The Man in Black

One of the biggest differences between teaching here and teaching in Changzhou is that I have a listening class. You might think this would be pretty easy since I can play video and what not, but partially do to the fact that the students have a pretty low level of English and because I've never taught anything like this before it's been a challenge. There is a class book and DVD which I've been using a lot but they're frankly incredibly boring. The whole class seems to be tension between is what I'm doing to hard or too dull. Playing the same four minute video five different times seems excruciating to me but might actually be useful to the students. Besides the book and the class videos I've been trying to find a few things of my own to liven it up a bit. I found some of the old School House Rock videos on Youtube and so far I think my class enjoyed Conjunction Junction. I also decided to try and play a different type of American music at the end of each class. I played In Them Old Cotton Fields Back Home in the first class since it's a slow song with only about two sentences repeated over and over again. I think the students liked it and I hope it helped a little.