Blogs from Xifeng, Qingyang, Gansu, China, Asia

It has really been a slowing down time towards the end of the semester since our last entry. We had our Chinese lesson as usual and our teacher's mother vey kindly invited to have lunch. So we enjoyed a couple of bowls of the local noodles - homemade! Later in the week we , our national volunteers and some other Chinese teachers visited a local middle school to offer further help, advice and guidance to help the Maths teachers improve their students' learning. As is usually the case, we were treated to a banquet lunch and returned for the afternoon stint FTB!. Christmas has simply not been the same here in Xifeng, for two reasons mainly. One, the Chinese don't celebrate it (they use the lunar calendar and have their main celebration during February) things pretty ... read more

The early part of the week was quiet. We worked on resources etc in preparation for repeating the English pronunciation training. As a treat on Wednesday morning, we and a national volunteer, went for a buffet breakfast, eat all you can for £1 each! This restaurant seems to specialize in this style. They offer three meals a day although lunch and dinner are more expensive than zao fan. Apparently it’s quite popular with the more wealthy people in the town. Thursday saw us and several of our Chinese colleagues travel to a local middle school, about 15 minutes by bus, to observe English lessons before feeding back and giving general advice about how to improve the effectiveness of learning. Xing qi wu (Friday) saw me and a national volunteer visit a primary school on the edge ... read more

The week started slowly, with both of us working on resources for a training session on Thursday. From information we heard many months ago, we’d decided to develop an idea which would help, particularly, English primary teachers (some of who have never had any formal teacher training or even majored in English) to improve their pronunciation of English and so better teach their students. So aside from our weekly Chinese lesson and Sabine’s Film Club, lesson observations and feedbacks and meetings at her school, our time was spent copying handbooks and tweaking our PowerPoint slideshow etc. Friday, we had a meeting with all the international and national volunteers in Qingyang to discuss future plans etc. Saturday evening allowed us another new experience - a thanksgiving dinner. The North American volunteers in Xifeng invited us to celebrate ... read more

In November, we are going to be doing some English language training in the local primary schools and so this week we visited some of the schools. Our main objective was to see what the standard of teaching was like but also to assess what type of training they need. In the morning, we observed some lessons and then fedback to the teachers. We also went and visited some other classes as most of the students have never seen a foreigner before. We spoke our best Chinese with them which they thought was hilarious and played some games. In the afternoon, we took part in some paper cutting lessons which is a craft local to Qingyang. We also discovered a buffet restaurant where you can eat as much as you want for 30 Yuan (about ... read more

The past couple of weeks for me at least have been a wind down towards the end of term. The school has been busy with various exams and so a big part of my work has not taken place. However, we did have a visit from the Programme Office to see what sort of Life Skills Education the students in the area were getting. This involved visiting different junior and primary schools in the area and interviewing the staff and students. The conclusion was that there was certainly a need to equip the students with more life skills for when they leave school. One group of students at one of the primary schools said that they needed to be taught how to look after themselves and how to live independently. For a lot of these children, ... read more