Everything I Know About Teaching ESL, Part 1: Know Your Audience

Captive audience via peruisay

Within a week of arriving in China I was teaching my first class, an hourlong "fun" lesson offered as a perk to students already signed up for normal courses. The topic was up to me. I wouldn't know the ability or exact ages of the kids ahead of time (anywhere from six to thirteen, which is a huge spectrum), and I was terrified. Before I came to China I had almost no experience with kids, especially not the Chinese kind; I didn't know how to talk to them, what they were interested in, what they needed to learn. I quick skimmed a few books on teaching theory, making note of different styles of teaching and lesson planning, possible games to play, things to watch for in students. I spent an hour prepping for the class, although one book specifically mentioned such a time investment is a waste of time. I had two full pages of notes and activities suggested by other teachers.

Needless to say, I bombed. The kids were all over the place; one near-fluent eleven year old was sitting next to a six-year-old who couldn't remember his colors. I ran out of my carefully prepared material within the first fifteen minutes before leaving (running out of) the classroom to catch my breath and begging anyone and everyone in the teachers' office- staff, students, desks, the ether- for ideas to fill the rest of the time.

Many of my first classes went this way. Students staring, doodling. Assistants looking at me with "Where did they dig up this fucking foreigner?" looks on their faces. The whispering in Chinese made me paranoid. The stench of boredom followed me from classroom to classroom. I thought I knew what I wanted to teach (English, of course), but I had no idea where to start.

The solution came in a short introduction to teaching written by a colleague: "Problem- Students don't find the class interesting. Solution- Be more interesting."

Hmm. Couple of things.

I've been blogging for a few years at different places, but for some reason I couldn't get the jump to work when I started this thing, so sorry for the long blog is long design. Maybe I'll work on that again some other day, but since no one's actually reading this all I have to say is: piddlewax farthing hopscotch limbo.

Thing the second: this is a personal blog dedicated to the too many things I'm working on, so posts can range from what tea I'm obsessing about to the little fart boy student disrupting my class last Thursday to my pathetic epiphanies about the Chinese language. I've tried to include helpful tags for each post, so if you're interested in further reading on anything I'm writing about (but why should you be?), just click on a tag and voila or something. Along those lines, as much of a grammar and punctuation nazi as I may be, my computer lacks a number pad, so diacriticals are fucking out.

Also, if you'd like to send me a giant wedge of delicious cheese, please email me at gcdonohue@gmail.com and I'll send you my shipping address here in China. I really miss cheese and the selection at the foreigner supermarket is pedestrian and inconsistent at best. We're talking Land'o'lakes on the top shelf here.

Fartsmuggler.

Chinese Talk Like a Pirate Day

The official TLAPD has come and gone in China, but I'm going to assume that it's today on the lunar calendar. This is the one time I can use the lunar calendar to my advantage as I have no grasp of how the damn thing works. I'm starting to think that no one else does, either; I'm convinced it's just a means for the government to justify their lack of foresight in planning official holidays

"So, Hu, Spring Festival. Biggest holiday in China. Country's gonna shut down for a month. Mind if I take a look at your day plann...."

*Looks at TV guide in lap, notices monthlong Prison Break marathon starting on...* "February 6th. Inform the masses."

and a convenient way for people to make you feel guilty about forgetting "important" things like birthdays and court dates.

"But I thought your birthday was in November!"

"Yeah, but on the LUNAR CALENDAR it happened...yesterday. Now empty your wallet."

But we're here to talk like pirates, not argue about dates. Talking like a pirate in Chinese is pretty easy. All you have to do is strategically replace certain words ending with an "n" sound with an "r" sound. Sometimes you'll see it written in pinyin as "n'r," but this is demonstrably retarded. Yes, there is a character for this sound, but the pronunciation is more of a regional affectation (I hear it all the time in Henan, but oh my god Beijing taxi drivers lay it on thiiiick) best confined to spoken Chinese. I've seen it used in newspaper headlines and it's the equivalent of plastering "Obama Ain't Gittin'r Done Yayt" at the top of a serious business op-ed column.

