Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Day 15 - Zina's First Oral English Class

Day 15

Today was crunch time for my first class.  I was going through things to try and have some “extra” stuff in case my plans took less time than I thought they would.  I put together a beautiful presentation of a song that was on the CD of media for the class.  (I tried to get it off of YouTube, but I guess you can’t do that anymore.  So I got it all put together, got myself ready, and we started off to class.  Down the stairs and 25 steps away from the apartment, I realized that I needed the paper with me that said where the class was (in case I was wrong—it’s all in Chinese….).  So back we go!

We made it to where my class was supposed to be with what I thought would be 15 minutes to make sure everything was ready for the class and there is still a class in there.  We went to the help desk and she assured me that I was in the right building, so we went back to wait for the class that was in there to leave.  A nice young woman, named Sherry, came up to us and asked if she could help us.  I told her that I thought I was supposed to be teaching in this classroom in 15 minutes, so she went into the teacher and asked for me.  Had I been told the correct time for the class to start, I would have waited another half hour at the apartment, but evidently, we are still on “summer hours” here for a few weeks and the time I was told were the “winter hours.”  Sherry was very kind and informed me that my class would start at 4 p.m. and not 3:30, so she showed us where a faculty room was, and we went there to wait.  She did not just leave us there, she sat and talked with us for the whole time we had to wait.  Such a sweet girl!  She is studying to be an electrical engineer and wants to get her Master’s in the US, and needs to pass the language test before she can do that.  Her English was pretty good, but I don’t know what level they expect before they can allow them to apply in the US.   She gave us her email so that she could help us if we needed more help.  Again I say, “Such a sweet girl!”

There is a class “monitor” in each class that is similar to a class president.  He is supposed to help me get the media center going and all the electronics.  They have to lock up the cabinet that it is in, so he had to go get them.  I started my presentation going (they like them done in Power Point so they can read and hear what you are saying).  It was going well.  The exclamations as I showed them my family were appropriate.  They filled out cards with their name in Chinese, pinyin Chinese (Romanized characters) and most of them had an “English” name.  I also had them tell a little about their likes and dislikes and where they were from.  I had them stand up and tell me about what was on their cards after they handed them to me, so that I could hear their English and make a judgment as to what I felt they needed to work on the most.  That took us up to the ten minutes break and then some.

After the break, I had the last eight people do their introductions.  Then I went to do the media song that I had worked on this morning.  No sound!  The Monitor came up and tried to help, but no sound.  The rest of what I was supposed to do required sound, but there was NO sound!!  I stumbled through a few things.  (Thank goodness David was there with me!)  They were supposed to be able to hear a dialog between two people and then answer some questions about it.  Well, David to the rescue.  I started to read it all by myself, but he volunteered to come play the part of the guy while I read the girl’s lines.  The students really seemed to enjoy that!  I was able to find the script on the CD that I had thankfully brought with me, so they were able to read it then and answer some questions about it.  I was informed that I was supposed to let the class out a few minutes early so that they could prepare for an exam that they had to take at 6 p.m., so I did.  Thank goodness that is over.  Now I know better where I need to take this class and what to do if that happens again!


David and I went to eat supper in the Canteen (campus cafeteria) and then had a nice walk home.  A mother was walking her toddler, and the toddler looked at us and pointed, so I waved and said, “Nee How.”  The baby was so enthralled with us and waved back and kept waving at us until the crowd came between us, and he couldn’t see us anymore.  So cute!  The parents seem pleased when you notice their children.   

No comments:

Blog Archive