Silly Chinese Presentation, New Job, Mailing List
Silly Chinese Presentation
Today was the last day of the semester. Every Friday we have to give a short speech slash presentation that uses the new vocabulary and grammar from the chapter. I usually just figure out what I am going to say a few minutes before class and wing it, but since it was the last day, I actually wrote it all out the night before. Seeing as it was already written out and I have never posted anything I have written in Chinese, I decided to share it with the world. It's not written all that well, and it's pretty short, but Enjoy!
(I made it into an image so that those without Chinese character support on their computers can see it too. Actually, I just noticed a typo and I am too lazy to go change it. For the Chinese readers, in the first line it should read "wo cong lai bu yuan yi".)
New Job
My friend Mel has a million jobs and works a million hours a week. She went strong doing that for almost five months now and paid off a lot of debt (the goal of most foreigners teaching English here). However, she recently decided it was too much. She knew I was looking for work, so she told her school about me. I went in for an interview, and they hired me! At the moment, I only teach Wednesday from 4:40 until 6:10 at 800NT ($25.42 USD) an hour, but once Mel leaves Taiwan in May, I will take over all her shifts there, which will leave me with like twelve hours a week, I think.
My first day was last week, and it was horrible...well sort of. I went in with high spirits because I love teaching and little kids (they are between nine and twelve years old) are a riot. I sat down and we started class. I asked everyone to introduce themselves. They each did the standard "My name is Doris. I am ten years old. I like to play computer game." I asked one of them a question about what they said and they had no clue what I said. It was then that I realized these kids could only have conversations verbatim out of the book. I tried to teach the kids the question I asked (and they seemed to be excited to be learning something new), but about that same time the principal walked passed the door and saw what I was doing. She opened the door and said, "Could you please just teach what is in the book. Just play the tapes and read the dialogues with them - they will learn best that way." It was surreal. The kids were not learning English, they were just memorizing dialogues and were utterly incapable of actual conversation. Oh, and on my way out the best student in the class was talking to the principal in Chinese. She must have not realized I can speak Chinese because she said, "Is he going to be our teacher next week?" The principal replied with an enthusiastic "Yes!", to which the girl replied with a groan and "I can't stand him." My head snapped around and I looked at the principal. She shrugged her shoulders and said I did a good job and she couldn't wait to see me next week.
So, I went this week and before class the principal told me that I should just let Doris (the star student) help the other students, i.e. instead of me trying to describe a word the kids don't know, let Doris just blurt it out in Chinese. I was not very happy about that, but whatever, I complied. By the end of class this week, all of the kids were laughing, squealing and having a great time with me. We actually ended up going five minutes past time, and they all yelped "BYE BYE TEACHER ANDREW!!!" on their way out. So, I guess if I just act like a moron, speak some Chinese, and let Doris run the class, they all love me. Whatever, money is money.
Mailing List
I have finally made that mailing list I have been talking about for a while. So, if you do not view my journal through your Livejournal friends page, you can join the mailing list to know when I update instead of visiting everyday only to find that I hardly ever update.
Today was the last day of the semester. Every Friday we have to give a short speech slash presentation that uses the new vocabulary and grammar from the chapter. I usually just figure out what I am going to say a few minutes before class and wing it, but since it was the last day, I actually wrote it all out the night before. Seeing as it was already written out and I have never posted anything I have written in Chinese, I decided to share it with the world. It's not written all that well, and it's pretty short, but Enjoy!
(I made it into an image so that those without Chinese character support on their computers can see it too. Actually, I just noticed a typo and I am too lazy to go change it. For the Chinese readers, in the first line it should read "wo cong lai bu yuan yi".)
New Job
My friend Mel has a million jobs and works a million hours a week. She went strong doing that for almost five months now and paid off a lot of debt (the goal of most foreigners teaching English here). However, she recently decided it was too much. She knew I was looking for work, so she told her school about me. I went in for an interview, and they hired me! At the moment, I only teach Wednesday from 4:40 until 6:10 at 800NT ($25.42 USD) an hour, but once Mel leaves Taiwan in May, I will take over all her shifts there, which will leave me with like twelve hours a week, I think.
My first day was last week, and it was horrible...well sort of. I went in with high spirits because I love teaching and little kids (they are between nine and twelve years old) are a riot. I sat down and we started class. I asked everyone to introduce themselves. They each did the standard "My name is Doris. I am ten years old. I like to play computer game." I asked one of them a question about what they said and they had no clue what I said. It was then that I realized these kids could only have conversations verbatim out of the book. I tried to teach the kids the question I asked (and they seemed to be excited to be learning something new), but about that same time the principal walked passed the door and saw what I was doing. She opened the door and said, "Could you please just teach what is in the book. Just play the tapes and read the dialogues with them - they will learn best that way." It was surreal. The kids were not learning English, they were just memorizing dialogues and were utterly incapable of actual conversation. Oh, and on my way out the best student in the class was talking to the principal in Chinese. She must have not realized I can speak Chinese because she said, "Is he going to be our teacher next week?" The principal replied with an enthusiastic "Yes!", to which the girl replied with a groan and "I can't stand him." My head snapped around and I looked at the principal. She shrugged her shoulders and said I did a good job and she couldn't wait to see me next week.
So, I went this week and before class the principal told me that I should just let Doris (the star student) help the other students, i.e. instead of me trying to describe a word the kids don't know, let Doris just blurt it out in Chinese. I was not very happy about that, but whatever, I complied. By the end of class this week, all of the kids were laughing, squealing and having a great time with me. We actually ended up going five minutes past time, and they all yelped "BYE BYE TEACHER ANDREW!!!" on their way out. So, I guess if I just act like a moron, speak some Chinese, and let Doris run the class, they all love me. Whatever, money is money.
Mailing List
I have finally made that mailing list I have been talking about for a while. So, if you do not view my journal through your Livejournal friends page, you can join the mailing list to know when I update instead of visiting everyday only to find that I hardly ever update.