Ms. B.'s TESOL

Seen in Jilin this week:

– young men with large red circular marks all over their shoulders and upper back. This is a health therapy technique in which hot cups are placed on the skin. As they cool the skin is lifted (suction) and “impurities” are removed. The resultant bruises fade eventually, but for a while it looks as though the person has had three-inch red circles tattooed all over him.

– goiter. At the gate of the university I passed a women of no more than fifty who showed the unmistakable signs. It surprised me that this would still exist in a city of 2.5 million people with several medical universities. On the other hand, perhaps she was on her way to consult with someone at the university. I hope so.

– a person with no nose. This is one of Fr. B’s neighbors, a small, frail, elderly person (gender unknown) whose face is completely flat, with two holes in the center above the mouth. I had heard of cutting off the nose being a punishment during the Communist revolution, but have never seen evidence of it until now.

After lunch break I returned to Class 8. Fr. B has stressed that he wants us to discuss the day’s article in detail during at least one session, so as boring as I found today’s gambling story, I charged ahead, first handing out some peppermint candies, which seemed to please everyone. Dividing the class into four teams, I asked all of them to look at four recommendations stated by the article’s author and to decide which ones they could endorse; additionally each team had a special question to discuss, relating to risk and risk-taking.

As I feared, the first portion did not proceed as well as it might at home, due, I believe, firstly to the Chinese student’s general unfamiliarity with the concepts of separating assertion from fact and of challenging others’ opinions, and secondly to the topic itself being generally irrelevant to them. Since it is largely illegal in China, in their view the discouragement of gambling is a fait accompli and there is nothing to discuss. Not to mention, a goodly proportion of the sixteen students did not know anything about casinos or games of chance versus games of skill…and about six of them had even listed mah jong as one of their “new” vocabulary words!

The discussion of risk was a bit more fruitful.
What is the biggest risk you have ever taken? Playing “chicken” at Chinese New Year to see who will hold onto a lit firework the longest. (!)
For whom or what would you risk a lot? For my spouse, for my family.
When would you be willing to take a risk? If the other person pays me money, I will take a risk.
What if the person paid you and asked you to kill another student?
Apparently, that was acceptable…

Here is where we find a big challenge in this program. With limited time, to uncover moral questions like that last one and explore its pros and cons. The opportunity to help young folks to grow in self-awareness and in moral capacity is great; at the same time it is important to avoid outright preaching and too much teacher-talk (esp. when still recovering from laryngitis!). A fine balance, but having uncovered this – to my mind – important issue, perhaps I can work it into a discussion in a future session.

We moved on to something lighter. Since everyone in the class has an English name, I asked each person to speak about his name, as I did yesterday with Class 7. This was very interesting. Edward’s mother chose his name…in honor of Edward the vampire in the Twilight movies! Another boy was given his name by his teacher, in honor of zombie in another film. Chloe named herself after the perfume. About two-thirds of the class said their English teacher had named them. I asked whether their teachers were Chinese or Native English Teachers. It turns out that most of them were named by our own Mr. I, who has taught at Jilin for the past two semesters and who is following me in the summer program!

We had about 15 minutes left, so I pulled out my usual pronunciation exercises and we ran over most of both sheets and did some minimal pair dictation on the chalkboard. On average, this class hears better than the previous groups and only has real trouble with V/F and V/W and long E vs. short I.

Conclusion:

I think this group may have been seriously under-challenged. I will have them for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of next week, so am going to plan some more difficult activities for them than I was able to use with my other students.

Happy Friday!

This is my fourth (and last) group to teach during this summer session in Jilin. But three of my colleagues have already had this group. All of them have reported to me that it is a most difficult group, with hardly anyone interested in working. None of the teachers felt they had had much success in really getting the group to talk, so couldn’t give me any suggestions for classes or exercises.

But I was encouraged by the time we broke for lunch. I started by writing my Chinese name on the board, then did my standard greeting in German, French, Spanish, and Korean. Like previous groups, these students were clearly intrigued and puzzled, until I explained in English that while I don’t speak Chinese I do speak (at least a little) of these other languages. This actually got me a round of applause! I then did my standard dictation (see previous post) and a review of the correct wording of it.

Then I passed out chalk and invited the students to write on the board any “new” vocabulary they had not understood from my presentation. There was a long hesitation. Now, the first couple of times I did this, students hesitated because they were not used to being called to write on the board. This time, though, glancing down at their copies of today’s article, it appeared to me that few had taken the kind of detailed notes I’ve seen in other classes. I wondered how many had bothered to pre-read the story. When they finally started filing towards the board, I looked over their dictation papers.

