English Corner (Part 2) and other random thoughts

A few weeks ago I explained English corner: a place where students meet with foreigners ever night at 8:30 to speak in English... I thought that English corner was such a useful way for students to practice their oral English and listening skills that I required my conversation classes (freshmen- about 150 total) that they would be required to attend once per week... Similarly, the other foreign instructor that teaches freshman classes also decided that it would be a good idea to require the same thing... What does this mean? ENGLISH CORNER HAS EXPLODED!!! Instead of only ten or twenty people coming, our numbers now range around 50 or 60 PLUS! (Mind you that there is only ever a maximum of 8 foreigners there at one time!) The conversations have become more strained too as freshmen with poor English skills vastly outnumber the upperclassmen who can hold a common conversation!!!

It is interesting to see, however, the gap in ability even between the 1st and 2nd years.... I hope that I will be able to make my freshmen improve to such a level by the time I am done here! The first classes with them was a bit strained... they were all very nervous, as I was the first time they had ever spoken to a foreigner... I can identify with with; being from a small town, I was exposed to little or no diversity until college... Their apprehension is understandable... BUT, I do feel as though this week's class with my first years will be much better. I have finished assigning their English names and distributed them back their class leader!

 My biggest mistake was that I accidentally named a guy "Cherry." I quickly changed this to Devin! This is what happened, in the first class I distributed cards and asked students in order to help me give them an English name write their Chinese name and something about them that could give me a clue as to what to name them. i didn't however ask them to specify gender!!!! And in Chinese, I am unable to do that simply by looking at names. So since i only have a few boys in class (about 8 out of 150), i decided that i would just go ahead with all girls names and clean up the mess later... Maybe I'll have a boy named sue!