Hey there, loyal readers, Luke here again giving you all the news that's fit to tell from Shiyan, China. I know it's been a bit since my last post, so I'm sorry about that, but I figured I'd go ahead and let everyone know about our preparations for the Breland-Garner-Knight-WhoKnows Reunion Tour. Yes, we have our plane tickets to get us to the States, now all we need to do is survive the short, tricky portion of our travels--domestic travel in China without a translator--and then deal with the long, boring, and slightly easier trans-Pacific flight. Well, that's not ALL we need to do. We haven't packed yet, after all, and even though classes are winding down now, some classes will not finish until after we've left, so we have to pre-teach those. Oh, and we have to make, announce, give, and grade the final exams for our classes. It's one of those things than can be easy and SHOULD be easy, if you've done things right the whole semester, but ends up being harder than it should be since we really didn't know what we were doing in the classroom until a few weeks had gone by (I didn't, at least). My New Years resolution? Better organization for the classroom side of my work here! But impending finals or not, we're still looking forward to coming home.
As I type, my stomach is rumbling. It is disgruntled. I've already fed it some baozi (if any of you come visit us in the spring, which we would LOVE, I'll show you heaven on earth in the form of a meat bun), but it wants more. More specifically, it wants Mexican food. A basket of nachos and a bowl of queso would go down REALLY well right now, and beyond seeing friends and family when we return, I honestly think that our next priority while in America is going on a gastronomic tour of the restaurants and food styles that are just plain unavailable in China! We are excited more about seeing our family, of course; I'm just saying that we wouldn't take it amiss if anyone wanted to visit and converse with us in oh, say, a Mexican restaurant.
I'm trying to snap pictures of my classes this week, to be sure that I have photos to show everyone over Christmas, but the class sizes are rather big and even with the flash the pictures seem to be turning out a little dark and fuzzy, so I'm sorry if they're not the greatest detail. And speaking of pictures, our students love seeing pictures of family, friends, and just our lives from home--so with that in mind, could everyone please keep their eyes peeled for our wedding pictures? Especially the ones in the slim black coffee table book? My students ask me about my wedding just about every week! Oh, and I might be taking more Christmas photos than usual, so I can show my students what the holiday really looks like for my family when I get back. Their ideas of Christmas come mostly from Chinese TV and music videos, I think, and they don't really get the idea that each family has its own individual traditions around Christmas.
Speaking of Christmas, I know it would be rather uncouth of us to fly home without any presents from China to give to you folks, and that may simply be the best way for us to shop for everyone anyways, since buying presents in America on a Chinese salary can get a tad expensive. Keep in mind that this is not a big city, like Chengdu was, so things that are Chinese and are more of a souvenir persuasion are actually a little hard to come by. But with that in mind, what sorts of things would you like that you imagine we could find in China? American products with Chinese labels? Tea? Jade necklaces/good luck charms (those are rather ubiquitous)? There's not much time left, so please send us your ideas! Oh, and the less breakable your requests are, and the easier they are to fit into luggage, the better off we'll be. We're trying to not pack very heavily for our return trip, because there are actually a lot of things that we need to take BACK to China with us from America, but at this moment we're not sure how many bags (and which size) we'll try to take with us. After all, we need to do some domestic travel in China in order to get out, some of it on train, and luggage standards are very different for domestic travel in China. I'll be pushing for less baggage, but methinks the others will want a bit more baggage, so we can take more stuff back with us. I'm just worried about changing planes and terminals in the Beijing airport, handling luggage on the trains, baggage overage fees, etc.
Wow, didn't mean to start rambling about my worries. Sorry about that. I'm about to wrap up for now, actually--I plan to come back and edit this post or add a new one tomorrow or the next day to add some pictures--but I would just like to reiterate that we LOVE getting comments on our blogs, especially from folks we don't hear from too often (I'm looking at you, cousins!). So please, if you read this, leave your thoughts and such in comment form, as we love reading them.
Oh, and we also have a few prayer requests. Well, the big one, really, is for safe travel from and back towards China. We would really love to arrive in America with all of our luggage intact, but I'd much rather arrive with all of my limbs intact. The other one I should mention is just general prayer for me to be a bit more organized, and a bit less forgetful. We're about to be rather busy, trying to take care of stuff here in China while also trying to be prepared for Ryan's wedding and Kelly's wedding. We appreciate all of your prayerful support, and we love the care packages--it's like a mini-Christmas whenever we get one--and we're looking forward to visiting with everyone when we come home. I'll update again later, before we leave. Until then, be good to each other, and enjoy those new low gas prices!!!
Monday, December 8, 2008
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
A Guilt-Inspired Update
Hey, everyone. Luke here again, writing from Shiyan, China. It seems that whenever I write a blog post, I always promise to make more frequent updates, and I never do. Well, as the end of the year/semester approaches, we naturally tend to reflect on those things we never accomplished during the year, and I felt rather guilty about my blog. I'm done teaching for the day, my students don't have enough free time for a meeting, I'm not really interested in any of the games I have here, and Alabama football has a bye this week, which means there is nothing interesting to be seen on the online football forums that I have begun to frequent this season. Besides, Kat might be taking a nap in the bedroom right now (I'm not sleepy enough to join her), and being on this computer has the benefit of giving me something to do while also being in a semi-heated room! (The den has no heating unit...not even a weak, semi-broken one like I have in this room.)
