Intermediate Khmer Student Presentation: "Letters of Separation"
951 views · Published 5 May 2014 · 13:28 · Indexed 3 October 2026
Channel: Frank Smith · 2014 · Education
All my Intermediate and Advanced UC-Berkeley and UCLA Khmer language students have to design, research, and orally present on an independent study project, on a topic of their choosing. The project counts for 20% of their grade for the Spring Semester. This student's project is highly creative and original: she started out wanted to read (and understand) family letters from Cambodia from the 1980s. To protect everyone's privacy, she replaced all the names with names she made up for the children and grandchildren of Sophat and Manyan (សូផាតនិងម៉ានយ៉ាន), the main characters in a novel (រឿងសូផាត) the students just got done reading. She also made up backstories for the new characters (the novel simply ends with a wedding). There you have it: Sophat fan-fiction!!
