Welcome back, Wu Yuan Shan

Yesterday was a killer day, which in part accounts for my not posting this earlier. But it is also the case that it is noticeably harder to get on line at night, and much much quicker to download stuff befeore, say, about 7 in the morning, with download speeds being ten to a hundred times faster. So I may start posting in the morning here.

Anyway, now my schedule is complete. I have fourteen hours, and six of them are on Wednesday. I have two culture classes (an hour and a half each) and one oral English class. The thing that really threw me, though, was the level of the oral English class. They had told me these were low level English students, but I was not really prepared for how low the level was.
My model school training in the summer and all my students up to this point had been relatively high functioning. I had heard stories about these sorts of classes and knew I might encounter them but in truth was simply not prepared for students at this level and it will take a major adjustment in strategy. In addition, and I think because these are low functioning students, there are a number of issues of what is politely referred to as classroom management. If you want to get some idea of exactly what my classroom with these students is like, think of a certain comedy from the 1970's starrring Gabe Kaplan and a certain group of remedial students led by John Travolta. Yes, the whole eperience is oddly reminiscent of Welcome Back Kotter, except of course that Kotter and Vinne Barbarino don't speak the same language, which makes for an especially interesting dynamic.

Today my class is a challenge of a different sort. I have a group of adult students who I've been told are also low functioning in terms of their English ability. But at least I've been assured that because these are adults who don't have to be in school but want to learn they are relatively highly motivated and serious, as opposed to yesterday's group who seem like some American college students and simply don't want to be at school.

But at least with my schedule I only have classes on three days, though those are three tough days, and I have Fridays and Tuesdays off. I just hope they let me teach the same courses for the next two years so that I can use this semester to get couse preparations together and then use these for the remaining time. I hope, but they have been known to switch classes on people, so we'll see.