So with the combination of all of these factors, I decided I really don't have any excuse to not post a blog update. And, while I am still slightly on the theme of unfinished business for the year, I've begun to feel pangs of guilt about my classes. I feel that I haven't truly given them the preparation time that my students deserve and have taken the classes lightly, blaming my lack of leadership in the classroom over the year on the fact that the textbooks that we are supposed to teach from are absolutely terrible. I don't know if I get the same group of students back next semester, or if (like an American college) they move on to new teachers and new classes for the Spring. It's a little late to make it up to them, but I've been feeling they deserved at least a little better out of me. It's easy for me to treat these classes lightly, with the absence of solid textbooks, teachers editions, guidelines, or even goals to work toward, but just because a class may not seem important to me doesn't mean that the classes aren't important to the students, and THEY are the ones who have to get grades at the end.
So I've been trying to think of something interesting to do outside of the textbook for these final weeks, but also something that would prove to be extremely useful for their English education if they took the lessons to heart. Any ideas? And I don't just mean games or exercises or anything; a project, especially a longer one that would span a week or two, would be ideal. Something to help them feel like they've worked hard for something in my class, but also something they would enjoy, have fun doing, and really learn from. I know it sounds like a tall order, and I won't exactly be sitting on my hands, but I would like to know the thoughts and ideas any of you readers out there (all five of you) may have.
Okay, that's my short (ha!) class update. And don't get the wrong idea about my guilt; I haven't been slacking off or giving up in my classes in the least bit. I just feel like I can be so much better than I have been, especially when being given such amazingly respectful and kind students in contrast to the disruptions and disrespect I had to put up with while teaching high school in Arkansas. I have for a long time now felt that I want to be a college professor, and after my first year of dealing with such a tough teaching experience, God has blessed me with students from a culture that arguably churns out the most teacher-friendly students anyone could ask for. I suppose my feelings of regret stem from me not showing my appreciation by fully taking advantage of the blessings God has given me, and for that, I truly hope He will forgive me.
Okay, please let me list off one more regret (this one easily fixable) before I turn to the lighter side of the news. It was only just now in class today that I realized that I haven't taken pictures of ANY of my classes! I feel pretty bad about this one, too, because I'd love to show pictures of my students and such online on this blog or simply in person to those people who I'll get to visit when I head home. Thankfully, this one is easy enough to fix: we have a camera, and I still have classes. My only excuse is just that I'm not much of a "picture guy"; I just don't enjoy taking the minute out from whatever it is I'm doing to try to snap a few photos. I guess I'm a little too ADD for it. The truth is, though, that I love looking through photos after the fact, especially with family and friends who have not seen the photos. In fact, I've always loved sharing things (ideas, songs, stories, jokes, books, whatever) that I enjoy with others, in hopes that they will enjoy themselves as well. I would just feel horrible if I came home and couldn't show a bunch of pictures of my students to everyone. And speaking of sharing things that I love, that leads me to my next paragraph...
I know I've been bad about updating, so it's not your fault that chunks of time go by and things don't change and you don't really hear about them when they happen. But some of you I've been able to tell (via Skype) about this, others I haven't, but it's pretty good news all the same. This, of course, has to do with studying with my students OUTSIDE of the classroom. This actually took a long time to get underway, and the crazy schedule of the entire school due to the martial arts festival in late October bears a huge share of the blame, but now that things have settled down, I've been hosting studies in our apartment with my students. We don't use our classroom textbook to study, of course (I think you all know which Book we use). Since it is a very early phase (the first one, pretty much), I don't know if any of my students are looking for Answers yet, but the English studies in my apartment will hopefully be the way I can find them out and introduce them to my Book. But before we held even the first meeting, I asked my class monitors of one group of students (broken up into two classes of 35ish for me, since all together they would be too many, but they are just one group for most of their classes) to create a sign-up sheet for any students who would be interested in having evening study sessions at our apartment. Out of the 70 or so possible students from this group, 60 of them (yes, that's sixTY, not sixTEEN) signed up. I would have been ecstatic if I could have gotten half of that! Unfortunately, having so much interest means that the monitors had to split people into multiple groups so that each time a group came to my apartment, I'd actually be able to seat them (and they would actually be able to get a turn reading). The downside of this is that, since the groups have to come one at a time, there is a long space of time before a group that has seen me gets to come for their next visit. In fact, I haven't been able to get through the first rotation of groups yet.
Keep in mind that it's not that I don't have enough time to host lots of groups for separate study sessions every week, it's that my STUDENTS hardly ever have ANY free time to come to this study! They are often in class every single night until 9 or even 10 or later, and that's not even leaving any of the time they need to study for things outside of class. Whenever they actually have a night free (usually the weekends), the leader of the group whose turn is next gives me a call ahead of time and we try to arrange quickly so they can come over (Kat and I are usually cleaning up last-minute!). I do wish they had more free time so I could have more time with my students on a more intimate and on a more FREQUENT basis. The craziest part of all this, however, is the fact that this is only one of my groups of students--I have another set of them, about 70 or so, that I haven't even been able to ask about studies yet! There's a lot of work to be done here, and it's enough to make a guy feel inadequate for the task before him. I just pray that I keep my heart open, to allow Him to use me as He needs in order to get the work done.
