Encouraging Participation (and Note on E-mails)

May 15, 2011 by Leave a comment

This past semester I encouraged participation in my Communications for English Majors II class in many of the ways we discussed at conference; I was explicit about expectations and gave examples of what good participation looks like. Also, throughout the semester I gave specific, immediate praise to students who went beyond simply answering my questions (e.g., if they responded directly to what another student said by building on it/critiquing it, if they asked a question that was not solicited but was still on topic). All these things helped raise participation levels. Something else that increased participation dramatically however was when I sent out a ‘Participation Progress Report’ midway through the semester.

I sent out these reports in individual e-mails and in them praised students specifically for what they did well at with regards to participation (e.g., quality comments, consistent comments, building on what others said, critiquing what others said well, etc.), told them if their participation levels needed to increase (and roughly by how much), and how many absences/tardies they’d had. Additionally, if a student didn’t participate much but wrote excellent papers (several students fell into this category), I commented on how given the quality of her/his papers, s/he would contribute greatly to the class if s/he spoke up more. After sending out the reports, every student participated voluntarily at least once per class and most mid-level participators turned into high level participators. I’m not sure exactly why it worked (The praise? The knowledge that I was watching them closely? The reminder they were being graded in participation?) or how well it will work again, but at least for this semester, it worked very well.

A side note on e-mails though: I’m not sure what it’s like at other sites, but at least most of my students are used to more indirect feedback/are more sensitive to write I write in e-mails than their American counterparts might be. Because of this, I now make sure to add plenty of praise in my e-mails, to warn them of the directness of my feedback beforehand, and to be direct but gentle in my comments.

Filed under Culture and Behavior, Teaching Tips Tagged with ,

Hainan and Couch-surfing

May 15, 2011 by Leave a comment

Last month I decided I needed the beach. I began planning a long weekend in Hainan, which of course must include couch-surfing. Thanks to this wonderful network of people I can stay for FREE almost anywhere in the world, and possibly make a friend and get my meals cooked for me.

I set off for Haikou by plane and landed late that night. I took a bus into the center of the city and my host, Robert, a recent UC-Irvine grad starting up a wine import business, picked me up on his motorcycle. This was my second time traveling alone (the first was this winter in Yunnan: my parents raised me that girls never travel alone- they technically still don’t know), but my first time being hosted by a guy. Turned out, as I expected, to be totally safe and lots of fun. He cooked for me and had time to show me around the city on his bike. We went to see the old inactive volcano there and went to the beach. I was continuing on to Sanya, the big tourist spot, so he decided to come with. We both surfed at this lady’s house who was an amazing cook and fed us in exchange for my baking savy! The beach at night was nice. I got the biggest, juiciest mangoes there the likes of which I haven’t seen since my grandma got a box from family in Jamaica! Also, blueberry filling to bake a pie.

Robert had told me about how he hitchhiked from Beijing this past summer all the way to Hainan. We both wanted an adventure so we decided to hitchhike back to the mainland. I learned all sorts of Chinese lingo for hitchhiking like “da biao che” and “qing wen ni wang haikou fangxiang ma?” People are pretty open and friendly. I wouldn’t do that part alone, but it’s definitely worth trying. To save money on a hotel or hostel we paid for a massage and asked if we could stay overnight. Nice, humongous washrooms all to ourselves! We made it as far as Guangzhou before I had to rush back to Changsha in time for work and he to Macau to renew his visa.

Editor’s Note/Disclaimer: Please be aware that Yale-China does NOT condone hitchhiking. It is illegal in both mainland China and Hong Kong. If couch-surfing, be sure to use common sense to evaluate the safety of each individual situation, and make sure you are in compliance with laws regarding local registration of foreigners.

Filed under China Travel, Travel Tagged with ,

Debate Club

April 15, 2011 by Leave a comment

For a while, I have been holding meetings for a debate club with between 10 and 25 students. Last week we had our first competition, a 15 person Congress style debate on the resolution “China should help Japan as much as possible with their earthquake disaster.” Each student gave a 2-5 minute speech followed by a minute of cross-examination from the other debaters. Eileen, Annie, and a Xiuzhong English teacher were judges (thank you so much) and I was the presiding officer. It was great, the kids were great, and the winner got a Yale Speech and Debate Hoodie I brought from the States.

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Short Story Lesson

April 15, 2011 by Leave a comment

I recently finished up a small unit that was way more fun than I anticipated. As a class we popcorn read “Lamb To The Slaughter,” a short story by Roald Dahl about a loving wife who kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb. After we finished it, as a review for the incidental vocab that we learned in the story, groups of 6 had to put on small skits using 7 vocab words with the prompt: SOMEONE IS MURDERED! How? Why? By whom? For what motive?

It was pretty macabre but the kids had a lot of fun. Stories ranged from typical lovers’ spats to time traveling Buddhist nun impersonators – the students killed off their classmates in really creative and fun ways.

