wrong pick shows what would have worked, teaches why, and the question comes round again later, so a period always ends well however it goes. Five periods make the day: who and what, what time and when, where, why, and how and how many. There is no losing and no time limit; the clock only remembers how long the period took, and the stars how many questions you got right first time.

Level and Difficulty are two different rows. The Level row is where on the Lesson 15 scale the next period sits — the same levels the course wall is divided into, numbered the same way. Each level teaches the period the lesson has reached: the lesson's early levels open the day's gentler classes, and from level five the timetable holds at its fullest while the lesson keeps going. The three difficulties are how much of each line is written down: Beginner puts the respell and the English under every sentence, Intermediate the respell alone, Advanced the Vietnamese by themselves. The difficulty is a free choice at every level. It is the fifteenth lesson of the Vietnamese course — and the only one in which you are the one being asked.