As far as personal prayer requests are concerned, I ask that all of you keep us in your prayers, especially insofar as traveling back to America for the Christmas season is concerned. Funds are tight for everyone right now, whether in America or China, and we weren't even exactly sure how we'd afford the plane tickets before we even came here to China; now, with winter here and us not quite prepared for the weather, we're trying to balance spending money on things like radiators/space heaters to stay warm with saving money for tickets and also to live off of while in America. Please pray that God continues to provide for us, as He has been doing, and that we are able to make it to our winter weddings in America without so much stress and hardship. Also pray for our Teaching here in Shiyan, and pray for our friends and families back in America, who we dearly miss (and we're reasonably sure they miss us, too).
Oh, and please don't be shy about dropping us a line via e-mail or Skype or Facebook or even through comments on the blog. Now I'm actually pretty bad about checking my e-mail, this blog, and especially Facebook, but I'm trying to get better. I'd say the best way to send us a message is through a text chat message on Skype, and the second best would be through e-mail...I think. Of course, Finn and Kat both check Facebook and e-mail plenty, so if you want a message to get through in particular, you should probably address it to them! I'll be working on it, though. The colder it gets, the more time I spend huddled in relative warmth by the computer!
I love all of you guys...yes, even you, Guy Who Accidently Stumbled Here on the Internet. We may complain, but we're actually doing fine here, and life is actually surprisingly wonderful. If only we could get all of you guys to come out here, so we wouldn't get homesick! Hahah, I know. Well, take care everybody, I'll try for another (shorter) blog post relatively soon. Please pass along the news to anyone who can't or doesn't read the blog, but who is interested in what we're doing.
P.S.: Oh, and if any of you rascally rogues from SBG are actually checking this and reading it (from that link I gave you the one time I was able to get through to the forums!), please don't hesitate to comment, copy the post in the forums, whatever. I almost feel like SBG has ceased to exist, I'm so cut off from communicating with you guys, but know that it is NOT from a lack of interest--I'm dying to talk to all of you!
So with the combination of all of these factors, I decided I really don't have any excuse to not post a blog update. And, while I am still slightly on the theme of unfinished business for the year, I've begun to feel pangs of guilt about my classes. I feel that I haven't truly given them the preparation time that my students deserve and have taken the classes lightly, blaming my lack of leadership in the classroom over the year on the fact that the textbooks that we are supposed to teach from are absolutely terrible. I don't know if I get the same group of students back next semester, or if (like an American college) they move on to new teachers and new classes for the Spring. It's a little late to make it up to them, but I've been feeling they deserved at least a little better out of me. It's easy for me to treat these classes lightly, with the absence of solid textbooks, teachers editions, guidelines, or even goals to work toward, but just because a class may not seem important to me doesn't mean that the classes aren't important to the students, and THEY are the ones who have to get grades at the end.
So I've been trying to think of something interesting to do outside of the textbook for these final weeks, but also something that would prove to be extremely useful for their English education if they took the lessons to heart. Any ideas? And I don't just mean games or exercises or anything; a project, especially a longer one that would span a week or two, would be ideal. Something to help them feel like they've worked hard for something in my class, but also something they would enjoy, have fun doing, and really learn from. I know it sounds like a tall order, and I won't exactly be sitting on my hands, but I would like to know the thoughts and ideas any of you readers out there (all five of you) may have.
Okay, that's my short (ha!) class update. And don't get the wrong idea about my guilt; I haven't been slacking off or giving up in my classes in the least bit. I just feel like I can be so much better than I have been, especially when being given such amazingly respectful and kind students in contrast to the disruptions and disrespect I had to put up with while teaching high school in Arkansas. I have for a long time now felt that I want to be a college professor, and after my first year of dealing with such a tough teaching experience, God has blessed me with students from a culture that arguably churns out the most teacher-friendly students anyone could ask for. I suppose my feelings of regret stem from me not showing my appreciation by fully taking advantage of the blessings God has given me, and for that, I truly hope He will forgive me.
Okay, please let me list off one more regret (this one easily fixable) before I turn to the lighter side of the news. It was only just now in class today that I realized that I haven't taken pictures of ANY of my classes! I feel pretty bad about this one, too, because I'd love to show pictures of my students and such online on this blog or simply in person to those people who I'll get to visit when I head home. Thankfully, this one is easy enough to fix: we have a camera, and I still have classes. My only excuse is just that I'm not much of a "picture guy"; I just don't enjoy taking the minute out from whatever it is I'm doing to try to snap a few photos. I guess I'm a little too ADD for it. The truth is, though, that I love looking through photos after the fact, especially with family and friends who have not seen the photos. In fact, I've always loved sharing things (ideas, songs, stories, jokes, books, whatever) that I enjoy with others, in hopes that they will enjoy themselves as well. I would just feel horrible if I came home and couldn't show a bunch of pictures of my students to everyone. And speaking of sharing things that I love, that leads me to my next paragraph...
