Suitably Punished

OK, I think someone has punished me for the jokey 'hard-work' post yesterday. :-)

I was picked up at 8am this morning and driven up to the vocational school - all the kids are aged between 16 and 19yrs old - and the some of the teachers aren't much older. I got shepherded into a classroom as soon as I got there and the woman that picked me up said "There you go, hope it goes well" and then promptly left me for 40mins!!!

It had to be one of the longest 40mins of my life - I taught them about sports (good job I'd done some prep and printed loads of pictures before I came out here) and covered "I like playing....." and just "I like....." - when you're not that confident and you've been chucked in at the deep end it's quite difficult. For some reason they didn't seem to know much more English than some of the kindergarten kids. I found out afterwards they have probably been learning it a similar amount of time and hadn't been taught it right the way through school.

I went straight from that lesson to the next and I resorted to a different lesson plan - parts of the body - this is the lesson the Spanish speaking girl came in and did when we went on the 'Teaching English as a Foreign Language" course in London - only difference was, her lesson was 15mins long with 8 students and I had to find activities to fill 40mins with 50 students in a class! It went better than the first lesson and I had a bit more confidence explaining things.

The funny thing was I was accosted by a group of girls (and teachers!) as soon as I got to the school, swarming round me saying 'hello' and asking where I was from and talking to me. I even got called 'charming' a couple of times - I think I like this place more now. :-)

The next 3 lessons we went down to a school lower down the hill (although still part of the vocational school) and I did the same lesson - I'd worked out exactly what I was doing and could easily fill 40mins and have activities/speaking time for the kids. The staff at this school were fantastic - a lot of them weren't English teachers yet their English was better than some of the English teachers at the Junior and Senior schools down here in Nanshan. They were a really friendly, fun bunch.

There were two Korean teachers - Angel, 22 years old (she didn't have an English name so we made on up for her - she was far from an Angel!), Deerwin, 23yrs old, who very helpfully showed me how to write and pronounce my name in Chinese - now I know why they keep calling me Ree-shard-a! A Chinese teacher - Pei-jingchun, 26yrs old, who was trying to learn English and said he had a love for English music - I listened to his MP3 player and I think a lot went out date along with Vinyl! Still, we had a good old sing-a-long in the English office! And then there was John Steven, 23yrs old, a politics/economics teacher whose English was the best.

We had lunch and then sat in the office chatting, singing, learning English and Chinese - it was good fun.

I was then taken to another school, again still part of the same vocational school, but further down the road where I did parts of the body (again!) and was getting pretty bored with it, I think it showed - either that or kids were just rowdier as it didn't go as well. It didn't help that half had to be taken out for 15mins half way through as the lesson kind of lost it's momentum by that stage and I just wanted to go home!

The final lesson I'd had a chat with the English teacher in the school, who surprisingly spoke very little English (god help these kids!) and asked her for ideas - I introduced myself to the class and spoke a little about myself, my hobbies and where I am from - they looked a little lost and you could tell they really weren't following what I was saying. I split the sentences down so they could fill in the blanks and then got a few to come up one at a time and tell me about themselves - I was quite mean as I picked the ones that looked like they really weren't listening to a word, or were hiding when I was walking around trying to pick someone. There were a few good English speakers, and a few terrible ones but they muddled through it.

We then did a word game called JAWS -its a bit like hangman, but instead of hanging someone - which for some reason is deemed a bit un-politically correct for some odd reason (although it probably wouldn't have mattered out here) - you have a man that goes down the steps every wrong answer until he reaches the sea where a shark eats him. I based it on sports (as I knew from the first lesson in the morning which sports they really don't know over here!) and we muddled through it - they got the hang of it in the end!

Anyway - 7 forty minute lessons in the one day with next to no preparation is enough for me! I'm off to the food market in a minute to get some tea - then I might go buy some more lager!