Welcome to English Village—the pride of Yilan County. Every Tuesday, six of us gather in the morning to give some fifth grade students of Yilan County an unforgettable English experience. The entire building is designed to be a simulated English environment, complete with an airplane donated by EVA Air, a fake dance studio, bank, restaurant, etc.
After a group introduction, the students, in groups, run through the stations to practice interacting with us, saying things like “I want to exchange $200 NT dollars to US dollars” at the bank or “Do your eyes hurt?” at the health center. We also play fun games with them to get them to practice using English more. At the end of their crazy adventure, they write postcards in English.
continue reading »
As July starts to creep up on me, I’m realizing more and more all of the things that I will miss about Taiwan. One of the biggest things that I’ll miss is teaching my sixth graders. They are amazing: hilarious, smart, sweet, mature, kua zhang, cute, crazy, and everything in between.
continue reading »
Oct28
So after I finish teaching class every day, I usually stay in the classroom to grade my student’s workbooks. Meanwhile, another teacher come in to teach an after-school program for first graders. Most of it involves review for the students or them doing their normal homework. But I think the cutest thing ever is when the students were practicing their Chinese.
They sat there repeating over and over again, “nu sheng…nu…nuh yu…san sheng…nu…sheng…shi…eng…yi sheng…sheng…nu sheng” (This breaks the Chinese word down to its bopomofo counterparts and identifies the tone). It was so cute how they broke apart every word and chanted it out. I guess it’s the Chinese equivalent of our spelling bees in America and how we drill spelling the first few years in elementary school.
Then, I began thinking about language acquisition in general. Like how it amazes me how I can understand much of what these first graders say but then by the time they’re sixth graders I definitely can’t understand the vast majority of what they say and they pretty much understand anything in Chinese (to a certain extent). How amazing is it that kids can just acquire language and how we study it in school too.
I wish I could be a Taiwanese first grader and learn Mandarin. Hehe.
Sep1
Twice a day, the students have a 20-minute break in which 6 students from each home room leave the room to clean up the school. During this break, cute happy music sort of reminiscent to the third Harry Potter movie plays over the loud speakers as the children run around asking the teacher for more things to do. It’s probably the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. These kids had so much energy as they washed the blackboard, cleaned off the erasers, swept the floors, wiped off the desks, and mopped the floors. They definitely must learn what it means to be responsible for the school and apparently obedience. I called them “hen(3) guai(1)” [p.s. be careful on the first tone for guai…otherwise you might call someone strange] which means that they’re good kids. Then, Amy laughed as she said that they are “hao(3) ting(1) hua(4)” which means that they are good listeners, they’ll do whatever you tell them to. Anyway, I was floored with how obedient the students were and noted how this would never happen in America.
Cute story #2. So, on the first day of class, I told the students that I didn’t know any Chinese. But, when they asked me what my favorite foods were, of course, I had to speak Chinese because all of my favorite foods don’t really have accurate English counterparts. So, I said “cong you bing” which is like a green onion pancake extraordinaire. Then today, I was introduced to the entire school at a school-wide assembly as an American teacher that only spoke very little Chinese so they should practice English with me, or if not, then Chinese. Later during the cleaning session, a kid (not in my class) came up to me and screamed “cong you bing” and smiled. Absolutely adorable. He ran away too quickly afterwards for me to respond with anything else but a laughing hysterically.