I know I've been bad about updating, so it's not your fault that chunks of time go by and things don't change and you don't really hear about them when they happen. But some of you I've been able to tell (via Skype) about this, others I haven't, but it's pretty good news all the same. This, of course, has to do with studying with my students OUTSIDE of the classroom. This actually took a long time to get underway, and the crazy schedule of the entire school due to the martial arts festival in late October bears a huge share of the blame, but now that things have settled down, I've been hosting studies in our apartment with my students. We don't use our classroom textbook to study, of course (I think you all know which Book we use). Since it is a very early phase (the first one, pretty much), I don't know if any of my students are looking for Answers yet, but the English studies in my apartment will hopefully be the way I can find them out and introduce them to my Book. But before we held even the first meeting, I asked my class monitors of one group of students (broken up into two classes of 35ish for me, since all together they would be too many, but they are just one group for most of their classes) to create a sign-up sheet for any students who would be interested in having evening study sessions at our apartment. Out of the 70 or so possible students from this group, 60 of them (yes, that's sixTY, not sixTEEN) signed up. I would have been ecstatic if I could have gotten half of that! Unfortunately, having so much interest means that the monitors had to split people into multiple groups so that each time a group came to my apartment, I'd actually be able to seat them (and they would actually be able to get a turn reading). The downside of this is that, since the groups have to come one at a time, there is a long space of time before a group that has seen me gets to come for their next visit. In fact, I haven't been able to get through the first rotation of groups yet.
Keep in mind that it's not that I don't have enough time to host lots of groups for separate study sessions every week, it's that my STUDENTS hardly ever have ANY free time to come to this study! They are often in class every single night until 9 or even 10 or later, and that's not even leaving any of the time they need to study for things outside of class. Whenever they actually have a night free (usually the weekends), the leader of the group whose turn is next gives me a call ahead of time and we try to arrange quickly so they can come over (Kat and I are usually cleaning up last-minute!). I do wish they had more free time so I could have more time with my students on a more intimate and on a more FREQUENT basis. The craziest part of all this, however, is the fact that this is only one of my groups of students--I have another set of them, about 70 or so, that I haven't even been able to ask about studies yet! There's a lot of work to be done here, and it's enough to make a guy feel inadequate for the task before him. I just pray that I keep my heart open, to allow Him to use me as He needs in order to get the work done.
As far as personal prayer requests are concerned, I ask that all of you keep us in your prayers, especially insofar as traveling back to America for the Christmas season is concerned. Funds are tight for everyone right now, whether in America or China, and we weren't even exactly sure how we'd afford the plane tickets before we even came here to China; now, with winter here and us not quite prepared for the weather, we're trying to balance spending money on things like radiators/space heaters to stay warm with saving money for tickets and also to live off of while in America. Please pray that God continues to provide for us, as He has been doing, and that we are able to make it to our winter weddings in America without so much stress and hardship. Also pray for our Teaching here in Shiyan, and pray for our friends and families back in America, who we dearly miss (and we're reasonably sure they miss us, too).
Oh, and please don't be shy about dropping us a line via e-mail or Skype or Facebook or even through comments on the blog. Now I'm actually pretty bad about checking my e-mail, this blog, and especially Facebook, but I'm trying to get better. I'd say the best way to send us a message is through a text chat message on Skype, and the second best would be through e-mail...I think. Of course, Finn and Kat both check Facebook and e-mail plenty, so if you want a message to get through in particular, you should probably address it to them! I'll be working on it, though. The colder it gets, the more time I spend huddled in relative warmth by the computer!
I love all of you guys...yes, even you, Guy Who Accidently Stumbled Here on the Internet. We may complain, but we're actually doing fine here, and life is actually surprisingly wonderful. If only we could get all of you guys to come out here, so we wouldn't get homesick! Hahah, I know. Well, take care everybody, I'll try for another (shorter) blog post relatively soon. Please pass along the news to anyone who can't or doesn't read the blog, but who is interested in what we're doing.
P.S.: Oh, and if any of you rascally rogues from SBG are actually checking this and reading it (from that link I gave you the one time I was able to get through to the forums!), please don't hesitate to comment, copy the post in the forums, whatever. I almost feel like SBG has ceased to exist, I'm so cut off from communicating with you guys, but know that it is NOT from a lack of interest--I'm dying to talk to all of you!
Monday, October 6, 2008
Wow, I'm bad at this blogging thing...
Okay, folks. I'm just writing as it comes to me because I have a bunch of nervous/excited productive energy right now, but I'm taking a break from lesson planning to write a blog post. This will probably not be constructed in any kind of logical order. Right now, I have no idea whether it will be long and rambling or way too short. The fact of the matter is that today is one of those rare productive days where I dust off the things I meant to do and actually try to do them. Sometimes a problem can be so absorbing that it is just time consuming when it should be discarded--such as earlier today, when I was trying to navigate the Chinese operating system on this computer to take a block of text out of a PDF file so that I could have a really neat print-out of the International Phonetic Alphabet for my students, and I ended up spending about an hour on it without getting anywhere--so I don't really know if I'll end up talking a lot or typing some and then being reminded of the other things I have to do. Honestly, I would normally just say I'll try to be brief (even if I'm not) in the interest of those reading, but I won't make any promises one way or the other this time around. Prepare to be confused.
