Classes

So, I'm teaching six classes this term: two listening, two oral, one reading and one writing. I only had five of them this week because freshmen don't start right away. It's amazing how tired I am from teaching only ten hours this week!

Monday was listening at 10:00. The classroom is pretty high-tech. Each student has a computer screen and a headset. I can put a book under a document camera and all of the students can see it at their stations. When I play the tape (it is a listening class, after all), the students all put on their headsets. It's a pretty easy class to teach. I play the tape, the students answer questions about the passage, I go over the answers. Rinse, repeat. There is very little preparation needed for that class. I teach the same class on Thursdays.

Tuesday I had both oral and writing. Oral is hard, just because it is a class of 41, and the goal is for them to learn how to talk. I can't possibly talk to each of them in the time given! I assign some pair work, but there is always the possibility that they will just talk in Chinese. We also do some "choral readings", but that's not a useful for learning how to speak "off the cuff". So that's an experience.

My writing class was challenging, only because the students didn't bring paper. I think I'll actually really like it. It is my most advanced class - they are juniors who are on the 4 year program. We wrote a collective essay on summer vacation, which was rather successful.

My last class is Literature, which has the potential to be my favorite class. The students aren't terribly advanced - they are only on the two year program. But I love Literature, personally. The book is really cool. It has just the most famous parts of the most famous literature. For example: this week we studied Shakespeare. The book had Hamlet's "to be or not to be" soliloquy and Sonnet 18 (Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?). I think that I may be more excited than all of the students combined, but that's OK!

I don't have many photos to share, because my batteries in my camera are dead. They are rechargable and I brought a charger with me. Unfortunately I don't have the right electricity converter to plug it in to the wall! Once I buy a new charger I'll take more pictures! I'm incredibly tired, but it's good. Life just takes a lot of effort here!!

Well, it's Saturday night and I'm just got back from doing some shopping, so I'm going to put things away.

:) Liz