English Corner has been quite interesting.
This is an optional time for the older girls to come talk to the volunteers and practice their English. It's from 6:45-7:45 PM every weekday except Wednesday.
Li Qin, Li Ying, Xiao Hua, and Wen Jun always come. For the first week it was rather disorganized. Sarah and Teresa, who usually go, can't speak Chinese, so they need me or Christine to translate. The room is full of exclamations like "安姐姐，你可以告诉Sarah..." which means "Ann, can you tell Sarah..." along with whatever the kids want to talk to me about directly.
Even when we have four volunteers there so that each girl has one person to pay attention to her, it's still very noisy and hard to handle. The girls all want so much attention. Two of them have yet to learn how to give other people their personal space, and they are pretty impatient when people don't respond to them right away.
Yesterday we tried a different format. Instead of a free-for-all, we made everyone be quiet until they were called on. We played a guessing game where one volunteer would describe an object in English and the kids had to guess what it was. Then we played telephone. Now we're thinking that in the future we should try to have one volunteer talk to one girl at a time so that it's not a free-for-all, but it's also not like a classroom.
I am getting faster at translating, and even when I don't translate something accurately, the kids figure out what we're trying to help them learn. I wonder how I can take over English classes next week when Teresa leaves. It seems like time is passing quickly. This week is already half over.
Christine suggested that I translate some resources about autism because a lot of kids here are autistic. That should be a challenge not just because the translation would be hard, but also because there are so many differing opinions on autism, and there is really no set treatment for autistic kids. I am not sure if anything I translate would be useful to the nannies who deal with the kids every day.
We now have internet in our house. I can make calls to people in the US with skype. I hope to settle down further and start reading literature again.
This is an optional time for the older girls to come talk to the volunteers and practice their English. It's from 6:45-7:45 PM every weekday except Wednesday.
Li Qin, Li Ying, Xiao Hua, and Wen Jun always come. For the first week it was rather disorganized. Sarah and Teresa, who usually go, can't speak Chinese, so they need me or Christine to translate. The room is full of exclamations like "安姐姐，你可以告诉Sarah..." which means "Ann, can you tell Sarah..." along with whatever the kids want to talk to me about directly.
Even when we have four volunteers there so that each girl has one person to pay attention to her, it's still very noisy and hard to handle. The girls all want so much attention. Two of them have yet to learn how to give other people their personal space, and they are pretty impatient when people don't respond to them right away.
Yesterday we tried a different format. Instead of a free-for-all, we made everyone be quiet until they were called on. We played a guessing game where one volunteer would describe an object in English and the kids had to guess what it was. Then we played telephone. Now we're thinking that in the future we should try to have one volunteer talk to one girl at a time so that it's not a free-for-all, but it's also not like a classroom.
I am getting faster at translating, and even when I don't translate something accurately, the kids figure out what we're trying to help them learn. I wonder how I can take over English classes next week when Teresa leaves. It seems like time is passing quickly. This week is already half over.
Christine suggested that I translate some resources about autism because a lot of kids here are autistic. That should be a challenge not just because the translation would be hard, but also because there are so many differing opinions on autism, and there is really no set treatment for autistic kids. I am not sure if anything I translate would be useful to the nannies who deal with the kids every day.
We now have internet in our house. I can make calls to people in the US with skype. I hope to settle down further and start reading literature again.
posted by Ann Chao at 8:51 PM
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