Okay, so...where to begin? My last post (not counting a slightly more recent post that we decided should be deleted since it looked like I may have been making fun of the Party Secretary here) was basically about classes going to begin soon. Well, classes have been going on for awhile now. Finn and Katherine both have groups of freshmen--Katherine with a group or two of upper-classmen to balance it out, and Finn with all new students. This means that they did not have to begin their real workload until three weeks into the teaching, and then they had one scanty week until our just-finished week-long October Holiday. I don't have any newbies, so I've been teaching a pretty full schedule. A fuller schedule, in fact, than I should have by what my contract stipulates. The upshot, though, is that my classes end earlier, so I only have to make up two classes ahead of time in order to return to America in plenty of time for my big brother's wedding, which is much more manageable than it would have been otherwise! You're welcome, Ryan! Finn and Kat will have a harder time making sure their schedules are cleared out for that time window, but I'm able to work hard in the beginning and relax toward the end, which isn't that bad considering that by the end of the semester we'll be teaching in unheated classrooms in freezing temperatures. I'm not complaining.
What can I say about my students? Although I want this to be the "family blog" and not just my own individual blog, I can't really speak about Finn and Kat's students because they have already done so (I think) themselves! Besides, I don't know their students personally, so I wouldn't dream of taking that pleasure away from them. So instead, I'll talk about my students. Is that okay? I hope it is, because you don't have a choice. (You could stop reading and go look at something else on the Internet, I guess, but let's pretend you don't have that option.)
My students...
My students are awesome. Yes, there are some who won't show up to class or who will put their heads down when they should be listening to the audio lesson and checking answers, but what classroom doesn't have those? The fact of the matter is that the whole lot of them is sweet, kind, and polite to a fault. If I ever called a student out publicly on missing class too much and made a deal out of it, he or she would be completely mortified and would probably never miss again. I don't want anyone to be mortified, of course, but I also want them to attend, so I'm still trying to feel out the culture and strike the right balance. As for the "good" students in my class, which means those that are angels instead of mere saints, I could have used just one of those in each classroom in Arkansas to create a behavioral revolution. Okay, maybe that's a little on the hyperbolic side, but these students are awesome. Their schedules are filled to the brim, such that if I want to make up a class period we've missed (or preteach one we are going to miss), I'll have to do it probably after 9 pm or on a weekend. But even so, any student would gladly spend all of their precious, limited free time to take me into the shops in town and help me buy a cell phone, get a hair cut, or whatever else I ask for. To top it all off, they would never even give a hint that they felt exasperated or obligated to perform this task; they would be all smiles. Even if they truly felt this way on the inside (exasperated, that is), they would sooner slap me in public than make their feelings evident, so it's very hard to tell when they are happy to help and when I am being a burden! But all of this business (the state of being busy, not commerce) isn't because different students within a class have different schedules that need to be reconciled--every group of students in a class has the exact same schedule, and they take all of their classes with the same group throughout the day. It's like elementary school in America, I guess, but on a college level. It's a lame comparison, I know, but it's the sort of thing that will take too long for me to explain to my satisfaction. Suffice it to say that if one student doesn't have free time at a given time, none of them do--they're all in it together.
Apparently, my students already love me. This may be just them saying this to get into my good graces, but what can I say? I'm a sucker for flattery. According to them, however, I make them feel much more comfortable and unafraid about practicing their English than their previous English teachers. I try to have a relaxed atmosphere in class--not casual per se, but with a strong dose of positive reinforcement for ANY answer, even wrong ones. As I love to point out to them, you'll never learn English if you never use it, so the student who speaks up and gives a wrong answer is a better student than the one who has the correct answer but never says anything! I also enjoy pointing out to them that their English is better than my Chinese, so they don't need to be embarrassed about their pronunciation, accent, or word choice when speaking with me. I'll have to find a way to keep this atmosphere alive while also correcting their utterances, so wish me luck on that front. I feel very optimistic about it, though; the material (the students, that is) that I have to work with here is much better than what I have ever worked with, even with the language barrier. I am grateful every day that I have such wonderful people to work with, and all I can do is thank God and pray that He will make me a better teacher so that I will be worthy of these wonderful students! I suppose that I should end my description of how awesome my students are by simply saying that they are so awesome, I am getting an inferiority complex as a teacher. I feel like people this bright and attentive deserve the best minds in the universe to be their teachers, not foreigners with bad lesson planning skills like me!
Which brings me back to something I mentioned earlier; I'm supposed to be putting together a lesson plan for tomorrow. Once it is finished being put together, I can't WAIT to start the next unit: pronunciation. I don't have a real plan or outline for the whole semester, just a book with no extra notes for the teacher and almost no comprehensive guidance. But as I've been going through these books, I've realized that even though some students are worried about the IELTS (an English-language competency test they will have to pass next year) and will raise a fuss if I deviate from the largely unhelpful IELTS books, they badly need to spend some time on pronunciation. Most of them have electronic Chinese-English dictionaries with phonetic symbols to help with pronunciation, but the students don't even know which sounds are associated with these symbols. So, I just began putting together some materials to begin teaching them the IPA, or International Phonetic Alphabet. Once I can organize the information well enough, and make enough handouts for all of my students, and once the students study and learn these symbols and their associated sounds, then any word in English that is giving them trouble will simply need to be transcribed into IPA format and they will know exactly which sounds they should be making. I don't know how to go about finding out what vocabulary they need and teaching it to them in a meaningful manner, but no matter how good their vocabulary is, they all need help with pronunciation, so I am deeming this to be the Next Big Thing. Once they learn the IPA, we will then be moving on to pronouncing problem words/sounds in the English language, especially those that present particular difficulties for non-native speakers (such as the "th" in "thanks"). I am excited because this is one way in which a teacher can have instant gratification and hear improvement very quickly. I am also excited because my Chinese students LOVE working on pronouncing words.