Lo and behold — with one exception, this class uniformly out-performed every other class with whom I’ve done this dictation. One student actually had no mistakes at all! Looking up to see what they were writing on the board, I saw that instead of eight to twelve words apiece, this group wrote an average of four new words. What’s more, most of them chose the same words.

My conclusion: this is a bright group who is capable of advanced work. I was encouraged in this impression when it was revealed that nearly all of them plan to be doctors.

After reviewing the vocabulary, I launched into Two Truths and a Lie. This was a hit, especially when I passed around the family photo. Then each student took a turn to introduce himself, give his English name, home province (and show it to me on a map), school major and then his Two Truths and a Lie.   We had some laughs over these, and everyone broke for lunch in a good mood.

Things observed during the above:
– this group can use complex vocabulary
– there are fewer pronunciation issues than in other groups
– the few “problem accents” do interfere with comprehension. (I misunderstood a girl’s comment about a doctor as being about a daughter.)
– there is occasional confusion in using “he” and “she” (since Mandarin does not use gender in pronouns).

Success or failure? Time will tell.

Today was the double whammy: not only was it my turn to present in front of the entire student body, but it was also my first meeting with Class 8.

The presentation went smoothly enough. All you really have to do is read from the slides, though most of the teachers (self included) have added some enriching personal touch. Fr. R’s puppet, for example, or Mr. M’s sports photographs or Ms. R’s bringing her entire class to the front of the room to demonstrate a proper handshake. Since my topic addressed the definition of illegal gambling, I added a few vocabulary words on the chalkboard to clarify the differences among “gamble”, “risk”, “bet”, “wager”, and “stake”. I also reminded everyone that the articles we read are opinion pieces and when the author says, “This should be…” he is expressing his own thoughts, and not necessarily facts. I truly believe this may have been news to many of our students.

It’s funny, I rehearsed everything the evening before and timed it at 25 or 30 minutes. Then, delivering it in real life and speaking at an artificially slow pace (and watching my diction) I finished in just under 20 minutes. No one minded, because that means that class begins early, which means earlier dismissal for lunch, which means a longer lunch time.

But I was a little anxious, because finishing early meant I’d have to meet Class 8 that much sooner.

It occurs to me that I haven’t described the dictation exercise I generally use with each new class. (Forgive me if I have.)

First I explain the word “dictation” and a) point out that the dict– root means “word” or “say” and b) announce that I will routinely underline word roots when defining words and that a smart student will start writing when I start underlining.

There are three dictation sentences. They are read once as a group, then each is read three or four times alone, then the group is re-read once.
1. The quick brown fox jumped over the sailboat.
2. The lazy dog awoke and yawned.
3. The birds sang merrily in the trees while I ate my lunch.

The words italicized above are the ones that generally give trouble.

I have found this a very useful tool in diagnosing the general level of aural comprehension among students and in indicating to me how I must adjust the speed and exactitude of my speech so as not to lose anyone.

The topic today was the importance of choosing a “good” English name, that is, one appropriate to a human being, if not simply one of our standard (usually Christian) names. Ms. R, who presented, speaks some Mandarin and some Cantonese, so she gave examples of bad Chinese names: Feng Shui Jones, for example, or Bing Shui (Cold Water) before going into awkward or meaningless English names.

My original plan for today was to begin by having Class 7 assign English names to each other – but it turns out that they already have them. So each person wrote his name on the board and then told us how he received or chose the name, what it means, and any other important fact associated with it. This worked very well, as everyone speaks readily and most listen very politely.

I did not have time to prepare a pronunciation exercise using Dr. Seuss’ Fox in Socks, so I fell back on my standard dictation exercise*, and then on dictation of minimal pairs. For this I read, and students write, eight words, grouped according to sounds that are hard to distinguish: bag and back, heat and hit, etc.. Class 7 averaged about 60% accuracy, which is about par for the course so far among Jilin students.

For the afternoon session I explained the Miller Analogy Test, which is used stateside as part of the LSAT exam for entry into law school. Everyone at Jilin understands math, so teaching analogy in terms of ratios is very simple. I gave a few examples:
1:2 as 10: _____ (answer = 20)
½:_____ as 5:10 (answer = 1)
10:J as 13: _____ (answer = M)
big:little as tall: ______ (answer = short)
Several students figured out those last two pretty quickly, so that got them excited. I had collected fifteen analogy problems from a sample test at the LSAT website, so I wrote seven of them on the board and broke the class into groups to work on them together.

