I don’t comprehend.

TEFL

Comprehension. That’s what we were talking about at a teachers meeting this afternoon. The staff at the high school where I teach was discussing how we can improve the English comprehension of our students.

Somebody thought I had the answer. Of course, they were wrong.

But, being the resident native English speaker, I had some insight to share, and share I did. Having read a little about this subject recently, and having the Internet at my fingertips, I put together a small program for testing the students’ ability to absorb the concept, then reported my findings to this meeting. It was fun to do.

Turns out, the government (that would be the US Federal government) has studied this problem a great deal. See http://dww.ed.gov  for starters. That’s Doing What Works in Education. They suggest we should teach comprehension, not just test for it. How do ya’ do that? They say we should make the students aware of the tools they already use without thinking.

It works this way. Suppose you’re reading an article on a subject you really enjoy. Before you know it, your mind is engaging thoughts about how you could use the information you’re reading; or perhaps if it’s an article about a place, you’re already there in your mind. That’s a phenomenon called reader response in the field of literature appreciation. You’ve experienced it yourself — we all have — as you read a poem you see in your mind’s eye the setting of the poem and you feel the emotion of the character. All I have to do is to type Treasure Island and your brain is already on some sandy beach somewhere with a shovel and several pirates. The trick in increasing comprehension is to increase comprehension of boring subjects. We “get” the interesting stuff right away. The solution is simple: Use on purpose the same tools we already use automatically. Our job is to show the students what they’re doing (actually teach them what they’re already doing) so they can do these things with any material they read.

Reading further, I discovered that the method of teaching is almost exactly the same way I’ve been taught to teach English language skills. With that similarity at hand, I was able to discuss it easily with the other teachers. We’ll see if this process can be accomplished, and with what success.

iTunes + TED = significant entertainment-–and occasional revelation

Life in general

I use iTunes on my laptop to scoop up the stuff I want to see and hear. I use it because I can do all this off-line. Here in China, the network throughput is sometimes frustratingly slow, so I just ‘set it and forget it’  as they say. What of it?

I recently found that I could add a subscription from TED to my iTunes library. TED (Technology, Entertainment, and something, I’ll go look it up, ah here it is: Design) is a storehouse of five to twenty-minute videos on everything under the sun, by some of the world’s coolest people. It looks like TED can stream one new episode every day to you if you wish. I have been absorbed in their presentations for some time now. If you need an “Oh, wow!” moment…

Most recently, I happened upon a video from Roger Ebert, the writer, reviewer, philosopher and all-around cool dude who recently almost lost his head to cancer. This is the guy we all watched on TV voting thumbs up or down on our favorite movies. For reasons I never understood, it seemed that whatever he and Gene Siskel (the other guy) didn’t like was sure to please me whenever I got the chance to watch on of the movies they reviewed. Oh, well. Great minds think alike. Which means…OK, skip it.

What kept me watching his TED presentation was the interesting method he used to present his talk. He doesn’t speak any more. Or eat. Or drink. He used the synthesized voice in his Mac notebook to deliver some of his presentation, but had several friends read parts of it as well.

It was fascinating. You have to see this. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/roger_ebert_remaking_my_voice.html

Because he is a figure of some notoriety, he’s been featured in magazine articles, notably one about his autobiography, titled Life Itself. Of the several excerpts quoted in the magazine is this one:

On how to write ‘fast’

“[In high school] I was a subscriber to the Great Lead Theory, which teaches that a story must have an opening paragraph so powerful that it leaves few readers still standing. Grantland Rice’s ‘Four Horsemen’ lead was my ideal. [Sportswriter Bill] Lyon watched as I ripped one sheet of copy paper after another out of my typewriter and finally gave me the most useful advice I have ever received as a writer: ‘One, don’t wait for inspiration, just start the damn thing. Two, once you begin, keep on until the end. How do you know how the story should begin until you find out where it’s going?’ These rules saved me half a career’s worth of time and gained me a reputation as the fastest writer in town. I’m not faster. I spend less time not writing.”

