Tag Archives: teaching teenagers

In The Same Boat

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 … Continue reading

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Office Adventures

In the office the other day… Sven: I’m off to class to have mad fun with our apathetic teenagers! Carol: Good job! Did you learn that word from David? Sven: What? Meg: He said “mad fun” not “ma fan“. (Chinese … Continue reading

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Talent Show

On Friday, my class played Hippopotamus. This is an awesome game for mixed levels, easily modified for students’ English abilities and not mind-numbingly repetitive. You send one person into the hall while the rest of the class picks a verb. … Continue reading

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Who Do You Love?

I played a round of Who Do You Love? with my students on Friday. You put the chairs in a circle so almost everyone can sit down, and one person is left standing in the middle. The person in the … Continue reading

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Apathetically Playing Charades

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 … Continue reading

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Reasons To Work In China

In the belief that such things are very Western, my school encourages me to wear jeans, sneakers and t-shirts to work. Subscribe to Violet Eclipse by Email

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Always Carry Tissues

This morning, some of my students pinned my chalkboard eraser to my desk as an April Fools. Unfortunately, when I touched the eraser and it didn’t move, I grabbed a tissue for the board, and ruined their joke! Mysteriously sticky … Continue reading

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English Assignment

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Universal Behavior

I did some Mad Libs with my new teenage class. This is secretly a test to sort out English speakers from nodders. I can’t even fault them for faking it… I spent most of my high school chem class pretending … Continue reading

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At Least It Wasn’t Blue!

I started my new job at the high school today. We did a good warm-up where I told the kids that everyone is strange, and asked them to tell me something strange about themselves. We talked about “strange” and “unusual” … Continue reading

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