My high-school students had the word fiasco on their vocab list today.  I asked if anyone already knew the meaning, and they defined it as epic fail.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Full of Win

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I gave one of my classes a lesson on idioms, as part of my ongoing guest to eliminate certain abused phrases (like overuse of what a pity or using not at all as a response to thank you) from my students’ English. I gave them a handout with a list of idioms and some example sentences using those idioms, and we talked about the literal meaning and the figurative meaning. Then I asked my students to write a short dialogue using one of the idioms we’d discussed.

Most of the students made minor changes to my example sentences, but one group of usually unmotivated boys really stood out from the crowd.

Tracy: Hello. Bill is the president and David is the mayor.

David: Hi Bill.

Bill: Hi David.

David: Haha! I have just embezzled 1 billion dollars!

Bill: Now I know your secret! You must give me half of the money!

David: You have stolen from the embezzler, we are in the same boat now.

This is exactly why I love teenage classes.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

In The Same Boat

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I played Secretly Eating Pizza, an adverbs/verbs charades game with my teenagers yesterday and today. I put together this one for my Yantai drips, asa reward for all their hard work learning the difference between adjectives and adverbs. The game is quite simple, basically, you pick an adverb and a verb out of two bags, and then you act them out while the rest of the class guesses. Sometimes you get normal combinations, like Slowly Walking, but sometimes you’ll get Lovingly Riding a Bike or Rudely Brushing Your Teeth (I call it that because John, one of my little boys in Yantai, really really liked to “secretly eat pizza”).

It worked even better with teenagers, except for my usual duds, a girls or two per class who do about 2% of whatever the assignment is. Even activities that are usually fun get no response. I’m sort of hoping there’ll be a fire drill or emergency while I’m here just to see if they can move quickly.

I did the game in two classes, modifying the vocab a bit for different level of English proficency, and in both classes, a few duds slowed the game to an unfun crawl when they looked at their words, whined that they wanted new ones, stood in the front for a while deciding what to do, then apathetically waved their hands a little bit, so little that Angrily Exercising was indistinguishable from Languidly Waiting For A Bus, and then stood waiting for their classmates to become psychic.

I know there are dud students in every school in every city, like those kernels of corn that refuse to pop, but I’m stumped as teacher when I plan a lesson that has 18 people waving their hands and begging to go next, and 2 people looking like they’re at the dentist’s.

What do I do here? Do I let the duds sit and stare into spare (I originally wrote “doodle” here but that implies active creativity) while the games goes on, keeping everything fun, fast-paced and focused, but making participation in English class optional? Do I force them to participate, and let unenthused students make it lamer for everyone? I’m considering spiking their drinks, but I don’t know the Chinese word for uppers.

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From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Apathetically Playing Charades

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My sister Bethie just returned from three months of sailing the high seas, so naturally when I got to talk to her tonight, I asked her all about her pirate life.

“Did you call your friends, ‘me hearties’? Do you call other people ‘landlubber’?” I asked, “Did you at least get to say ‘Aye, aye, Captain’ when you got orders?”

“Actually,” she said, “you’re supposed to repeat the instructions back, and then say aye, so they know you heard and understood the order. You can’t just say yes.”

“Kind of like teaching English.”

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

My Sister The Pirate

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I met Joe about a month ago when he asked me to sub for Christina’s class one day, and he’s offered me occasional tutoring and substitute gigs since then. Subbing in an American middle school looks like torture, but subbing for Chinese-middle schoolers rocks. Basically I turn up, introduce myself, giggle at a few of the more creative English names, then we chat about iPods and CounterStrike or play some games. This time, he had a class of 10-year-olds, which means more Meg Says and less actual teaching.

“Sure, I’m free.” I said. “What did their regular teacher cover last week?”

“They don’t have a regular teacher.” Joe said.

“The class is in 4 hours and they don’t have a teacher?”

“That’s why I called you,” he said. (Duh! I know the engine’s on fire! That’s why I called a mechanic!)

Good thing I went, though. While I was in the midst of explaining the rules for Verb Charades, I happened to look at the wall behind my students, and noticed something odd with the language poster.

Usually these posters are something like this:

Language centers are full of these posters. A bit of a random assortment, a touch of Chinglish, and some rarely used idioms but nothing memorable. But what caught my attention — and almost stopped my class — was this one:

I wonder if they make a wallet-sized version for easy reference on the go.