This being a very advanced exercise, I did have to permit the use of translators, but the pitfall often was that students would choose the wrong answer because they did not pay attention to the part of speech. Overall, most teams got six of the seven problems correct. They were very gratified, especially when I pointed out that this is a test given in the last year of university; I did mention, however, that English-speaking students are not allowed to use a dictionary, which got a big laugh.

I do think this was a good exercise, but if I use it again I will write my own problems so that students can do it without recourse to a translator. Ideally the problems should be written to require only an English-English dictionary, and only in the worst cases.

For the last session we played What IS That Thing? I laid six odd household items on various tables. In small groups the students visited two tables apiece, examined the items, and devised an explanation to present to the class as to what the item is called, its purpose, who might use it, and how. I emphasized that I was not looking for accuracy or truth but for originality and imagination. To demonstrate, I held up a tiny packet wrapped in gold paper (which everyone recognized as a cough drop), and I spun a tale for them about its being a magic love stone that you can only obtain from an old lady in a remote village at the time of the full moon but if you turn around three times and then swallow it, the boy you love will come to you within the month.

I will admit to being a little disappointed in the results. The groups all presented well, with few notes, but in every single case the explanations involved magic! We had an alien space craft that will take you anywhere, we had Cinderella’s key which will open anything, and so forth. I had expected something a bit more down-to-earth….

The biggest problem with this exercise is that it takes far longer than I expected: nine minutes’ discussion for the first item (which the students conducted mostly in English) and five for the second item, plus time for each group to present twice. I think if I do it again I will leave magic out of my example piece, and I will assign one object to one individual. This would, of course, not be appropriate for a short program like this, but may work well in a semester-long class.

I congratulated Class 7 for their proficiency in English and for the fun they afforded me because of their hard work and enthusiasm and reminded them not to miss breakfasting with Fr. B, as clearly it has its benefits!

 

* see next post

 

Leo has got be one of the nicest young men alive.  In addition to riding herd on the class leaders and organizing the talent show that will mark the end of the English Summer Program, he does all sorts of little kindnesses for us teachers.

The other day he brought me some plums and mangosteens (because I was out sick and these are full of vitamin C).

Last night he stopped by with a tray of watermelon for all of us to share.

Love that boy.

 

How many dumplings can you eat?

After our tour to of Shenyang Palace, Frank took us to a restaurant that has been in business for more than 150 years. Their specialty?  Dumplings!

I hate to use that word, since for American me it conjures up images of poached bread dough in chicken gravy. But “pot stickers”, “gyoza”, “mandu”, and other words don’t quite tell the tale.  Anyway, we left the ordering to Frank and he must have been planning to place wagers as to who could eat the most because we ended up with fifteen bamboo steamer baskets of dumplings:  probably 15 or 18 dozen in all, for eleven people!

Fillings included spinach and egg; fish; beef; green onion; pork; and others we had no luck in definitively identifying.

Just to please those of us who wanted a balance diet, Frank also ordered one dish of sauteed greens.

Sadly for me, I did not charge my camera battery before starting off on our outing to Shenyang and so was unable to take any pictures after lunch.  This is a great disappointment to me because our next stop was the tomb of the second king of the Qing dynasty; I think he was the last Qing king to reside in Shenyang.  The tomb is in a massive park with lovely shaded lawns and a long central avenue lined by huge sculptures of real and fantastic beasts:  elephants and camels, fu dogs and dragons.  All eleven of us piled into a little open-air bus (75 cents fare) to travel about half a mile to the real entrance.

Since this is a tomb, the emperors who followed this one would come periodically to offer sacrifice. Therefore, off to one side is a building, under renovation, that served as a staging area for the sacrificial animals.  (Apparently, as late as the mid-17th century the Chinese occasionally offered human sacrifice as well as animals.) The wide stone walkway leading to the tomb includes a path made of a different color of stone — for use only by the king or, alternatively, only by the spirit of the dead king.

In front of the tomb is what appears to be a citadel:  a large, roughly-square space surrounded by crenelated stone walls about 25 feet high, with a large watchtower-like structure in each corner. Passing through a huge gate, we walked up a staircase and wended our way along the “battlements”.  At the far end of the square was another large gate.  We all thought this was the place where the king’s body or ashes were buried, but instead just beyond it was the altar of sacrifice — solid carved granite and about four feet high by six feet wide by 20 feet long.  Past this was the great surprise:  a solid wall containing a sealed-up door which is said to be the entrance to the tomb itself.  On the other side of the wall is a large tumulus (mound of earth) with an old elm tree growing at the top.

