English Corner

The title of this post refers to the practice of having a time when students can gather in one place to practice speaking some English with foreign teachers, but before I get to any of that I have to describe what happened in my small class today. My first thought was to try to teach them some English history since they'll be going there. Besides the usual grumbling the passages I found just seemed to be completely over their heads. In fact I think I'd need a description basically for children for most of them to be able to understand it. My next idea was something Clark suggested to me. I asked them to get into groups and write a 10 minute speech on any topic, I suggested a few topics. They literally wouldn't stop complaining that this was too hard. I tried to help them break it down into smaller segments but they weren't really giving it a chance at one point one of them pulled out a cell phone and called Grace, who is basically in charge of the department that is sending them to England. Now I know a lot of things they do aren't really meant to be rude. I can tell from the way they react most of the time that they are just really direct more then rude. Honestly I'm usually pretty good with understanding that even some odd things are just cultural differences and I should let it slide, but this one really riled me up. Even if they were just looking for a solution to the class being too hard, even if this is somehow appropriate in China, I take offense to this. It's just too far to call up another teacher to complain in one teachers class.

Grace decided that the best thing to do was to have us all come to her office so we could discuss it. We all went over to the hotel, her office is on the third floor of the hotel I live in, and sat down at their conference table. It is a very weird experience to have 6 people sitting around talking about you and not being able to understand a word of it. In all the time here, with all the weird atention I get this was the most watched I ever felt. Grace would occasionally stop and tell me something or other, but I was largely in the dark. What became apparent eventually is that there level was just way to low for most real oral English work. We're going to get a book eventually and I guess were just going to have to do boring things like dialogues and what not. But it also definitly seemed like Grace was trying to explain to them that this was not just like other courses where the professor lectures at them, they were expected to talk and participate. I think they finally were starting to get it by the end and it was useful to be so close to more teachers who had suggestions and kept some order. One student, the one who had made the phone call, left really early and didn't tell me why. We also decided to have class in the hotel from now on where Grace works. I just can tell at this point that this class is going to be twice as much work as all my other classes combined. Not only do I have 6 hours a week as opposed to 2 but I haven't been able to find any good activity yet that kills time and makes 3 hours not feel like 8.

While that side of the day was annoying the English Corner was actually a bit of fun. It's held every Thrusday at 6:30 in a little park in the school. It's an odd place to hold this since it's dark and it was raining a little. I was the first American to arrive and word must have spread with the students that the American's were actually attending these things since I was basically mobbed by students. By the time David got there, who they all call by his last name, I basically never told any of my classes my last name to avoid this, I was standing in the center of a circle about 4 people deep in any direction with some students even standing on things to get a better look. I've never felt more like either a celebrity or circus attraction in my life. Even Chaz who had come with me was looking visibly nervous about all the people. I tired to talk to some of them but it seemed oddly ridiculous in a group of 60 to try to talk to one person. Eventually a couple more Americans came and the groups evened out, actually David had by far the biggest group and seems to have a talent for essentially entertaining a crowd. I just talked to a few students, one girl Catherine despite not being an English major had really good English from listening to American radio all the time and reading some pretty difficult books like Wuthering Heights. Seeing someone who learned English like that highlights why I'll never be that good at Chinese, I'll learn some, I might even become fluent, but I don't have that sort of commitment.