D-Day +48 (and Some Reflections on Teaching)

I've been in "the JX" for one and a half months now, and I'm just now starting to get used to it.  Maybe that's because I've spent the last two weekends traveling to other places (Nanjing and Hangzhou) or maybe that's because Jiaxing is just that mind-boggling.  There are parts to hate, parts to love, parts that are lovely, and parts that are just down right ugly.  Thanks to my fellow teachers and a few kind students I have discovered wonderful parks and a few great places to eat (Sichuan cuisine is my nectar and ambrosia).  Naturally after just getting into the swing of things, it has suddenly dawned on me that I need to find something else to do next year.  *Sigh.* It never fails.  Maybe I'll just stay here.

As for teaching...well...some of my students are great, like my Wednesday afternoon class, and some just don't care (and thus sleep).  As for the best ones, they are always quite eager to learn--actually, let me rephrase that--they are quite eager to play games, such as "Review Jeopardy" and my own heavily-modified version of "The Dating Game" (don't ask).  Chinese students can be quite competitive and we've had some pretty exciting contests.  Though still quite shy, they are always quite willing to volunteer their classmates to participate (Ah!  The glories of peer pressure!). 

Start talking about writing resumes, though, and almost all of my students, even my star pupils, lose interest quite quickly.  This is too bad, because there is a great deal that they have yet to learn about the "real world."  My students are mostly International Trade majors, and while it's obvious that many of them were shoehorned into that field by the administration and really don't care, they ought to know what kinds of jobs to be looking for and how to apply for them.  I mean we can't all be nepotists working at Dad's oil company after graduation, can we?

Oh and another problem.  They cheat.  A lot.  Okay, to be fair we always had dictionaries in German class, but their damned cell phones can do much, much more than that.  Those things translate idioms, almost perfectly.  I haven't any solid proof but what else can explain how each of my classes came up with the same exact meaning of "bending over backwards"  (a nearly-correct "to do one's best")?  Then again, if I made them put these lifelines away their response rate would go wayyyyy down.

So I do worry about my students.  Some of them have what it takes to be international businesspersons, but most clearly aren't getting the guidance they need and are simply coasting through this thing called "college" via they easiest route, blissfully unaware of what comes next.  Hopefully they'll snap out of this carefree revelry by senior year.  Otherwise they'll end up teaching their mother tongue in a foreign country.

Leb Wohl