As a language teacher, I rely heavily on visual communication – flashcards, pictures, and, most of all, the blackboard. Trying to avoid direct translation and encourage my students to find other ways of understanding, I find myself constantly drawing as I teach, aiding my images with simple words, gestures, and sounds. The blackboard and chalk [...]
China is full of cities of negligible differences, with buildings just like other buildings, parks like other parks, shopping districts like other shopping districts. And within each city are numerous schools, all of which more or less comply with the trend of repetition. In this episode, School Tour, see the typical elements of a Chinese [...]
Teaching is often about tricking one’s students into saying something without having them realize it, but is also a more obvious battle at times. A battle against teenage laziness, cultural reservations, or individual doubts, among other adversaries. I am constantly asking certain questions in order to induce more complex language, and one particular word finds [...]
Laughing in Chinese is short essay written for The New School University’s International Student Services Contest. The theme of the contest was: “Global Exchanges: Stories of Your Journey from Here to There.” It was originally published in a printed booklet and in a PDF version on their website. The essay was awarded second place. Read [...]
Working in Chinese public schools, the classrooms we foreign teachers are given are often bare, minimal spaces, with dirty plaster walls, dangling fluorescent lights and unmaintained wooden desks. Compared to the regular rooms, which are by no means lavish or tidy, ours are forsaken. The furniture is older and less sturdy, the technology dated or [...]
I have redrawn the first episode of Waijiao and posted it here. The original was posted on This Ridiculous World – feel free to read through the archives, it gives a pretty good background for the comic. There are a few more episodes already finished, which I plan to post soon. Right now we are [...]