Advertisement
New photos on:
http://s251.photobucket.com/albums/gg311/draftwrite/ …..Paul makes the observation that it's extended exposure to the people around you, seeing the layers peeled in chance encounters, observations & conversations, that makes life rewarding & interesting. This is prompted by a recent breakfast conversation exploring the paranormal & Mike's revelation that his interest at one stage extended to practical experiments in telekinesis, sitting on the toilet concentrating on making the paper unroll by the power of thought alone. Premature elation at what appeared to be an early success was later attributed to wind…..
…..mini-detention now my preferred method of maintaining order in class. Why didn't I think of this before! Even if the gap between classes is only 10 minutes, just write the finishing time on the board, & space for a short timeline after it. Still talking while I'm talking? Add one minute to the class. Throwing a book? Another minute. Poking your classmate in the back? Add another one. Oh! What's this? Everyone's quiet. Wow, subtract a minute. Great answer from you, Andy, (usually so ignorant & inattentive), fantastic, subtract another minute. It requires constant fine tuning but this can be incorporated into the lesson rather than taking time
Titanic Pose
Grade 8 Students out to write detention slips which then require me to make notes of names & reluctantly round up kids I don't want to see for another week to spend extra time with them in the office at 5.30pm. Ha! One of my worst classes is the last of the afternoon. Knowing that I could extend it for a full half hour if I need to is a great deterrent.....
…..among the foreign teachers at Xin Dong Fang, or New Oriental, Alex, Patrick & I have become the people to ask when a Chinese word or phrase is needed. Not that we're fluent, just that we have put SOME effort into trying to make sense of what is an almost impenetrable wall of similar sounding words. The difference between Chinese & a Watching a Spanish movie of the novel Germinal I read a while back, with pretty awful subtitles that often made no sense, I found I could piece together a lot from the Spanish audio, having NEVER studied Spanish before. I realised I was probably getting almost as much of that, with no study whatsoever, as a Chinese dialogue after about 3 years of work.....
…..having said that
The Band, Old Brewery, Yangzhou
Thanks for letting me jam with you! we've just got the results from the website of our Chinese exam. In percentages we all got scores in the high 90's & only needed 65 to pass. Gan Bei (cheers), to Alex, Patrick & myself, we're all pretty stoked about it. Sobering thought; we now officially have command of less than 10% of the characters needed to read a newspaper.....
…..English! Digging myself a big hole in one of my bright classes. Dates are displayed applied to places of interest in the lesson topic. “What does B.C. stand for?”. “Before Christ”. I can see it coming. “What does Christ mean”. Luckily they've heard of Ye Su, the Chinese name for Jesus. I've just looked it up. It translates as something like, “Regain consciousness father”. I explain, “Christ is another name for Ye Su”. It's not over yet though. “What does A.D. mean?”. I carry on, bravely. “Well, I don't know why & I know it doesn't make any sense, but we use Latin instead of English. Anno Domini”. “What does that mean?”. “It means year of our Lord”. “What's Lord”. “Well, it's another name for Ye Su”. “How many names does he have?”..... OK, back to passive past
La Mian, Yangzhou
One of the many great Moslem noodle shops all over China tense.....
…..listening to a recent radio report on east Asian student's eyesight our observations in class are confirmed. Even with the text blown up on screen to 10cm high letters I still have students squinting, borrowing glasses, (sometimes using two pairs like binoculars), or coming to the front of class to read a sentence. There are several factors involved, according to the study, the sheer amount of studying they have to do to get through school. My middle school students are in class from about 8am until after 9pm, plus homework & one weekend in two at school with Saturday & Sunday classes. with a two hour break for lunch. That in itself is a contributing factor; time they could be outside synthesising vitamin D in the middle of the day is often spent having a nap. Anyway another factor, air pollution, would probably inhibit that process anyway.....
.....as if that's not enough cases are reported of intravenous drips keeping Chinese students alert & able to get through the punishing study regime for the college entrance exams. Maybe Australian students could work harder but that's going too far in the other direction.....
previous issues of the YYW
Betty and her Mum
A previous student at the family tea house are on:
http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Laotou/
Advertisement
Tot: 0.148s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 5; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0739s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
pip fox
non-member comment
failing eyesight
Hi, the eyesight probs are due to using the eyes for close work for too long, and not taking eye-exercise breaks. The people with the best eyesight are fishermen, shepherds etc who are constantly changing their focus from near to far, scanning both the horizon and foreground. If you took one of these guys and sat them at a desk doing schoolwork etc, they would quickly develop the same vision probs. Yet if you put the same people back in the field again, and the prob disappears.... All the detail on this is laid out in a couple of good textbooks on the subject, with easy exercises to do; catch it early enough at school, do a few mins excercise each morning pre-class and there is no need for corrective lenses. Google it...if you have time! ps, a quick way to go blind is to do very fine work like lacemaking, constantly without breaks...