I haven't done any comprehensive pronounciation practice yet, of course, but I've halted class to drill them once or twice when we've come across particularly difficult consonant clusters in English, such as in the family name/proper noun "Griffiths." When your "th" already sounds like an "s", the "ths" ending sound can be pretty difficult. So I had them all stop what they were doing, wrote some things on the board, and promptly began telling them to make funny noises and stick their tongues out between their teeth. I kept cajoling and guiding until most of the class was producing the correct noise, then I described what making that noise should feel like inside your mouth--where the air pushes against, where the tongue is, whether the teeth are together, whether any parts of the mouth are contacting any others--until I could see comprehension dawning. Although the drill was pretty informal and I would be surprised if any of them can now correctly recall the exact pronounciation, at least by the end of the class I had just about every student pronouncing this difficult English name perfectly. The best part is that they love it. What student doesn't love to stop listening to his or her professor and make funny noises? And since it's fun and interest-grabbing, it will also hopefully be far more educational than any dry lecture or presentation of mine could possibly be.
Well, true to form (for those who know me), I've wandered. A lot. I'm going to wrap up now, even though I haven't breathed a word about our trip this past week to Qingdao in eastern China, even though I haven't mentioned any of the thousand little things here in China that make everyday life here both irritating and almost unbearably wonderful. I won't tell you about these things, at least not tonight. I won't even tell you WHEN I will tell you about these things. Just write me an e-mail, prompt me, nag at me when it's been too long...and I'll write again. I'll try to do it without outside prompting, but the fact of the matter is that life here can take up every single MOMENT of your time in a meaningful way if you play your cards right, and that makes you really want to spend a lot of time practicing your card-playing skills. Just know that I love all of you--yes, even you, Guy I Don't Know Who Is Reading My Blog. I know you're out there. All of us here wish all of you the very best, even if we don't get online much to say it, and we promise--we really do--that we will try to keep in touch. But it's a two-edged sword: if you have a computer and an internet connection, download Skype this instant and send us your contact information so we can talk! Failing that, write us an e-mail, post a comment, or do anything to let us hear from home. And on a final note, before I forget, know that we ask for you to pray for us and our teaching. Things are starting off slowly, but I know great things will happen. Four students have already approached us, asking to Study (winkwink!) with us. Once we begin announcing study times at our apartments to all of our students, I'm sure this number will increase greatly. I desperately wish I could tell you more, and I honestly can't wait to tell you in person all that we have seen and experienced.
Take care, please leave your comments, and please tell the others to read this blog. Our schedules are beginning to settle into a routine now, so I PROMISE that this will be updated regularly! Until then, be safe, be kind, and be happy.
-Luke
Okay, so...where to begin? My last post (not counting a slightly more recent post that we decided should be deleted since it looked like I may have been making fun of the Party Secretary here) was basically about classes going to begin soon. Well, classes have been going on for awhile now. Finn and Katherine both have groups of freshmen--Katherine with a group or two of upper-classmen to balance it out, and Finn with all new students. This means that they did not have to begin their real workload until three weeks into the teaching, and then they had one scanty week until our just-finished week-long October Holiday. I don't have any newbies, so I've been teaching a pretty full schedule. A fuller schedule, in fact, than I should have by what my contract stipulates. The upshot, though, is that my classes end earlier, so I only have to make up two classes ahead of time in order to return to America in plenty of time for my big brother's wedding, which is much more manageable than it would have been otherwise! You're welcome, Ryan! Finn and Kat will have a harder time making sure their schedules are cleared out for that time window, but I'm able to work hard in the beginning and relax toward the end, which isn't that bad considering that by the end of the semester we'll be teaching in unheated classrooms in freezing temperatures. I'm not complaining.
What can I say about my students? Although I want this to be the "family blog" and not just my own individual blog, I can't really speak about Finn and Kat's students because they have already done so (I think) themselves! Besides, I don't know their students personally, so I wouldn't dream of taking that pleasure away from them. So instead, I'll talk about my students. Is that okay? I hope it is, because you don't have a choice. (You could stop reading and go look at something else on the Internet, I guess, but let's pretend you don't have that option.)
My students...
