2nd week, 2nd day -- Shilou Middle School, another day of teaching

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It's Tuesday and we just finished another day of teaching the teachers. Monday was a little slow...in the class. I tried to concentrate on teaching reading...I think that this is a loathsome task for many teachers and this group is no exception. We began with a passage from the old elementary Grammar in Use book that I used to use with Level 1 or 2 -- I loved that book....it presents simple structures with a theme and usually introduces the theme and structures with lots of pictures...a picture story or a large picture with a lot of situations going on that can be used to generate a lot of language. We looked at the unit that focuses on past tense. The theme in this is olden times -- what the Pilgrims did in olden times and what we do today...lots of pictures and some controlled exercises and activities to focus on grammar using this theme. I can't decide if I like this approach to materials and to teaching because I 'grew up with it' professionally or whether I really think that it's better for focusing on language -- a better approach for making the structures and the language salient. I honestly believe that creating materials that are so busy with information makes it very difficult to learn/acquire the structures.

Right now, learning Chinese, I could not handle any materials with a great amount of stimuli...I would become completelyl overwhelmed. I need enough stimuli or context to make the language meaningful, a context that makes salient the circumstances or features that relate to the language structures that I am learning...if I'm how to say helllo -- greetings -- then I need to somehow focus on the situation/context in which the greetings are used, focus on who says what and when -- I can't screen out a lot of extra stimuli at the beginning, at least. I spent an hour or so the last 2 afternoons with 2 of my best students trying to learn some expressions in Chinese and also to figure out how to write a few of the characters...primarily the stroke order...it's very complex and I don't pretend to have figured out the rules yet. And I realized that I can only do it a little at a time. that's part of language learning: you can only do a little at a time. I think that in the communicative approach we teach and learn under this notion that we can absorb everything around us and process it all and that we'll be able to begin to speak...this may be true for some people but I think to master a language there needs to be more detailed attention to the language -- structure as well as vocabulary as well as alphabet, etc.

Back to Monday...we generated a brief overview of how we would teach a passage...
Pre-reading
-Ask students questions about themselves: to motivate and/or interest them
-Ask questions about the topic
-Provide background information about the topic or a related topic to activate their schema or to give the students information about the topic
-Present and/or review vocabulary: What vocabulary is topical? That is, which of the vocabulary words are related to the main idea that is developed? What vocabulary is new or difficult and may need either a definition, demonstration, explanation, synonym,e tc.?
-Presentation and/or review of key grammar structures -- not an overwhelming number but if like in this unit we were focusing past tense, past tense could be reviewed.

While reading
Ask students to
--do a response journal
--take notes
--answer specific questions
--find the main idea and the maiin points developing that idea
--ask students to circle unfamiliar vocabulary
--ask students to read a sentence and then explain it to a partner
--ask students to outline the passage
--ask students to sequence events or order them in some way
--students write questions about the text -- what they didn't understand or what else they need to know

Post reading
--students order/sequence events
--students answer comprehension questions orally
--students write answers to comprehension questions
--students write reflections about what they read
--student write summary of what they read
--students paraphrase key parts of the passage
--students outline
--students discuss with a partner/group the passage

These are some very basic ideas...we then did this with the passage in the grammar book...and then we tried to do with a passage from a new textbook series on the World...a reading about Hiram Bingham who was an American archeaologist who took off for South America in search of ancient Inca ruins in 1911. He made his way to Cuzco and then met Arteaga who told him about Macchu Picchu and agreed to serve as a guide for $.50 a day....we didn't completely finish the passage but made a stab at it and the passage was projected very poorly on the visualizer so it was difficult to read. WE ended up reading it aloud.,..a last resort but a poor one to demonstrate teaching reading skills. For homework, they were to read a passage on teaching reading from their Doff textbook. I promised the next day would be better...

That afternoon I tried to liven things up but we had divided the entire program into 2 groups and I was supposed to do the PowerPoint on the structure of the middle school textbook -- Go for it! The powerpoint was created by an intern about 3 years ago...the year that this textbook series was adopted so it focuses on what is presented at the front of the textbook...something that we already had gone over at the beginning of my class. I let Constance present this to the class of teachers and she did a fine job referring to the Teacher's book and presenting the different parts of the textbook...helping the teachers to focus on the different parts of the lesson and what they can do at each stage of the lesson. Their assignment for Friday is to present a lesson, either Section A or Section B of one of the 3 books. I have to give them time to do this and I'd like to videotape the presentations so that teachers can see themselves teaching.

This morning, I tried to bring in a lighter activity...it's intense but fun. I got Victoria one of the volunteers who is quite talented as an artist to create a 4-picture story based onthat series of photographs..what's the story? it's the one about the little boy playing with a ball on the sidewalk and a woman gets out of the taxi and drops a bill..the boy's ball rolls to the taxi and when he runs to get the ball he sees the bill...the woman is walking away and the boy is left standing with the bill in his hand looking after the woman, presumably trying to decide whether he'll return the bill or not...I love this story too...so the activity is that the students divide into 4 groups and eaach group gets a picture...they can't let any of the other groups see the picture. They look at their picture, generate vocabulary and sentences abou tthe the picture to become familiar with it. Then the other groups ask one group (in the picture story order) questions about what is in their picture. We continue around asking each group about their picture -- the questions have to be yes/no questions...until questions have been asked of each group about each of the pictures. The individuyal groups have yet to see any other group's picture. Then the groups have to create their own stories. Then someone from each group goes up to the front of the room where the pictures are hung up in order and reads the story that his/her group created. This is a great activity...and they enjoyed it.

