Scott's Trip to China: Second Semester, First Day

School has started once again.

This semester I'll still be teaching 12 hours (3 classes - twice a week) but with different subjects and some new students. This term I have two courses of "Survey of Britain and America" and one class of "Western Culture Audio/Visual." It should be more structured than the Oral and Listening English courses of last term that gave me a good deal of freedom inside the classroom.

China being as it is, I received my new schedule Sunday afternoon with classes starting the following morning... In a slightly more unexpected twist, textbooks for the courses won't be arriving until sometime next week! Not as big of a deal in a speaking class, but I'm not sure exactly what I should be teaching here. The topics seem broad enough to cover anything from humanities to simple geography.

In any event, having a number of new students, I'm just using the first week as a chance to try and familiarize myself with their English level. Hopefully, once the books arrive, I will have a better idea of what I should be preparing for them. One great thing is that all of my classes are small. I still have the college class of twenty-five from last semester, but added to them are two high school classes.; One with just twenty students and the second with about thirty. Overall, I'll have under 100 different students this term. Compared to the foreign teachers at Zhanjiang Normal University who usually average around 400 to 450 different students, this will be quite a luxury.

I think the new courses may be a bit of a challenge (imagine learning history, politics, etc. in a second language), but with a little experience now under my belt, I'm hoping I'll be able to meet it and be a more effective teacher this time around.

My New Schedule