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R O Y A L U N I V E R S I T Y O F P H N O M P E N H
An Interview with a Deputy Director of the Institute of Foreign Languages
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
An Interview with a
Deputy Director of IFL
1
Annual fundraising
event and charity trip
2
Strangers: A short story 2
School to work: The first
job fair at IFL
4
First Semester, 2011-
2012 IFL calendar
4
IFL Level: Beyond the
classroom
5
Common errors 5
Did you know? 5
IFL 2010-2011: A reca-
pitulation
6
his secondary education certifi-cate in 1983 and spent the next two years training in the For-eign Language Institute (currently the Institute of For-eign Languages). In 1986, Mr. Sam had his first white-collar job, working as a teacher and an administrative staff mem-ber. Mr. Sam slowly but surely worked his way up the career ladder from an administrative staff member of a small school to a Deputy Director of an insti-tute with thousands of stu-dents.
Having witnessed and ex-perienced some of the worst atrocities and traumas, Mr. Sam always envisages develop-ment of Cambodia into a con-flict-free society in which eth-ics is upheld, common interests are put before personal ones, and civilization does not “deculturalize” our culture. He
For his 50th day of birth, Mr. Sam Vanna is honored for his struggle, his fall and his rise to the current position as a Dep-uty Director of the Institute of Foreign Languages.
Born into a middle-class family in Kampong Chhnang province, Mr. Sam spent his childhood as a typical country boy. What set him apart,
though, was his big dream. Instead of letting fate take over him, he took over it and left his hometown to pursue education in Phnom Penh alone.
To make ends meet and study in the war-torn city, Mr. Sam worked multiple shifts, juggling hard earned jobs as a cyclo driver, a rice sack carrier, and a taxi conductor. Despite the hardships, never for once did a thought of giving up his fight for education cross Mr. Sam’s mind. Out from the Khmer Rouge Regime, Mr. Sam sought every possible means to pursue his education. Getting up at 4 am, carrying 100 buck-ets of water, and walking for 10 kilometers to school every day did not take away a smile of contentment from him every time he went to bed.
A holder of two Master’s Degrees now, Mr. Sam earned
is confident that young genera-tions are key to the country’s growth and development. For this reason, Mr. Sam has de-voted and will continue to give his all to the development of Cambodian education.
So many struggles, hard-ships, and failures – Has Mr. Sam ever got tired? For certain, he has. However, Mr. Sam has always managed to stay moti-vated and carry himself out of trouble and challenges, which in turn have taught him some recommendable lessons: “Live a meaningful life and die with honor.” “Time is nothing when not spent for learning, commu-nity development, and doing good deeds.”
From a country boy to a leader of a leading higher edu-cation institution, Mr. Sam Vanna is a role model with endless stories of inspiration.
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I squeezed her hand gently. It was warm, tender, yet lifeless! She seemed to be lost in the state of serenity and tranquil-ity, lost in the world not quite like the one I was in—the world she would refer to as the “ghost garden” full with blos-soming scarlet red roses and tall shady green trees, but de-serted and abandoned! Despite the fact that she was lying asleep in the sickeningly white patient’s uniform tucked under the awfully white sheet in the hospital bed which was nothing but white, she was still a beauty, a sleeping beauty! Her long black silky hair still daz-
zled when caught in the reflection of the florescent light that was illuminating the ward. Her pointed nose, on the bridge of which would normally rest the black-framed specs, just went so well with the soft rosy lips, still rosy against the odds she was fighting against, and the odds that had sucked not only the energy out of her, but also her livelihood!
It was all started with a sim-ple click, the click on the word “Accept” on Facebook! Admit-tedly, I was a Facebook enthusi-ast! Never did I nod my head in genuine agreement when some nerdy-looking classmates of mine came forward and started bab-bling about how much time could be saved up for the late-night self-study on the chapter on fishing in
Global Studies or for the lengthy Writing Skills entry about abor-tion to be handed in the next day, all in the absence of what they termed as “the inconsiderable obsession with Facebook”. In their creased white shirts and blue pants which could almost literally cover them from head to toe, they would corner me like a hungry cat eyeing a strayed pa-thetic mouse and snatch my black, nicely polished iphone before venturing into the usual typical lecture-like advice about how “life-destructive” Facebook could be to students like them and me. I would normally smile at them, trying as much as I could to translate the smile into a non-fake sign of appreciation—though with little success. To me, Face-
of activities, which indicates the rise in the spirit of volunteer-ism and willingness to contrib-ute to helping a cause.
