An active pedagogical approach to raising language awareness in learners is to bring the world into the classroom and to go out with them into the community. To that end, our goal in Cambodia was not only to be conference participants, but to also participate in the Cambodian community. Our inspiration came from teachers and organizers doing NGO work in English education in Cambodia. Cambodia, due to historical and economic factors, sorely depends on nonformal educational efforts to provide adequate schooling to its children. We visited three NGO schools in Siem Reap and also provided an afternoon of English lessons to young church members in Phnom Penh. Our ELF students were asked to provide part of the content, Japanese toys and culture, via videos of their class presentations, for these lessons. As a result of our service learning efforts in Cambodia, we are even more aware of the critical influence of a pluricentric, not monocentric, approach to teaching and learning languages.
