Letters from Overseas

March 2008

Hi friends!

Classes started this week. It was wonderful to see the students again. Most of them had not spoken English since they left Lanzhou in mid-January. Not surprising, really—I had not attempted my very limited Chinese since that time either! A few had family members who were eager to practise their English and two had actually taught English one-to-one during the holiday.

Out first class was Teaching Methodology. Very few of my students are indicating that they want to be teachers but the whole class takes the subject. I found their contributions to a discussion of "What makes a good teacher?" and "How can one learn to be a good teacher?" very similar to what I would expect to hear in the West. They focused on knowing the subject, treating students fairly, and providing for individual differences. Someone did say "giving lots of homework"—that surprised me! They felt that studying methodology, observing, and practising were the ways to become a good teacher. We discussed a model of reflective practice. It was a very interesting class and a course that I am very excited about.

Right now one of my senior students is practice teaching at a middle school (high school) in Lanzhou. She is very concerned that the students are almost her age and that their English is better than hers. That may be true, since they have studied English since elementary school and my student has only studied since she came to university. I hope I can be helpful to her as she faces these challenges. The other seniors who are practice teaching are less likely to be experiencing that, since they are teaching in their home towns in Inner Mongolia where the students now generally don't study English before high school. Most of my students had not studied English at all before university.

In our initial discussion the students identified The Scarlet Letter, Little Women, and Tom Sawyer as pieces of American literature that they had heard of. They also named a number of works that were actually British. Unfortunately, I do not yet have the textbook, so we are starting off doing novel studies with three abbreviated, written for Chinese versions of Huckleberry Finn, Call of the Wild, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which I was able to buy at the local foreign language bookstore. Interestingly and surprisingly to me, when they got their books, most students began reading aloud.

My third course is Figures of Speech, which really is figurative language. This promises to be lots of fun as we discuss and try to understand the meanings. We discussed a lot about how culturally specific figures of speech are. When we talked about "laughing your head off," one of the students mentioned that there is a Chinese expression that means the same but is "laughing your teeth off."

It was challenging this week as we worked on the pronunciation of many of the names of common figures of speech—we worked on syllables and stress. At my orientation last summer, one of my Amity colleagues shared her method of teaching stress patterns: "Oo" would represent the stresses in a word like “symbol”; "Ooo" in a word like “simile.” The students find that denotation very helpful. I am finding that it really is the stress that makes English words recognizable in their speech. Just as in Chinese, the tones are so important.

My movie nights have been transformed into games nights so that we can actually have more interaction. The first two were very successful. We played Whoonu?; Twister; Monkey, Monkey; and a card game that the students introduced me to. Twister is the same in any language—the students loved the physical challenge involved and were quite surprised and amused to end up in a heap on the game mat! Whoonu involves predicting the favourites (food, places, activities) of the person who is "it." The 100 cards introduced lots of new English vocabulary. Monkey, Monkey is essentially Old Maid; the students play a similar game called Pig, Pig! In the game that the students introduced, each person is dealt one numbered card (one to seven): number one is "it" and assigns a task to any of the other numbers without knowing who is what number—sing, dance, say the alphabet, hop, etc. I was surprised once again at how willingly the students perform. Singing and dancing really are such an integral part of their culture. Of course, they managed to give me a dancing task! Someone managed to take a video (curse cell phones!), which I'm sure will be well-circulated among my students!

Last term, once a week, I had lunch with a student whose name is Grace. She just spoke to me on campus because she is very keen to study abroad and wanted to work on her English. We've arranged to get together for dinner once a week this semester. It is a win-win situation. She gets to practise English for an hour and I have company for dinner, which means I can go to the cafeteria and have help ordering a meal. On Saturday she and I walked downtown to a supermarket together. Even on the street it was so helpful to have an interpreter. We heard a great volley of firecrackers, just like the cherry bombs in Canada, but a larger variety. This was followed by a few particularly loud firecrackers that spouted colourful foil confetti. Grace was able to explain that this was announcing the arrival of the bride and groom to a wedding dinner. Sure enough, their car had just pulled up.

After the service on Sunday morning I was able to share some gifts from Canada with the pastor, Ruth, and my friend Linda, who translates at the English Bible study. I had learned from them that nativity scenes are scarce or non-existent in China so I had arranged to bring some back with me. I was glad to be able to share something which I love so much! The gifts were well-received.

Although Lanzhou is a city of three million, as far as foreigners are concerned, it's a village! Sarah had told me about meeting a Chinese man named Peter on Monday. He is having some difficulty with some missionaries who are pressuring him to be baptized and he is feeling quite uncomfortable because he is hesitating. On Wednesday, in a bookstore, a young man approached me to chat. I soon realized that it was Peter. He has gone to the Catholic church with Sarah today and will come to the Protestant church with me another Sunday and perhaps to the English Bible study. I hope we can support him and connect him with some Chinese Christians who can mentor him.

I understand there has been even more snow again this weekend. I hope it is at least a sunny week for March Break.

Blessings,
Mary

Mary Fraser is a United Church of Canada Overseas Personnel serving with the Amity Foundation in China. The work of this ecumenical partner and the work of overseas personnel are made possible through your gifts to the Mission and Service Fund of The United Church of Canada.