Bob’s Blog

Observed teacher #3 for 2 classes.

Both classes were “privately funded” (one was an active class, the other not so much so). Apparently in Ch

ina, as long as you score well on the entrance exams, you can attend college for free.

However if you didn’t score well, or you want to attend a different college you have to pay, (Private Funded). Supposedly, these students/classes are a bit slower/ less motivated than their peers who are not privately funded.

This is just a generalization however; I’ve noticed many students of this status are actually better than some of the Publicly Funded (guessing on the term) classes. Doing my now standard introduction thing (45 sec self introduction, followed by calling up everyone to ask their one or more questions they have written down), I’ve found that it is best to avoid bringing up Taiwan (saying that I’ve visited there or that my Mom is from there) & to somewhat dance around the topic of what is the difference between China & America (schools, general life, etc). Talking about these topics in too much detail seem to bring the “rabble rabble” (ala southpark) out of the students.

Most if not all students are in the common thought over here of Taiwan is part of China & I don’t really want to get into too much of the differences between the 2 countries (besides my notes of traffic & cleanliness being different), since that will mostly likely eventually get into political things that you just don’t want to touch while over here :-p.

In these classes, the teacher had them do debates in one and an act from Romeo & Juliet (converted to modern English). The debate topic he picked out for the in-class debate, was a pretty controversial one: “It happened a long time ago, so Japan should not be required to apologize for what she did in China”. Needless to say the half of the class picked to defend this statement had a hard time coming up with arguments, while the other side came up with a pile of statements to challenge it…as oral English practice, it seemed to be fairly effective though.

Hopefully I’ll figure out how to put video on here and you can see an impromptu performance of the scene from Romeo & Juliet