We are having a new adventure every day and finding that this town has a whole different feel every time we pop our heads out of a new subway stop. Last weekend was a District Conference for our church, so members from the larger geographic area came to Shanghai for meetings. We are involved with the ex-pat young single adults (basically, singles 18 and older), and there were about 80 here. Most are going to school or teaching English at various elementary schools. A tour of downtown Shanghai was set up for them for Saturday before the meetings, where we toured the Yuyuan Gardens. What a fun market area and beautiful gardens!
 |
| These amazing rocks were carved by a river |
 |
| KFC sign on Ming dynasty architecture--near the birthplace of a popular type of Chinese steamed bun. Lines for the buns went down the street. |
 |
| The back wall of our church meeting place on Sunday-- some people spent the night in various locations in order to make it to all the conference sessions. They brought their luggage to church when they checked out. |
This week, however, we'll mostly update you on what we are really here in China for: teaching!
In China there are a lot of programs with English teachers, some teaching in elementary schools, etc. Several only require that you have a college degree and speak English. Some don't require any degree.We are part of Brigham Young University's China Teachers Program. Each year BYU recommends teachers (usually retired couples with teaching credentials and/or extensive experience in subject areas) to 17 of the most prestigious universities in 8 cities in China, primarily in the eastern cities. These universities extend offers, and there are generally about 80 teachers who end up in the program.
We are teaching at Tongji University in Shanghai, ranked 9th in China out of over 2200 universities; they require English teachers to have advanced degrees and at least two years of teaching experience. Our students are English majors. Each week we teach 5 classes each: 2 classes of Freshmen Oral English, 2 classes of Sophomore Oral English, and a Business English class (mostly Juniors). Our class size ranges from 12 - 24 and are primarily girls. Our students are very good with reading and writing English, and actually pretty good with oral English.
For Oral English classes, we spend much of our class time with students speaking. They present reports on news items , give impromptu speeches, and work as groups to conduct class activities that teach each other the concepts in TED talks we assign them to watch as homework.
In our Business English classes we are teaching from a "Principles of Management" textbook, discussing and testing them on principles and vocabulary used in management. We also have a weekly business case, drawn from real-life companies and challenges they've faced with business, ethics, or personnel issues. We have the class divided into teams and each team analyzes the case and submits a solution that the other teams review and vote on best solutions, followed by a (sometimes energetic) debate. Again, we are working for them to use their verbal skills extensively.
We hold an "English Corner" on Tuesday nights, which is open forum for all students to come and get additional exposure to oral English. So far, we've had 100-140 attending each week! A few pictures of this event:
 |
| Students discussing in groups - in English |
 |
| Some were brave enough to come to the front of the room! |
Finally, we help mentor speech and debate contestants for several English speaking competitions. One was last weekend - an invitation event with universities from Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Macau. We were coaching them via WeChat (a Chinese social media tool that allows audio files) on Friday night for a Saturday competition. One of our students took 1st place and received a special commendation award from the judges!
We are having a great time working with these amazing young people.
No comments:
Post a Comment