Nick wrote this... (not that it is hard to tell who writes what on our blog)
So the reason why we chose to include Cambodia was for me to present two presentations at CamTESOl 2008, an English language teaching conference held at the National Institute of Education. I presented on one misleading topic "Developing Effective Global Communication" where about 70 people showed up to hear me speak about a speaking technique that could develop students' proficiency in order to communicate in a future global context (hence why it was a mismatched title and abstract) AND I also presented on "Interaction in a writing classroom through peer response' where only 20 teachers showed up. I geared my presentations towards native Cambodian teachers of English and thus didn't put a great deal of academia in the presenations. the first presentation was packed full of Cambodians who probably wanted to silver bullet to learn how to develop GLOBAL communication... but learnt only how to unclip the gun in the holster. the second presentation was mainly attended by foreign nationals teaching overseas. I felt some were bored which I gathered from one guy staring out the window during my presentation and the ultimate humiliation; one love sick couple was writing notes on a pad for each other and were putting their arms around each other during my presentation... young people have no respect for their elders these days.
~ nick