My students are awesome. Yes, there are some who won't show up to class or who will put their heads down when they should be listening to the audio lesson and checking answers, but what classroom doesn't have those? The fact of the matter is that the whole lot of them is sweet, kind, and polite to a fault. If I ever called a student out publicly on missing class too much and made a deal out of it, he or she would be completely mortified and would probably never miss again. I don't want anyone to be mortified, of course, but I also want them to attend, so I'm still trying to feel out the culture and strike the right balance. As for the "good" students in my class, which means those that are angels instead of mere saints, I could have used just one of those in each classroom in Arkansas to create a behavioral revolution. Okay, maybe that's a little on the hyperbolic side, but these students are awesome. Their schedules are filled to the brim, such that if I want to make up a class period we've missed (or preteach one we are going to miss), I'll have to do it probably after 9 pm or on a weekend. But even so, any student would gladly spend all of their precious, limited free time to take me into the shops in town and help me buy a cell phone, get a hair cut, or whatever else I ask for. To top it all off, they would never even give a hint that they felt exasperated or obligated to perform this task; they would be all smiles. Even if they truly felt this way on the inside (exasperated, that is), they would sooner slap me in public than make their feelings evident, so it's very hard to tell when they are happy to help and when I am being a burden! But all of this business (the state of being busy, not commerce) isn't because different students within a class have different schedules that need to be reconciled--every group of students in a class has the exact same schedule, and they take all of their classes with the same group throughout the day. It's like elementary school in America, I guess, but on a college level. It's a lame comparison, I know, but it's the sort of thing that will take too long for me to explain to my satisfaction. Suffice it to say that if one student doesn't have free time at a given time, none of them do--they're all in it together.
Apparently, my students already love me. This may be just them saying this to get into my good graces, but what can I say? I'm a sucker for flattery. According to them, however, I make them feel much more comfortable and unafraid about practicing their English than their previous English teachers. I try to have a relaxed atmosphere in class--not casual per se, but with a strong dose of positive reinforcement for ANY answer, even wrong ones. As I love to point out to them, you'll never learn English if you never use it, so the student who speaks up and gives a wrong answer is a better student than the one who has the correct answer but never says anything! I also enjoy pointing out to them that their English is better than my Chinese, so they don't need to be embarrassed about their pronunciation, accent, or word choice when speaking with me. I'll have to find a way to keep this atmosphere alive while also correcting their utterances, so wish me luck on that front. I feel very optimistic about it, though; the material (the students, that is) that I have to work with here is much better than what I have ever worked with, even with the language barrier. I am grateful every day that I have such wonderful people to work with, and all I can do is thank God and pray that He will make me a better teacher so that I will be worthy of these wonderful students! I suppose that I should end my description of how awesome my students are by simply saying that they are so awesome, I am getting an inferiority complex as a teacher. I feel like people this bright and attentive deserve the best minds in the universe to be their teachers, not foreigners with bad lesson planning skills like me!
Which brings me back to something I mentioned earlier; I'm supposed to be putting together a lesson plan for tomorrow. Once it is finished being put together, I can't WAIT to start the next unit: pronunciation. I don't have a real plan or outline for the whole semester, just a book with no extra notes for the teacher and almost no comprehensive guidance. But as I've been going through these books, I've realized that even though some students are worried about the IELTS (an English-language competency test they will have to pass next year) and will raise a fuss if I deviate from the largely unhelpful IELTS books, they badly need to spend some time on pronunciation. Most of them have electronic Chinese-English dictionaries with phonetic symbols to help with pronunciation, but the students don't even know which sounds are associated with these symbols. So, I just began putting together some materials to begin teaching them the IPA, or International Phonetic Alphabet. Once I can organize the information well enough, and make enough handouts for all of my students, and once the students study and learn these symbols and their associated sounds, then any word in English that is giving them trouble will simply need to be transcribed into IPA format and they will know exactly which sounds they should be making. I don't know how to go about finding out what vocabulary they need and teaching it to them in a meaningful manner, but no matter how good their vocabulary is, they all need help with pronunciation, so I am deeming this to be the Next Big Thing. Once they learn the IPA, we will then be moving on to pronouncing problem words/sounds in the English language, especially those that present particular difficulties for non-native speakers (such as the "th" in "thanks"). I am excited because this is one way in which a teacher can have instant gratification and hear improvement very quickly. I am also excited because my Chinese students LOVE working on pronouncing words.
I haven't done any comprehensive pronounciation practice yet, of course, but I've halted class to drill them once or twice when we've come across particularly difficult consonant clusters in English, such as in the family name/proper noun "Griffiths." When your "th" already sounds like an "s", the "ths" ending sound can be pretty difficult. So I had them all stop what they were doing, wrote some things on the board, and promptly began telling them to make funny noises and stick their tongues out between their teeth. I kept cajoling and guiding until most of the class was producing the correct noise, then I described what making that noise should feel like inside your mouth--where the air pushes against, where the tongue is, whether the teeth are together, whether any parts of the mouth are contacting any others--until I could see comprehension dawning. Although the drill was pretty informal and I would be surprised if any of them can now correctly recall the exact pronounciation, at least by the end of the class I had just about every student pronouncing this difficult English name perfectly. The best part is that they love it. What student doesn't love to stop listening to his or her professor and make funny noises? And since it's fun and interest-grabbing, it will also hopefully be far more educational than any dry lecture or presentation of mine could possibly be.