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From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Adventures In Tutoring

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I was tutoring a teenage student last night, and we did a reading about finding jobs in America. The passage talked about looking in the paper to find a new, and I mentioned that it’s a bit out-of-date, and people our age use the internet much more than the newspaper classified.

My teenage student gave me a look that clearly told me that we are not the same age.

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From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

I can feel the wrinkles already…

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My first two days of classes were great, but also overwhelming. I have 6 classes of 25ish kindergartners per day. Fortunately I only work 3 days a week, oddly enough it’s Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, which were the days I worked at LCC.

My classes are exhausting. I keep the kids entertained and alert by doing physical games and activities with them. I have the same level all 6 times, so my first class are guinea pigs, and by my last class I’m sick of looking at my flashcards.

Our director came to observe me yesterday, I was hanging colored-paper flowers on the wall while the kids called out what color it was, and when I turned around, there was Director Liong in the back row. Fortunately, he happened to stop by when I had a pretty good class and we were going an activity that got everyone excited. And he left before class ended so he didn’t see the mass stampede out the door at the end of class, either.

It was a good lesson by American standards, but e I’m still a little worried because the Chinese expectations of teachers and ideas of education are so different from ours. So far, the director doesn’t have the typical attitude that we can teach English by osmosis. (A lot of Chinese English schools believe English is a communicable disease spread by native speakers. We don’t need books, school supplies, or advance notice of lessons, we just need to be in the same room. If only that worked, I would be speaking fluent Mandarin right now.)

The Chinese education system seems to be based on memorization, on being punished if your stroke order is wrong, and on trying to be top of the class. The American schools have freewriting about your feelings, spelling and grammar don’t count. So we have Chinese graduates who have memorized advanced texts but who are unable to think creatively, while American graduates are problem-solvers who can’t find the US on a world map. It seems like the two systems are completely at odds, but I really think that blending the strengths of each is the only way for the world to progress in science and technology.

At the end of the day, a huge crowd of parents and grandparents gathers at the gates of the school. The kids come out, meet their moms, and show what they did in school. I know it’s a private school in a good neighborhood, and not necessarily a typical Chinese elementary school. It’s really good to see that the parents are interested in their kids’ education. I hope it means that if the children act up in class, their parents will care.

Anyway, teaching the little ones is extremely tiring, but I feel like I’m working for a reputable school (in a lovely neighborhood — more on that later!).

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Teaching Little Ones

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Meaderthal — 1) n. A dull-witted student moving through his workbook at his own special pace. 2) v. The behavior of such a student.

Usage: John’s parents were so wealthy and well-connected that he meaderthaled through three years of English with perfect grades.

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Meaderthal

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I gave my students a writing warm-up exercise today. A lot of my students come straight from work, or from picking up their kids, etc. and I thought it would make a good transition into English class. And it rewards those who showed up on time by giving them extra time to complete the assignment without being unduly harsh on those rushing in a few minutes late. And it’s theoretically a silent activity, which means students don’t feel comfortable greeting their friends, which in turn means I don’t have to give the Glare of Doom. It was a brilliant plan in every way.

The assignment was this:

Imagine you are sent to live in an igloo for the rest of your life. What five things would you bring with you? Assume that you have enough food, water and warm clothing.

Apparently my ESL students didn’t grow up with “I is for Igloo” in their alphabet books. They all asked me what that means, and after I described an ice house, pointed to the Arctic Circle on the world map, and drew a weird little igloo on the board, they finally understood.

“It’s the same in Portuguese,” one of my students told me, “But we didn’t think you wanted us to live in the snow.”

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Portuguese Igloos

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Some of my students will learn English whether I’m a good teacher or not. They are the most fun to teach, and they ask the most interesting questions, but I spend most of our class time on the middle of the bell curve, the ones who are progressing and struggling and need a second explanation. I can’t take credit for my dream students’ progress, but I love hearing my middle students ask and answer “Where is your verb?” or “Who’s doing this action?” or any of the other things I repeat in class. That’s when I feel like I’m doing a good job.

There’s a third section of my academic triage. These are the ones who come in late, who forget their books, who don’t have a pencil, who aren’t sure which page we’re on, who whisper through the explanation, who didn’t know there was homework, who didn’t have time to read and so forth. Fortunately I have only a couple like this, but they are repeat offenders.

I don’t know what to do about the ones who lack basic study skills. I don’t want to just ignore them and but I don’t want to waste our class time and my energy on students who are actively fighting against learning English.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Academic Triage

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