Monthly Archive for May, 2008Page 2 of 3

More aftermath photos

Published on Friday, May 16, 2008

Source: http://news.163.com/special/00012700/fotodiz.html. Lots more pho­tos there.

Death toll now at nearly 15,000 and ex­pected to get a lot higher.

Here’s a photo es­say from Time.com.

Here’s an­other way to do­nate, es­tab­lished by the Committee of 100 (百人會).

Day 31: English class

Published on Friday, May 16, 2008

This is what my English class looks like.

 

o_​O o_​o   ?_​? o.o   *_​* ó_​o   O_​o •_​•   o_​o ‘_’

o_​o x_​x   -.- ~_​~   o_​o 0_​o   >.< o_​o   v_​v o_​o

–_​– o_​o   o_​O ò_​ó   O_​0 o_​ò   ?_​? –_​–   o.o 0_​o

0_​0 –_​–   o_​o z_​z   >_​< o_​o   o_​o ó_​ò –_– -.-

o_​o @_@   O_​O o_​o   o_​o –_​–   /​_​\ o_​o   ‘_​‘ o_​o

 

>.<;

Aftermath photos

Published on Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Some pho­tos of the af­ter­math and res­cue ef­forts from the earth­quake in Sichuan two days ago.

Source: http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20080513_1.htm. Go see the rest there. Donation info here.

Day 28: Huge earthquake hit China

Published on Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Yesterday af­ter­noon a mag­ni­tude 7.8 earth­quake hit Sichuan Province. That’s way out in the mid­dle of China, but even peo­ple in Beijing and Shanghai and neigh­bor­ing coun­tries felt it. (I didn’t. Probably de­pends on the foun­da­tion.) For com­par­i­son with the SF Bay Area, the 1906 San Francisco earth­quake was also a 7.8. The 1989 Loma Prieta earth­quake was 6.9.

I’ve been to Yunnan Province, just south of Sichuan, and if I re­mem­ber right the build­ings were mostly made of con­crete – not some­thing that would be able to with­stand a ma­jor earth­quake. (Californians think about this stuff.) I imag­ine Sichuan build­ings are prob­a­bly the same, and to­day the death toll es­ti­mate has passed 10,000. I had a feel­ing it’d be bad when I first heard about it, but wasn’t ex­pect­ing such a big number.

Go to Shanghaiist.com for more info. They’re do­ing an ex­cel­lent job keep­ing up­dated with the news.

(Photo: Xinhua, Wang Jianhua)

Day 27: I teach English

Published on Monday, May 12, 2008

I have in­ter­net at my place now. Forgot to men­tion that. It was in­stalled about two weeks ago. I can’t be­lieve I’ve been here al­most a month already.

Business Spoken EnglishTomorrow I be­gin teach­ing English to my cowork­ers. (I thought it was to­day. No won­der no one got ready for class.) When I was first told I’d be teach­ing English, I thought I’d be teach­ing a hand­ful of peo­ple, like maybe five at most. Turns out I’ll be teach­ing a class­room of 26 peo­ple, five days a week, 30 min­utes per day, indefinitely.

Not a prob­lem. Even though my biggest pho­bia in school was speak­ing in front of the class­room, this’ll be cake. Why? No idea. I just keep telling my­self that. Nothing to worry about. Not a thing. As long as I don’t wet my pants or vomit or st-​​t-​​t-​​tutter, I’ll do f-​​f-​​f-​​fine.

I chose a small hand­book called Business Spoken English to use as our text­book. It’s 300+ pages of noth­ing but phrases. Just A talk­ing to B, and B re­spond­ing to A. Not a sin­gle tech­ni­cal gram­mar lesson.

Teaching gram­mar might work for some peo­ple, but I bet rep­e­ti­tion of sen­tence pat­terns is a bet­ter way for most. Plus I don’t want to an­swer ques­tions like “why do you al­ways end sen­tences with prepositions?!”

I’ve made a course syl­labus, and a ques­tion­naire so I can get an idea of everyone’s cur­rent English level. I just hope every­one can at least un­der­stand the questionnaire.

If any­one has ad­vice on teach­ing English to a class­room of Chinese adults, lemme hear!