The day was full of bustle and hustle and everyone in-dulged themselves in many fun-filled activities ranging from fun games, to stand-up comedy, guitar concert and many more. Besides all the fun, excitement and good laughs, participants enjoyed a variety of good food and drinks cooked and sold by our very own students and faculty staff members. The day couldn’t have been any more exciting, and thanks to the un-precedented number of turn-outs and their generous contri-butions, the event raised ap-proximately USD4,000, which was used to fund a charity trip to Ksoeung Primary School and an orphanage located in Takeo Province. The success of the event is in deep gratitude to the invaluable participation and generous contributions of all involved – students, faculty members and others.
Three weeks following the fundraising event, the charity
Every year IFL organizes a fundraising event to raise money to reach out to the needy through charity trips. To date, IFL has reached out to a significant number of orphans and pupils in two different provinces, namely Kampong Speu and Takeo.
The second annual IFL fundraising event was held on December 25, 2010 on IFL cam-pus from morning until late afternoon. The event attracted a record of turnouts and saw a marked increase in the number
trip was organized. A total number of 160 students and faculty staff of IFL joined the trip, which was presided over by H.E. Pit Chamnan, Secretary of State of the Ministry of Edu-cation, Youth and Sports. Giving his speech at Ksoeung Primary School, H.E. Pit Chamnan was quoted as saying “This is such an immense feeling of pride and joy to see the willingness and generosity of everyone in sharing and lending your hands and reaching out to those who need help.” He reiterated the importance of the culture of sharing and helping one an-other, especially the less fortu-nate and the needy. Most im-portantly, he encouraged every-one to cultivate and maintain that culture.
As far as the donations are concerned, a total of 480 chil-dren received a big package of study tools and materials and some money. They were also provided with a light breakfast package.
Contributions were also made to the management of the orphanage and primary school
– each received an equal amount of 1,000,000 Riels. Apart from that, hundreds of books and educational posters – used and new – were handed over to the school library. The teachers at the school also re-ceived a contribution of 20,000 Riels each.
Following the donations ceremony, educational and entertainment activities were conducted both inside the classrooms and in the court of the school. Activities ranged from oral health care tips and how to brush teeth, to lessons about personal hygiene and morality, and to solidarity games.
It was such a worthwhile trip and a rewarding act as IFL community could reach out to a group of people who are in need of support – and we helped put a smile on their face!
We all are excited and very much look forward to yet an-other successful fundraising event and beautiful and mean-ingful charity trip next year.
Reaching out to the needy is helping to give back to society!
IFL EVENTS
PROSPECT
Annual Fundraising Event and Charity Trip: From IFL to KSOEUNG
Strangers: A Short Story
SHORT STORIES
Volume 3, Issue 2
ally by the bright and sudden flashes of lightning. It was the day that most people probably hated, but the day I dearly loved and would never let go of my mind! It was the day that I—for the first time—had an actual conversation with her!
The rain was pouring down. The wind was howling. The sky was pitch dark. This bloody um-brella wouldn’t save me from this savage rain! I grimaced at the thought, and still lingered on the corridor of Building C, occasion-ally giving hateful stares at the raging sky as if by doing so, the rain would relent. Just as I was about to venture into the unshel-tered openness with my umbrella in my right hand, I heard a painful cry, and it was just within sec-onds before I could figure out who the girl who had just slid over the slippery wet earth was. It was her! I was already on my heels dashing towards her before my reasoning had any chance to obstruct me. Neither did I greet her nor look at her face and be lost in her beauty which stood against the test of such a natural and wet condition. My mind was too preoccupied with her own physical safety to make sense out of what I was being engaged in. I grabbed her cold trembling hand, made sure she clenched the um-brella I was offering her so that she was now sheltered from the rain, and slid her other free arm over my shoulder before rising to my feet, and therefore, lifting her up to her feet as well, though she was still shaky from the harsh coldness and the bleeding wound on her knees. She summoned her might and gave me a weak smile. I was lost in eyes! My heart skipped a beat. We were standing so close together under the um-brella. I was warm in the cold!
Sensing the awkward silence, she began talking, “Thanks, JaJo!”
I froze! She knew my name! She continued, trying to ex-
plain herself, “I am sorry! I mean, this is the name you use in Face-book. I have no idea what your real name is.”
book was an electronic home port, a place where geographical distance between my best friends in the States and me mattered little, and a place where I could get all the frustration and stress that weighed me down off my chest. And without Facebook, I would not have had a chance to step over the threshold into her world!
It was sheer handwork of God when her name and her picture of herself with her black-framed glasses resting slightly towards the edge of the nose bridge, hold-ing a tiny little fork, popped up in my friend request list. Wanting to get to know her had always been a wish upon a falling star. I had caught fleeting glimpses of her usually in her white blouse and her pleated knee-length skirt on and off the campus, especially when it was around 3 30pm in front of Building C. There was something magnetic about her that drew me closer to her, some-thing strangely familiar. However, I had always known I was just like a forgettable fan in a huge crowd who had done quite a thor-ough research about her, yet whose existence had been of little significance—if any—to her.