Then we did a reading -- we did a prereading exercise for the text on reading that I asked them to read for homework. I don't think any one had done it...but we talked about the 4 statements about reading that preceeded the text...students were asked to say whether they were true or false, talk to a partner about the statements, and then we discussed them as a whole class.

That was as far as we got...lunch break...until 3:30 pmn...

Later that day we did a listening exercise from Great Ideas following up on something we noted in the textbook the day before. That is, in one of the units one of the functions is to ask for and give telephone numbers. We did a back-to-back role play in which one person is the patient calling the doctor's office for an appointment and the receptionist asking for the number so that they doctor could call back. I discovered that some people needed some practice with numbers.

So we listened to the recording in lesson 5 from Great Ideas...which include 5 great phone conversations between Mr. Turner's secretary and callers. STudents take notes on the calls...they take the messages....this was a great way to review the numbers.

AFter that, we did an information gap activity in which students interviewed each other about different countries, using the cue cards produced by ProLingua. I brought that set of cards here and the activity worked very well. The cards include information like population and area and areable land and also more interesting informaiton such as life expectancy or literacy rate. Students interviewed each other about many different countries and I think that the level of proficiency of this group is high enough to benefit from these more challenging tasks...I was happy with the results.

WE followed up on the crossword that I had given them the Friday before -- a crossword about using English/learning English...it wasn't at all difficult...but just a breather and then we wrapped up the day's lesson with a pronunciaiton exercise /d/ /t/ and /id/...it's a little bit of a puzzle...a good way to end the afternoon.

I was beat and am feeling that way now...I walked to my Chinese lesson and the heat was fierce...I then walked part of the way back...I really need some exercise...and I was glad to walk...but now I'm tired.

Today I also washed out 2 skirts, a pair of pants and a dress and a shirt...and I got the girls who work here to hang them outside so that they dried. Now I have to iron them...I'm running out of clothes. I also took a shower when I got in and the water of ocurse was filthy. It's very dusty here...the wind blows and there's sand and dust everywhere. The cliffs around the city have in many places been stripped of tress...they are in the midst of a refforestration project but the hills are eroding fast...don't know if the trees have been planted in time...if there were a major rain, I'm afraid some of those hills would slide right down on top of the buildings being constructed a tht ebase of the cliffs...

I am reading Amy Tan's Kitchen God's Wife...really a very interesting story, especially now that I'm here...most of the book is set in China during and before WWII. She's really a good storyteller.

I'm trying to think of descriptions of Shilou to remember the town by...the streets are dusty and dirty. Vendors line the streets...fruits, vegetables, clothing on the sidewalks. There are many motorcycle repair shops with the young men dirty with oil and grease and stains on the sidewalk bent over parts of the motorcycle trying to figure out what's wrong. There are rows of motorcyles standing on the sidewalk and in the street. There are many many stores filled with the necessities of life...basins for washing clothes and woks for cooking, toilet brushes for cleaning the toilets next to ladles for cooking in the woks....cheap coffee pots for boiling water...cheap appliances that are only designed to last a couple of weeks...already the pot I have is beginning to not heat...it seems thatone of the coils is burning out...I bought a mop to clean my shower area since my toilet was leaking urine and excrement when I used it out from the bottom of the toilet and then into the shower drain (shower and toilet are in the same room/area). I bought the mop and used it 3 times and now the mechanism to wring it out just dropped off a few minutes ago. My toilet was 'fixed' with a ring of silicone around the base.,.now it's leaking again...but not clearly urine yet...it's more like water ... I m,anaged to buy a half-pound of Starbucks coffee in Shanghai at the World Expo ...and it's lasted me until now...I bought 2 coffee pots and a case of small cartons of milk and I've been making morning coffee in my room each day...it's such a treat...now my coffe is getting low and I may have to use Nescafe instant but it's been good while it lasted.

I've also been eating red dates, a sweet dried date that comes from Shanxi...they're great -- and a good laxative. The food at the hotel is good but has become a little boring...we have the same dishes every day or at least every week...tonight however we had shrimp with what I think is cous cous...that is my favorite dish. WE also had a pumpkin soup that wasn't bad and cauliflower wiht tomato,....scrumptious sauce...and we had somevegetable dumplings...that was my evening meal and I was quite happy with it in the end...lunch was another story...no shrimp, beans, ... can't even remember..we've had pan fried noodles with green beans, what they call Dutch beans...kind of like snow beans but thicker.. string beans, with garlic, some cold oninons with fungus, the girls eat a lot of pork and ribs...and some beef...in fact they had pork with steamed buns tonight...

Back to the streets...there are all these little bodegas of sorts...lots of Chinese snacks and cold sodas...lots of green tea drinks...and other things like detergents, etc...there are many of these stores, one every 2 or 3 doors...then there are several clothing shops in which the sell short-sleeved shirts for both men and women and maybe some pants...the women are wearing a capri style pant -- the pants a little shorter than the original capris...they wear flowered blouse...something feminine, in general...some wear T-shirts but there is always the attempt to be feminine....

There is also a lot of garbage ont he streets...there are the occasional garbage bins but one door is always open and the garbage--both food and paper and plastic and bottled goods...fall out onto the street...sometimes there are wild dogs going th rough the garbage scavenging for food...and there is an apparent 'foo' -- as they used to say in Senegal -- I think it's a woman -- who may be homeless and walks around with wild eyes...unwashed...who I see going through the garbage. The other day she was eating from a discarded watermelon rind. There's poverty everywhere in the world.

THere's little shade on the streets although there is a park across the street from the hotel. It's got an area -- very dusty however-- surrounded by cedar trees and there is a government building inside the grounds...I went ther eon Sunday and sat in front of the government building to read for a while..it's actually a good place to go and I'm going to go back there perhaps tomorrow...it's quiet and relative clean...

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