Well, true to form (for those who know me), I've wandered. A lot. I'm going to wrap up now, even though I haven't breathed a word about our trip this past week to Qingdao in eastern China, even though I haven't mentioned any of the thousand little things here in China that make everyday life here both irritating and almost unbearably wonderful. I won't tell you about these things, at least not tonight. I won't even tell you WHEN I will tell you about these things. Just write me an e-mail, prompt me, nag at me when it's been too long...and I'll write again. I'll try to do it without outside prompting, but the fact of the matter is that life here can take up every single MOMENT of your time in a meaningful way if you play your cards right, and that makes you really want to spend a lot of time practicing your card-playing skills. Just know that I love all of you--yes, even you, Guy I Don't Know Who Is Reading My Blog. I know you're out there. All of us here wish all of you the very best, even if we don't get online much to say it, and we promise--we really do--that we will try to keep in touch. But it's a two-edged sword: if you have a computer and an internet connection, download Skype this instant and send us your contact information so we can talk! Failing that, write us an e-mail, post a comment, or do anything to let us hear from home. And on a final note, before I forget, know that we ask for you to pray for us and our teaching. Things are starting off slowly, but I know great things will happen. Four students have already approached us, asking to Study (winkwink!) with us. Once we begin announcing study times at our apartments to all of our students, I'm sure this number will increase greatly. I desperately wish I could tell you more, and I honestly can't wait to tell you in person all that we have seen and experienced.
Take care, please leave your comments, and please tell the others to read this blog. Our schedules are beginning to settle into a routine now, so I PROMISE that this will be updated regularly! Until then, be safe, be kind, and be happy.
-Luke
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Classes start tomorrow!
Luke again--nothing much to report here. We're still settling in, trying to get things to work (like the toilet), etc. Tomorrow is the first day of classes for me and Katherine, so I'm a little nervous. Finn, lucky guy that he is, doesn't have classes for three weeks! Keep us in your thoughts. When I have more to post, and internet that works in my own apartment, I'll write more.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Greetings from Shiyan
Hey, everyone! This is Luke, posting for the Breland crew in China. Today, we finally have our internet working (kinda), so here's my first post. I tried to post once from Hong Kong's airport, but it didn't work for some reason.
So far, I am confused and nervous, Katherine is blase, and Finn is...Finn. At least he is teaching freshmen, which means his classes don't start for 3 weeks! I'm the only one in the group with a full load from the beginning. We've started settling into our apartments on campus, and they are...strange. Well, they actually aren't bad at all, aside from the kitchen and the bathroom. We'll get used to them. Poor Finn, however, is on the 7th floor of our building, which has no elevators. Katherine and I are on the 4th floor, and that's bad enough; I can't imagine needing to hike up all of those stairs every day! Poor Finn. At least he can hang out at our apartment all he wants.
Not much has happened. We've found a good place to eat, which the teachers here call "Happy Lady" (because the chef/owner never stops smiling), but any health inspector from the States would have a heart attack if he walked into the restaurant. Aside from that, we've just been taking naps and trying to get over our jet lag. Our Xbox is working (woohoo!), but I don't believe we'll be able to get it hooked up to the internet. So, no Xbox Live for us. The city itself is rather pretty, now that it has stopped raining, and I can see the hills and mountains surrounding it. It reminds me of Charleston WV a little bit, but it is in many ways beyond comparison.
Well, I can't think much right now, so I'll just wrap this up. For all those who are wondering, we are all doing well, in good health, etc. Don't worry about us, but please keep us in your thoughts!
So far, I am confused and nervous, Katherine is blase, and Finn is...Finn. At least he is teaching freshmen, which means his classes don't start for 3 weeks! I'm the only one in the group with a full load from the beginning. We've started settling into our apartments on campus, and they are...strange. Well, they actually aren't bad at all, aside from the kitchen and the bathroom. We'll get used to them. Poor Finn, however, is on the 7th floor of our building, which has no elevators. Katherine and I are on the 4th floor, and that's bad enough; I can't imagine needing to hike up all of those stairs every day! Poor Finn. At least he can hang out at our apartment all he wants.
Not much has happened. We've found a good place to eat, which the teachers here call "Happy Lady" (because the chef/owner never stops smiling), but any health inspector from the States would have a heart attack if he walked into the restaurant. Aside from that, we've just been taking naps and trying to get over our jet lag. Our Xbox is working (woohoo!), but I don't believe we'll be able to get it hooked up to the internet. So, no Xbox Live for us. The city itself is rather pretty, now that it has stopped raining, and I can see the hills and mountains surrounding it. It reminds me of Charleston WV a little bit, but it is in many ways beyond comparison.
Well, I can't think much right now, so I'll just wrap this up. For all those who are wondering, we are all doing well, in good health, etc. Don't worry about us, but please keep us in your thoughts!
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
WE ARE ON OUR WAY!!!!
Thanks to the Huntsville Airport, we are able to fire off one quick departure post! Hugs have been exchanged, passports have been checked, Luke has been unnecessarily scanned by security, and the obligatory water and tic tacs have been purchased!
So we now await the boarding call for our flight to Dallas. From there, we will fly to L.A., where we change airlines, cross the Pacific Ocean, stop in Hong Kong, and continue into Wuhan! As exhausted as we are from a long night of packing and goodbyes, we are all running off of a seemingly boundless amount of nervous energy and excitement (Luke is so giddy that he has been dancing down the concourse)!
Thanks for your thoughts and prayers as we fly. We hope to update again as soon as we find internet in China. This may be a few days so be patient with us! Pictures and news to come later!
Peace and Blessings,
-The Brelands
Friday, August 8, 2008
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