I found myself clicking “Like” on almost every single update about her, ranging from the silly video clip of two blonde Ameri-can toddlers trying to strangle each other to death, the kind of video I would normally have hated myself for even bothering to lay my eyes on, to her very daily status update about her showering! One week passed with my eyes being glued to the computer screen, my butts being stitched up with the cold iron chair, and my finger hitting the “refresh” button every five sec-ond to see if there were any up-dates from her, updates that would allow me some room—however small it might be—to not only “Like” but also “Comment” on her status.
It was the 10th of May. It was the day of dark clouds stretching all over the sky, lit up occasion-
I chuckled and scratched my head in embarrassment. For ten good minutes or so, we were lost in one small, heart-warming world, shared by just the two of us, sheltered by one protective umbrella, without paying heeds to the surrounding. This marked an important milestone as the beginning of our relationship!
Two years into the relation-ship with her was heavenly … until one day!
It was a scorchingly hot day! Despite the fact that colours tended to fade from her face, leaving it a pale worried one, in her white robe embroidered with flowery designs, and with her long silky hair tied back into a ponytail, she was still a raw beauty as she was clutching my left hand so tightly, dreading the diagnosis result in the waiting room. I gave a slight squeeze onto her hand, and smiled reassur-ingly. She smiled back, under-standing my intention. I was star-ing blankly at those haggard-looking faces of the patients whose names were called out, and who, sobbed their hearts out, after glancing through the result sheets for a few minutes. For the first time in my life, I felt scared! I really was! I just could not fathom how a young beautiful girl like her would have to be sitting next to me in this heart-wrenching room, witnessing the dramatic scene before me. I just could not fathom how people always wor-shipped God who kept throwing swords of the unexpected at them, tearing people apart.
I shook my head, trying to shake the thoughts off, and tried not to let my fear engulf me, though with little success. In the past few months, she had been unusually forgetful! She suddenly could not recall the name of her puppy she so dearly loved. Nei-ther could she remember where she studied as an undergraduate. I was most worried when I re-ceived a phone call from her one day, “Where are you? I … I … don’t know how to get back home. I … I … can’t remember where it is!”
There was even one tragic time when she laughed so hard at my joke about the monkey and the banana, and after an awkward pause of mere searching for something in my face with a frown and tearful eyes, she broke into hysterical sobs. It was only when she pulled herself together again did she reveal the root cause, “I tried! But I couldn’t re-member your name!” I remem-bered how my heart sank and my knees went weak upon hearing those words, yet I was always quick to pull everything back into the usual nothing-wrong-is-happening-and-you-are-just-tired routine by holding her rosy face with my hands, and saying, “You are just tired, dear!”
I was brought back into the coldness of the reality when my name was called out by the nurse! Be strong! No matter what, you needa be strong, man! I gave her hand a little squeeze one more time, and faked a smile, before slowly rising to my feet, and trudging towards where the nurse was waiting rather impa-tiently. I swiveled around and looked at her, but she was staring at her toes instead. My hands shook, and I hated how I could not be in full control of how my body should be functioning at the moment. With a few times of clumsy flipping, I managed to unfold the result slip. My heart was pounding. My eyes were quickly skipping words and num-bers before laying fixed on the italicized words: RETOGRADE AMNESIA. I rushed towards where she was still sitting, and hugged her so tightly before she could utter a word!
Her hand jerked, and my thoughts were interrupted. She was gazing into my eyes now, and she went deep beyond, attempt-ing to search for something quite unknown to me. I looked back at her trying to read her expression, and before I could ask her any-thing, she slowly opened her mouth, and let three words out, the three words that killed me on the inside, “Who are you?”
IFL EVENTS
PROSPECT
Forte Insurance, CDRI, ANZ Royal Bank, NVC Corporation Co., Ltd. (Vital Premium Water), HR. Inc. Cambodia, iOne, ACE, IDP Cambodia, VLK Royal Tour-ism, and Resolvo, this Saturday morning event attracted almost 400 participants from different-year levels at IFL.
The event was organized with the main purposes to in-form participants of job seeking skills and knowledge of job markets in Cambodia, to inspire participants to plan their career paths, and to provide the par-ticipants with opportunities to meet and ask employers di-rectly about jobs and applica-tion processes.
