Party of 25
I wanted to organize a lunch meeting that students may attend on Thursday's and figured that if each student brought 5 yuan, I could make up the difference. Shandong University gives me a little bit of extra money every month for my transportation costs. Since I am riding my bike, I pocket all of that money and thought a good use for it would be to subsidize lunch for a group of students. I told both of my Monday morning classes that they were welcome to meet me on Thursday at noon for lunch and a chance to practice English outside of class. As they left the classroom, about 10 of them said "See you Thursday". I thought that ten students seemed like a lot of people for lunch and eventhough probably not all of them would show up, I figured I better not tell my classes for the rest of the week just to play it safe. I presumed I would have other lunch days available to other classes. On Thursday, I went to the main gate at noon and within five minutes, twenty five of my Monday students arrived. I suppose it was naive to think that I wouldn't get a big turnout when there was food involved. We walked to a nearby restaurant and packed in at two large round tables. (Many restaurants here have large round tables with "Lazy Susan"s in the middle). As you might guess, the majority of the lunch time discussion was in Chinese except for the 5 or 6 students nearest to me who asked me to compare Western food to Chinese food among many other questions related to my fondness for Chinese dishes. It was all rather chaotic and the bill was very large. The students insisted I accept 8 yuan from each of them, playing the "it would make us uncomfortable if you pay so much" card. It was nice that they helped out more, but I was embaressed because they could have spoken to each other in Chinese and eaten in the cafeteria for 3 yuan.
Second attempt:
Josh has office hours at our apartment on Wednesday nights. About ten or twelve students sit in the living room laughing and carrying on about interesting topics for a couple of hours. I am always envious because he gets to see personalties of his students emerge and hear what they have to say about politics, loveless marriage and a wide variety of topics that can't be thoroughly discussed in the classroom. I decided to plan some office hours of my own, but it was proving difficult because I live on another campus. It is too far for my students to commute in the dark and cold. Also, far too time consuming of a journey (unless you are bike) in the city's bumper to bumper traffic. At last I found a classroom on the other campus that could be unlocked for me between 2-4 on Mondays. Today, I went to the classroom and within minutes I had forty students (including five people I had never seen before). The worst of it was they all looked at me like it was a class and waited for me to speak. I tried out a couple of dicussion topics, but a discussion with forty people just wasn't happening. Eventually, we broke into five groups and had free-talk time. Many students were dissapointed. It felt like a problem without a solution. I went around a participated in each discussion group for 15 minutes, but we all left feeling rather dissatisfied.
One solution is to have seperate office hours for each class, but another solution is to not have office hours at all, and I am leaning towards the latter. Afterall, they can find ways to practice English on their own, right?
This week I am teaching each class how to write a business letter, cover letter and other practical communication skills as well as some Western manners.
My students were absolutley shocked and embaressed when I told them it is uncommon to end an official letter in "Yours very truly". I went as far to say that you would probably not use "yours" unless you have a close relationship with the person you are writing to if not a romantic relationship. Many of my students have written me emails with the close "Yours very truly" and I know they had to be a tad embaressed when I brought this up. There is a chapter in their textbook about official letter writing. The authors suggest you use "yours very truly" or "yours faithfully". I was very surprised to see this. For the longest time I've believed it was too personal. Am I wrong?
Second attempt:
Josh has office hours at our apartment on Wednesday nights. About ten or twelve students sit in the living room laughing and carrying on about interesting topics for a couple of hours. I am always envious because he gets to see personalties of his students emerge and hear what they have to say about politics, loveless marriage and a wide variety of topics that can't be thoroughly discussed in the classroom. I decided to plan some office hours of my own, but it was proving difficult because I live on another campus. It is too far for my students to commute in the dark and cold. Also, far too time consuming of a journey (unless you are bike) in the city's bumper to bumper traffic. At last I found a classroom on the other campus that could be unlocked for me between 2-4 on Mondays. Today, I went to the classroom and within minutes I had forty students (including five people I had never seen before). The worst of it was they all looked at me like it was a class and waited for me to speak. I tried out a couple of dicussion topics, but a discussion with forty people just wasn't happening. Eventually, we broke into five groups and had free-talk time. Many students were dissapointed. It felt like a problem without a solution. I went around a participated in each discussion group for 15 minutes, but we all left feeling rather dissatisfied.
One solution is to have seperate office hours for each class, but another solution is to not have office hours at all, and I am leaning towards the latter. Afterall, they can find ways to practice English on their own, right?
This week I am teaching each class how to write a business letter, cover letter and other practical communication skills as well as some Western manners.
My students were absolutley shocked and embaressed when I told them it is uncommon to end an official letter in "Yours very truly". I went as far to say that you would probably not use "yours" unless you have a close relationship with the person you are writing to if not a romantic relationship. Many of my students have written me emails with the close "Yours very truly" and I know they had to be a tad embaressed when I brought this up. There is a chapter in their textbook about official letter writing. The authors suggest you use "yours very truly" or "yours faithfully". I was very surprised to see this. For the longest time I've believed it was too personal. Am I wrong?
posted by B | 3:35 PM
1 Comments:
I just stumbled upon your site and as a fellow teacher, it is quite embarrassing that you have mispelled the word embarrass a few times in your entry.
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