By now, I have changed my lesson plan from its first draft probably 5 or 6 times. And I find myself still changing it depending on how the class before went. I have added in a game of hangman to get the kids to learn my first name. They really like that, and surprisingly, some of them still have difficulty with some letters. So even though I felt it might be too elementary for them, it turns out to be a good ice breaker.
After that, I tell the students that I want them to get to know me, so they have to ask me questions. I say maybe they want to know my favorite food, or how tall I am, or maybe they want to know where I’m from. Some classes are great, asking me question after question. Other classes have been a little more reticent. I can tell they want to ask, but speaking in front of their peers is a tricky thing. From what I’ve heard from another teacher, Junior High is when they start worrying about “face.” As I understand it, it is basically your reputation. If you answer a question correctly, you save face (or maybe gain face makes more sense). If you answer incorrectly, then you lose face. While it is certainly the same back home, it seems a more insidious pest in the culture here. I will be doing what I can to get students to speak without fear of losing face, but I’m limited by the fact that they do not want to speak out in front of the class.
So far, I have had the usual “where are you from?” And “what’s your favorite food?” But my favorites have been “do you have a girlfriend?” the students are always disappointed by my negative answer. Also, “are you married?” is a good one. The one that wins the prize is “can you speak Chinese?” to which I reply “I know very little Chinese. I know ni hao, xie xie, zai jian, and che fan” (hello, thank you, goodbye, and lunch or dinner, respectively). The students love that. I’m looking forward to wowing them with more Mandarin, but it’s one of those things you really want to get right before saying it to them, don’t need my students thinking I’m a stupid foreigner. It may be true, but it’s something I want to prevent them from learning as long as possible.
I enjoy messing with the class in different ways. I’ll pretend to write in a letter during hangman, only to put it with the wrong letters at the last second. I’ll change the order in which they’re supposed to read words: “Hi, my name is John” becomes “Hi, my name is nice, nice, nice, nice to meet you, I’m meet.” And my personal favorite is to really emphasize that they have 3 homework assignments. Their faces fall and I can usually get a few good groans out of them too. Then they find out that the assignments are as follows:
1) Read a short poem 5 times, out loud. (it would take them no more than 5 minutes)
2) Introduce themselves to an English teacher (it could be me, their regular teacher, or some other English teacher)
3) If they see me around school, they have to come up and give me a high five
They really like the last one once I explain it them. I was surprised that almost none of the kids knew what a high five was. I guess it is an American peculiarity. Well, it may take China by storm now that I’ll have 1500 Junior High students giving each other high fives. I only hope that doesn’t qualify as starting a cult or something. No need to start an international incident because I wanted to be the cool foreign teacher. Though being profiled on “60 Minutes” would surely up my blog traffic.
I had one student today who, after her friends literally dragged her to talk to me when class was over, told me that she lived in the U.S. for 7 years I think it was. It explained why her English was so good. It’s funny to see some of the girls getting really embarrassed to talk to me, or even say “hi.” They tend to whisper to their friends while walking by and then once they pass me, they’ll say “hello” or something like it. I’ve felt like I’m going to strain my neck with all of the quick turning I have to do to return the greeting.
Well that’s all for now. And as I’ve taught my students, “Sorry, I’ve got to go. See you later.”
I was walking around campus and I think I found out what to the bad students...