Now, the proper way to turn your n's to r's is to turn your mouth sideways and overpronounce.

It works equally well with street food,

yangrouchuan -> yangrouchuaRRRRRRR

waitresses,

fuwuyuan -> fuwuyuARRRRRRRR

and cherished symbols of Chinese cultural identity.

tian'an'men -> tian'an'meRRRRRRRR

Now, a disclaimer: if you choose to participate in CTLAPD, you will get funny looks from people, and you MAY be called a 农民, or nongmin. This loosely translates as "land pirate" or "badass," and it may be said with what you hear as a tone of disdain. In fact, it's pure unadulterated awe, fear and, depending on the sex of your conversant, lust, much in the way a typical wench three or four hundred years ago would say, "roguish highwayman." Nongmin, or should I say...nongmiRRRRRR.

Red scarf bandit via peruisay

Off the grid and through the alleys

A friend once told me, "Greg, the difference between you and me is that when I drink I stay at home and watch TV. You go on adventures." I wish I could say that I'm that interesting (I'm not), but there's something to be said about going on a jaunt to parts unknown just to see what you find. The right amount of alcohol, daring and happenstance sometimes make me feel like I'm reliving the events of Ulysses and has bulked up my collection of mini-epics to tell over drinks with company both polite and rough.

Living in China, The Land of the Entirely Too Permissive Drinking Culture, has added quite a few stories to my portfolio. The time I mistook a hospital wall for my apartment door. The time a friend and I wandered to all corners of Beijing to all manner of places looking for a simple bed for the night. The endless seafood and beer corners of Qingdao. Nighttime rambling is when I'm at my most comfortable, my most reflective, my most aware.

Zhengzhou provides plenty of stimulation for a party-seeking drunk. Start at the bars, which can only be described as bars, then circle out to the garish, loud, gaudy karaoke club mazes and proceed to the flashing, superficial dance clubs, all layered with mirrors and young men hawking carafes of Ballantine's spiked with sugar water. Club girls playing their dice games, girls to help you belt out the songs in the KTV (or more if you're a businessman or government official). It's all flash and no substance, the appearance of fun without any of the epiphanies.

Now that I haven't been drinking I've been wandering around a different sort of after-hours China, a place beneath the quicksilver veneer of luxury and modern living that supposedly distinguishes this city from the less "cosmopolitan" urban districts of China. During the day, Zhengzhou is loud, crowded, smoggy, a clogged artery of a city, but once the clock strikes nine most of the normal people with normal families and normal lives (by normal standards at least) go to bed and what's left is the acute character that makes living here so great.

Outdoor restaurants spill into sidewalks, parking lots and intersections, serving grilled everything on a stick or heaping plates of fried this and that (noodles, crawdads, bread). The other night a friend and I stopped at a night-only food market and bought an entire Beijing duck with all the fixins for three (including spring onions, wraps and duck sauce) for all of 26 yuan. The woman offered to throw in the carcass for free, and I might take her up on it next time to boil up some duck soup at home. I try to go to the places where I'm least likely to encounter a foreigner, far away from major roads, fast food restaurants and western style "coffee shops. Some people pride themselves in finding the closes thing to a Starbucks latte; last night I found a place that serves giant plates of spicy rivercrab.

What I love most about this late-night Zhengzhou is that it is the perfect snapshot of China as it stands: a country-in-progress. Half-finished luxury skyscraper shells jutting out from old, twisting neighborhoods. Incandescent lights strung above people gathered around squat tables brimming with food and beer and liquor and shouts of serious recreation. Hazy alleys littered with small stores selling any fake ware you can imagine. Small fruit stands neighboring pink light massage parlors neighboring fluorescent-lit beef noodle restaurants. Quiet, dusty streets hosting small caravans of old trucks and farm equipment. The smell alternates between wafting piles of garbage and grill smoke. Distant generic pop music. Nothing is fresh, left to be admired; it's all chaos and action and improvement. The fleeting nirvana of constant change.

Photo of 三门峡 by peruisay.