Yes, I'm still updating my blog. This entry is actually rather long to make up for new experiences and information that I simply haven't gotten around to documenting. I have been pretty busy for the past few days. M-F: I have Chinese class [in which a Chinese tutor and one other student comes to my house for two hours] from 9am-11am. Following Chinese class I do have downtime for a few hours, but it isn't substantial enough to do any sort of traveling or sightseeing - so I usually just use that time to call what few people I know are still fighting the urge to go to sleep in America. I usually end up walking around a very local area or scoping out the nearby markets and supermarkets to see if there's anything I could use. From Weds-Friday, Mike picked me up and I arrived at the school at around 3:15. I don't really know why I got there that early, because I never ended up doing anything until about 5. I observed classes until 7:45, took the bus home 8, and got home at around 8:15-8:30.
Chinese classes are interesting. They're basically just tutoring sessions. We have a book that we purchased [pretty inexpensive.. ¥40/$5.85] that the teacher instructs us to read the vocabulary from from a vocab list and use grammatical patterns. She corrects our pronunciation and gives us other examples of contexts that grammar patterns can be used. Grammatical patterns are just word structures that you insert vocabulary into. I'd list some grammatical structures of the chinese language but I can't think of anyone who would actually be interested in asian linguistics - except for my Michigan chinese instructor, and she's much more informed on those than I am =D.
Classes are ¥60RMB/2 hours [$8.78]. Its kind've expensive, because it adds up quickly. It's about $175/month for a M-F schedule. I'm making $800 a month so that is a good chunk of change, but it'll be worth it in the long run if I can bring a lot of this knowledge back with me when I finish college next year.
I like how they don't just throw you into classes the day that you jump off the plane here. They have a very well developed teacher training program. For the first week you simply just watch classes to see how classes are conducted. For 3-4 days you teach bits and pieces of classes to get a feel for how class is handled and how to understand time management. Then, you get thrown into classes for awhile, but the Chinese teachers help you [basically write your] lesson plans. This way you can focus on doing the teaching when you're teaching the right material, and not have to stress out about writing lesson plans and learning how to teach at the same time. Along the way they give you some tips on writing lesson plans, and eventually you work up to creating your own. This completely surpassed my expectations, i thought that it was going to be a lot more rough [which is still will be] trying to adjust myself to teaching here.
This weekend I taught my first classes with "assistance" writing my own lesson plans. The classes are 50 minutes long, and can be difficult to fill up depending on the age group that I'm teaching. Older kids [13-15] have had much more experience. This is nice because you don't have to spend so much time using simplistic words to describe games, because they can understand just about anything you say. However, you also have to put a lot more thought into what you're going to be teaching because simple jokes bore them easily. I've only taught one older class and it was a group of just 4 girls. The easiest way to get them to smile is to ask them a series of rapid fire questions about the material and then surprise them by asking them about their boyfriends. They get really embarrassed and it lightens the atmosphere.
It I haven't taught a really young class yet [5-7] but I've heard that they're a pain to get through because you have to teach really simplistically [boring] and all of the concepts are very elementary. They also tend to cry a lot. Luckily those classes are only 40 minutes instead of 50.
The children I've had the most experience teaching with are the middle groups [most everyone else]. They know enough english to be able to understand some simple things, but you don't have to over think what you're going to be teaching them, because they still tend to find simple [stupid] things funny. If you mutter or build "poo poo" into your lesson plan, the class explodes into laughter. Especially if things are getting boring, its a good way to liven up a quiet class.
Now I'm on paid break for a week. I'm thinking of going to visit the
White Horse Temple [白马寺],
Shaolin Temple [少林寺], and
Longmen Grottoes [龙门石窟]. White horse temple was the first buddhist temple in China, and is one of the oldest in history. Shaolin Temple was one of the first temples which studied Kung Fu. Longmen Grottoes appears to be, for lack of a better term, GIGANTIOUSLY STUPENDOUSLY HUGE! Check out the links for more information, I'll post subsequent blog entries when I reach those attractions.