So there’s Roger’s advice to bloggers everywhere, and aspiring writers, too.

Don’t wait for inspiration, just start the damned thing.

Thanks for sharing, Mr. Ebert. And thanks for having us over for dinner.

Seven point plan to redefine sexuality and marriage has my head nodding in agreement. What’s our plan?

Marriage

So far, I think this effort hasn’t made it into China. Ha! I wonder what the local marriage registration office would have to say. Nevertheless, this is a succinct treatment of the strategy the Stateside activists seem to be using. Steve Cornell wrote this at Wisdom for Life:

Seven point plan to redefine sexuality and marriage.

This is a vexing problem for many of us citizens, and especially for those who profess Christianity. It’s hard to muster the strength to argue when the terms are defined by the opposition in a way that portrays argument as un-Christian.

I’m reminded that most Christian beliefs only became written doctrine upon challenge. Nobody felt the need to write it all down — and indeed, most of our doctrine remained verbally traditional until someone adopted a divergent belief. Only when challenged did the Church find it necessary to meet, consider, and publish the truth. We reduced to writing the things we believed when someone else wrote heresy, having been entirely satisfied beforehand to know the truth without having to read it. In other words (if I understand this correctly) a good portion of Christian doctrine is counter-argument to heresy.

Which thought allows me to opine that we now are attempting (some better than others) to counter-argue the question of marriage from a similar position — we know what it is, all right, but until recently we haven’t had to argue the truth we’ve traditionally accepted. Now that we have a well-prepared opposition confronting us, we must gather together our thoughts and promulgate the truth about marriage as we have routinely come to accept it — as your parents did, and theirs, and theirs.

This is actually not an easy task for many of us, it appears. Certainly not for me.

Liturgical differences

Catholic Church in China

I am married to a Chinese national, and I myself am an American citizen. The Church we attend for weekly Mass varies; some Sundays it’s the local Chinese Catholic Church here in town, other times we travel back into Shanghai proper and attend an English Mass at St. Peter’s International. It will be interesting to compare the liturgy in the one celebration with that of the other.

Already we notice that the homilies differ in scope: the international parish homilies talk more about behavior in general, explaining the underlying meanings found in the Gospel that day, while the local Chinese Catholic Mass has a sermon more closely tied to the behavior of the parishioners. I guess that’s to be expected. In the next several weeks, we are going to try to attend two Masses each weekend — his and hers — to compare notes. It’s going to be enlightening to see what differences exist.

I fancy myself a techno-wiz, but all I get is chalk.

Teacher's aids, TEFL

This is one of my classes.

Sometimes, I think my job performance is linked to my support electronics, but I’ve been re-considering the premise this year. I don’t have much to use anyway. I also recall that old saw about how a poor workman blames  his tools, so I try not to be too critical of classroom technology that malfunctions or is non–existent.

I should behave; after all, I am more or less a guest in China – I teach English to high schoolers who are learning the language in a rough environment. I’ll talk about the Chinese education system later. I say a guest because of the visa rules that are in place here. While almost anyone can visit this country, if you want to stay around, you need to be somebody. As it works out, I have permission to be in China because I’m a foreign expert.

A foreign expert is someone who has a skill not found locally. Understand, there are plenty of people to do almost every job imaginable around here – this is China, remember, home of a billion people, most of whom are looking for a better job than they have right now.

So what makes me an expert? Well, I wish I could tell you it was my superior intelligence, my business acumen or my extensive experience managing men and machines, but alas, it is none of those. I just speak English. Yep. That’s it. I talk. I am a native English speaker. It’s my first language, L1 in the parlance, and so I have a skill that no Chinese person can match.

China thinks that a knowledge of English is a skill so valuable that they recruit us to come here and teach native pronunciation to their students.

This year, the teaching plan is a little different than last. Last year I was awash in Power Point presentations, but I lost the kids because they were only watching; they were not speaking English; they were not listening to my instructions.

This time, I’m playing with chalk on the board and words from the students. So far, it’s working. I’ll let you know.

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