Getting Ready for Registration, Intake, Placement & the First Day

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Yesterday and today have been spent getting ready for the beginning of the program. We reviewed all the materials. Judy went over many of the games and activities that she has on file with the assistants. She has a great deal of patience and enjoys going over every game in great detail. As she worked with them, I searched for the placement test --- began to develop a new one based on years past -- and then discovered the placement test and rubric that we had developed last summer. There were copies left over and there were also copies of the criteria for rating the oral performance so we will use that rubric.

After lunch we returned to our teaching site at the Lin Xian Teacher Training Center and looked through the pronunciation materials and planned our first afternoon's lesson -- which focuses on pronunciation and speaking. The first morning (which is Tuesday) we will each be focusing on a particular lesson from the book. ,,, we'll start with self-evaluation chapter because it focuses on criteria for effective teaching and I'll take a look at lesson planning.

Then after returning we later went out to a hot pot restaurant just around the corner. The food was delicious and afterwards we walked to the town plaza, full of people and a huge video screen and a lot of children on roller skates and scooters -- entire families out and about.

We came back to the hotel very early and I worked on my course, slept late this mrning til about 9:15 and then studied Chinese and began to read a teacher training book that my assistant Sunny loaned me. This is the textbook that she used in her courses at university. It's very interesting because 10 years ago China initiated the New Curricular Reform with a focus on communicative language learning but it's been slow in implementation, given the focus and emphasis on the examination -- also with the large classes it's difficult to implement the communicative approach (some of these teachers have reported having 90 students ina class) and of course they are required to cover what's in the book so there is a tendency to cover the book chapter by chapter, one step at a time, with little thought towards communication as the goal of instruction/learning.

I'm carefully reading this textbook, reviewing a lot for me but Adamson (2007) does a fabulous job of simplying a great deal of theory and making it somewhat practical. It's actually a very isntructive text.

We went out for lunch to a local restaurant because there were 2 weddings here and no place for us to eat. The food was local but delicious and tonight we managed to get a table here at the hotel although there are a number of tables set up for what looks like another event. I took a walk after luncha nd there were firecrackeers being set off all around the city in front of restaurants for weddings or other auspicious occasions. It seems like a very affluent city...people are spending money, enjoying themselves and celebrating.

The afternoon I've spent reading and taking notes. What a dull existence in some respects.

It's also been raining this evening...big drops of rain ... a sudden storm.

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