First Semester Wrap-Up

In the interest of giving a lot of information in a short amount of time I want to share a few moments from my first semester in the style of superlatives. So without further ado…

Best Lesson: My best lesson this semester was the one I previously wrote about on this blog. My classes watched a scene from Harry Potter in silence and created their own ideas about what was happening with the characters. It went well in every single class and I believe the students genuinely enjoyed being creative with each other.

Worst Lesson: My worst lesson was during our formal and informal speech unit. I created a few different lessons to help differentiate between formal and informal vocabulary and expressions. There were some very successful lessons with mock job interviews and a game using “slang” words, but one lesson fell flat. We discussed how diary style writing influences informal speech, and how casual videos can show informal relationships. However, the lesson did not have enough substance, so I’ve put it on the blacklist for the future.

Funniest Moment: I can’t pull out one specific funny moment from my memory because the students all say humorous things quite often in my class. One of the most fun weeks though was when the students were learning raps for their pronunciation and intonation class and they came into my classroom mumbling the lyrics to “My Humps” by the Black Eyed Peas under their breath. I forced them all to tell me which raps they were learning and many were throwbacks to my middle school days, so we listened on QQmusic and I rapped right along with them.

Scariest Moment: The scariest moment is a toss-up between two memorable incidents. One: during our Harry Potter acting class two of the boys were such good actors that I was convinced they were actually going to fist fight each other. Fortunately, they played nicely. Two: in two of our classes a computer began smoking in the middle of class and scared the students half to death. We have since marked that computer as the computer of death and NO ONE is allowed to touch it EVER again! ~Fun times!

Most Memorable Class: Again, difficult to choose, but we have now acted for two class lessons and I think those are the most fun. We did our Harry Potter scene lesson, and we also did a class that focused on improvisation. Improvising in a second language is so difficult because it strains your mental capacity to remember vocabulary and sentence construction. Buuuuut… this is how spoken English is used – we don’t plan out everything we say on paper before we say it. So we did a class-wide improv game and the students were once again creative and successful!

Most Difficult Parts of Learning English: Everything. Just kidding – the students are actually quite good at memorizing vocabulary and using it in their writing. They also know a lot more English grammar than I do, which stinks because native English speakers tend not to use grammar appropriately when they speak. The pronunciation is also difficult because it’s so different from the pronunciation of Chinese. There are many sounds that exist in one language, but not the other and vice versa.

Most Interesting Discussion: We spent time one class discussing winters in our hometowns. This was just after a big storm in New Hampshire, so I decided to share my typical winter experience with my classes (Nanchang does not get any snow). It became interesting when I opened up the floor to all the students and had them share with each other about their own hometowns in winter. Many are from this province (Jiangxi) but there are also many from more northern or southern provinces that had cool things to share with their classmates.

Things I Learned: My biggest learning moment (in class) this semester was about the education system in China. We discussed high school, applying for college, and admittance. In China the Gaokao is the college entrance exam (similar to the SAT… except not… the Gaokao score can decide a student’s future entirely). Everyone takes the Gaokao and sends their scores to the universities of their choice, along with their requests for a major. You get 6 choices. Then, a while later you receive information telling you which school you will attend and which major you will be, almost solely based on your Gaokao score. This is very different from receiving several (hopefully) acceptance letters from colleges in the U.S. and choosing one along with your major. It was a big learning moment for me, and it helped me to understand my students even more.

Well, classes are over. Exams take place during the next two weeks. And then it’s time for the students to go home and relax and celebrate Spring Festival (or Chinese New Year) with their families. More on that later!