Thursday, May 17, 2007

Last night was interesting at work. Classes were fairly smooth all day. I even had one class cancelled to extend my dinner break.

I had what was probably the largest demo class the school could host--they had to bring in an extra chair for a late-comer. Fortunately, there were about five potential students who were more than willing to participate and talk at length when given the slightest opportunity. That really made the demo time fly by. It also gave me a chance to actually teach something that some of them could actually use. My boss looked a little impressed when she saw the size of the class I had to handle.

I almost got in trouble with the students of my intermediate level. I gave them an article about coffee's growing popularity in China. I read through it before class to find the new vocabulary for class, but came across a line that made me a little uneasy. It had a reference to Taiwan, "a country with a similar cultural history to China." I decided to give it a try in class and to skip the last three paragraphs of the two-page article. Everything went well, until about the end when one student read further along and found the line. I had to explain that many Western governments and news agencies think this way, but that doesn't mean it's right. At least I escaped that one.

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