Thus, the Qing king was buried as the Koreans did their kings:  in an earth mound, presumably surrounded, Egyptian-style, by regalia and utensils useful to him in the afterlife.  We know that many of the Korean royal tombs contain masterworks of ceramics and jewelry, but no one has ever excavated this Qing tomb.  Evidently no one has ever pillaged it, either.  As Dr. D told us in Hong Kong, the spirits of the deceased cannot feed themselves, but they can make trouble for the living. Perhaps for the Chinese throughout these last five hundred years that threat has been enough to keep such a site intact.

During his presentation to the large group, Fr. R made use of a little owl puppet, which the students found novel and engaging. (We teachers had begged him to bring his guitar and sing but had to settle for the puppet.)

Fr. B kindly took over my class yesterday. When I met them today I was a) appalled at the size of our classroom, and b) impressed at their readiness and fluency at speaking, and at their generally good level of pronunciation. I was also impressed that at least two of them slept soundly through my first hour with them. The explanation:   this group meets privately every morning at 6:30 in Brian’s office for breakfast and conversation!

During my first session with the class we reviewed vocabulary, as usual. More than with previous classes, today nearly everyone chose the same “new words”. Unlike previous classes, this time there was often a student who could suggest a synonym or give an explanation.

To get to know them and to assess their individual speaking ability, I used the questions I described in the earlier post, Day 7: Thoughts from a Sickbed (q.v.). It worked very well, with little coaching or prompting on my part. Better yet, several of the students used vocabulary words from today’s lesson or from last week!

After lunch we very quickly reviewed the salient points of the day’s news article and divided into four groups, each with a discussion question. Here is where the men separated from the boys. In Classes 5 and 6 I told them, “Discuss in English if you can; Chinese is all right. The answers are not in the news story. They are here” (pointing to the head). “Write down your answers, in English, if you want. You may read them. Each person must speak.” Results: the entire group stood up in the front of the room (for moral support) and each person read a line or two. Class 5 sometimes read verbatim from the news article, while Class 6 gave guarded opinions.

Class 7 was given the same instructions. When I told them I wanted their own opinions and thoughts, not the author’s, they looked at me as if to say, “Well, duh. Of course you do!” When it came time to speak, each of them gave us at least ten extemporaneous sentences. (Rehearsed, perhaps, but delivered with no notes!). In a couple of cases I was sorely tempted to say, “Enough, enough! Let someone else have a turn before we run out of time!”

We finished the day with Two Truths and a Lie. It’s interesting to see how few students know the word “lie” but the way I introduce it they also learn “falsehood” and “untruth” so they get their money’s worth.

As usual, no one believed that I have two sons and two daughters…which was the lie, because I have two sons and three daughters (and more!). They were delighted at the photo of the family and intrigued by everyone’s fair complexions.

Tomorrow I definitely want to try What IS That Thing and…the Miller Analogy Test. I think Class 7 may be able to handle it.

From our Win a Few/Lose a Few Dept.: Word among the teachers is that Class 8 students are generally uncooperative and hard to get talking. I hope my voice returns at full strength by then.

My roommate, Ms. K, has been mute since the evening of Day 3, with Fr. B assuming her classes for her. I’m getting a bit hoarse myself. I blame the air-conditioning in the hotel, which always gives me a cold. For both Ms. K and myself, though, there is surely an element of too much “teacher talk” But now that they have several days’ experience in speaking English with us, the students must be challenged to speak more frequently and for longer stretches. Class 6 is more than willing to do rise to the bait – I mean, the challenge!

During the lunch break I placed 16 props into the drawer of my lectern. For the second afternoon session I announced that now it was my turn to be the student. I distributed playing cards (to establish random order) and called for the student holding the Ace. Then I handed her a comb and a card on which I’d written Teach me how to use a comb. She had to describe in exact detail how to do it. Other tasks: to walk, to use a flashlight, to put things into a bag, to use a sleep mask, to use an umbrella, to shave one’s face, to use a fan, etc. This is more difficult than students expect, even Americans. I encouraged speakers to have a partner to help demonstrate the task. If the presenter spoke too briefly I would say, “But I’m very stupid. You must tell me everything!” or ask, “Which is my left hand?” Many were a bit perplexed at first, but did their best. In about a third of the tasks we used toilet articles provided by our hotel; the students were quite excited to take home the comb, the toothbrush, etc..

My plan for Day 6 is to play “What IS That Thing?”, about which more later.