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Reflections

April 15, 2011 by Leave a comment

Douglass Endrizzi
Slightly frivolous, but fun. I had a student send me a chain email full of English and Chinese positive quotes. I was reading them, and I noticed a few where the English is quite different from the Chinese. Here’s my two favorite, from which I will extrapolate to make erroneous assumptions about Chinese culture in general:

Email’s English: Fall in love with someone..
Email’s Chinese: 尝试坠入爱河……如果不影响你的其他更重要的事情
My translation: Fall in love with someone…if it doesn’t influence your other more important affairs.

Email’s English: Live up to your name.
Email’s Chinese: 别辱没你的名声
My translation: Don’t disgrace your name.

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Saving money on a trip to Asia

April 15, 2011 by Leave a comment

by Elizabeth Weissberg
Here’s the article on how to save money on in-Asia trips that I mentioned at conference:
http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/travel/20prac-save.html?pagewanted=1&hpw
The most helpful part of the article may be the section on “air passes” for discounted travel on multi-destination trips (under the heading “Jetting Around Asia”).

Filed under Non-China Asia Travel, Travel Tagged with , ,

Reading and Writing Short Stories

March 15, 2011 by Leave a comment

by Kelsey Clark
I’m teaching a class called “Reading and Writing English Short Stories” right now, and I wanted to share an activity I did in the first meeting of that class. The goals of the activity were to get students thinking and talking about how writing/reading short stories is different from writing/reading other types of writing, and to help them understand the importance of choosing what specific details or scenes to include in their own creative writing. Anyway, this worked pretty well and led to a nice discussion, so here it is:

The lesson is centered around Hemingway’s famous 6-word “short story”–“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” I gave my students a handout with this story and 5 other 6-worders from a fun Wired magazine collection that you can look at here. I had them read the stories aloud, and then they discussed the following questions:

1. What do you think of the “stories” above? What makes them interesting to read? What makes them short stories?

2. How do you think short stories are different from other types of writing? What makes short stories special?

You could definitely word these questions better/go a different direction with this. My students mostly talked about how the stories counted as stories because they had conflict, plot and characters, and how short stories are special because they’re all about choosing details to spark the reader’s imagination and leaving the meaning open to the reader’s interpretation.

I ended the mini-lesson by having them try to create their own 6-word stories in pairs. They then read them to the class. This was cool because it got them thinking about the need to edit/pick and choose what action they include in their stories.

That’s it! I hope everyone is doing well and look forward to seeing you all at conference. Expect updates on the Yale-China Cookbook!

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Book Review: “How to Read a Book”

March 15, 2011 by Leave a comment

by Elizabeth Weissberg
Authors: Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren

How to Read a Book is a book that discusses exactly what its cover suggests it might–it contains a step by step description of how to read a book. It was assigned reading the summer before my senior year of high school, and although I read in ways in addition to those it suggests, it did make me a better active reader. This semester, the book has helped me with my teaching in two ways.

1) It’s what I used to prevent myself from reinventing the wheel–that is, in my English class, where we’re reading Brave New World, I taught my students some of its methods to use while they’re reading the novel.
2) It’s the book I recommend when a student in a class where I won’t be reading lit with them asks how to become a better reader.

There are a few drawbacks to the book.
1) It’s rather long.
2) It is perhaps overly focused on its step by step approach and begins to feel wearisomely meticulous and rule-heavy at points. At the same time, this is part of what makes it so useful–it’s really clear and leaves a strong impression as long as you can get through it.

Also, in the way many stodgy books are, it has its witty moments and can be quite funny at times.

The detailed table of contents is as good as any summary I could write here. The text of the book itself can be found here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/27663860/Adler-Mortimer-J-Charles-Van-Doren-How-to-Read-a-Book-Rev-Upd-Ed-Schuster-1972

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YCTB Vol. 1 No. 7 Introduction

March 15, 2011 by Leave a comment

This month I have a link to share:
http://www.economist.com/content/chinese_equivalents
It’s a map of China that shows the GDP of each province; they have also listed a country with a similar-sized economy for each province.

I hope you all were able to get your tickets to Huangshan without any trouble. See you in Xiuning next week!

Filed under Living in China, News and Statistics, Teaching Resources Tagged with , ,

HKU China Media Project

February 15, 2011 by Leave a comment

 by Brendan Woo
I heard about this website at a talk given at CUHK by Prof. David Skidmore of Drake University. It’s essentially a news translation project run by Hong Kong University, and has a lot of interesting features, including a “media dictionary,” which highlights the nuances of various Chinese terms appearing in the news.

This could be a great way to keep up with Chinese news if your Mandarin reading level isn’t up to the newspaper standard yet! Here’s the link:
http://cmp.hku.hk/

Filed under Living in China, News and Statistics Tagged with ,

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