In addition to the afore-mentioned advantages, the participants were also able to make direct contact with em-ployers and learn more about the companies or organizations. It can be a tough decision for an employer to make whether to employ a candidate when the employer does not know the candidate well. Therefore, the sensible thing for applicants to do is to meet face-to-face with
Getting a job in the current competition markets can be very challenging. To help stu-dents plan for their future and seek a proper job, the Institute of Foreign Languages organized a job fair under the theme “School to Work” at the Multi-purpose Hall of the Cambodian-Japanese Cooperation Center (CJCC) and IFL building E on June 11, 2011.
With its first opening, free entry and presence of represen-tatives from UNDP Cambodia,
the company/institution HR representatives to obtain con-tact details, job descriptions, and duties and responsibilities, thereby providing them with enough confidence in the job interview when they have to “sell themselves”.
The main activities of this job fair included presentations and booth visits. In the CJCC Multi-Purpose Hall, each repre-sentative from the key employ-ment companies and institu-tions took turns giving a short presentation about his/her own work experience, a brief history of his/her workplace, and tips how to be successful in getting a job so as to keep par-ticipants well-informed. The presenters were honored with small gifts and appreciation letters before the Qs and As session started.
After that, the participants had a chance to visit the booths set up by the participating com-pany/institution from 10:30 to 11:30 A.M under Building E to commence their inquiries to the representatives concerning the employment opportunities.
The Job Fair was another successful event organized by the innovative IFL community. It provided students with an opportunity to learn about the needed skills for their career prospects, thus encouraging them to sustain their school commitments, building a sense of self-awareness of their ca-reer goals and maximizing their employment chances upon their graduation. Taking all the points into consideration, the event conveyed a very clear message to students: “Aim high with the right direction”.
Mark your calendar and be a participant in the IFL Job Fair 2012.
School to Work: The First Job Fair at IFL
2nd IFL Musicians Get-Together
STUDY SKILLS
Volume 3, Issue 2
Students who learn in a classroom are only physically at IFL. At the IFL level, I think students need to have three characteristics:
Independence: most stu-dents who I think have been successful in learning English are those who take control over their activities. For instance, they don’t wait for their teach-ers to tell them to do this and that. They go beyond the class-room, the homework and as-signments required by teachers to create their own learning group, decide on their own materials and activities, and sometimes even set the direc-tion for their next class.
Fantasizability: is the ability to go beyond the lines, in other words the ability to go beyond what is visible. Good language learners enjoy going deeper than the surface structure of words in sentences either spo-ken or written. Although aware of the language rules, they usu-ally free themselves from all
Recently a number of my stu-dents have asked me very good how-to questions concerning English language learning. I usually answer these questions with an answer that students often say is not an answer. So I am writing this short article to define what I call English lan-guage learning at “IFL level” and to attempt to answer some of those how-to questions again although I don’t think they have any answer.
these rules and have the ability to frame their understanding in almost any way they want. To them, nothing is impossible with language.
Leisurability: is the ability to enjoy language-learning ac-tivities and to include them in your leisure time. Most stu-dents I consider outstanding in language learning enjoy a vari-ety of activities with language, including reading novels, news-papers, magazines, textbooks, watching movies, listening to news/music, joining small group activities/study clubs and a lot of other extra-curricular activities.
Therefore, at IFL you are very much limited to a class in buildings A, B, C, E or G, but at the IFL level you are expected to have “Independence, Fanta-siability and Leisurability” so that you can be found in the pond, under the grass, or on the tree enjoying learning.
Don’t just be at IFL. Be at the IFL level.
IFL Level: Beyond the Classroom
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PROSPECT
ថ្នា ក់ត្រៀម្រឡងចូលឆ្ា ាំទី១ ររញិ្ញា រ្រភាសាអង់តលេស តៅ
សិក្សារយៈពពល ៣៦ព ៉ោ ង អំពីវាក្សយស័ពទ, ពវយាក្សរណ៍, ជំនាញអំណាន, យុទធវិធីរបឡង រពមទងំវិញ្ញា សាសាក្សលបង។
វគ្គទី១ចាប់ពផតើមៈ ១១ ខែក្សក្សកដា ឆ្ន ២ំ០១១
វគ្គទី២ចាប់ពផតើមៈ ២២ ខែសីហា ឆ្ន ២ំ០១១
ទូរស័ពទពលែៈ ០២៣ ៨៨៥ ៤១៩ - ៨៨៤ ១៥៤
បពរងៀនពដាយសាស្រ្សាត ចារយវិទាសាា នផ្ទទ ល់
ចាប់ចុុះព ម្ ុះពីថ្ថៃពនុះតពៅ ពៅការិយាល័យទំនាក់្សទំនង (បនទប់០៣)
អាស័យដាា នៈ ផលវូសហព័នធរុសស ីជាប់របងខាងពក្សើត សាក្សលវិទាល័យភូមិនទភនំ ពពញ។
