David's Big Adventure in China

We’re more than halfway through the semester now and I’ve got a pretty easy workload. I started off with a pretty light load this semester and some classes end early. After next week I’ll be down to 7 periods which is about 2 days work per week (each period is 40 minutes of class time). Bonnie has 12 periods. Most students have about 24 periods per week but get very little homework from most of their classes. I teach a class of oral English for students who have English as their second major and in addition to their normal load they have 13 to 17 periods of English on the weekends. All second major classes are scheduled on the weekends so that they don’t interfere with their normal classes. I was very frustrated with my second major students last semester because it seemed few of them did the homework I assigned. Then this semester after I learned that they have 35 to 40 periods a week in total I had a new appreciation for why they didn’t do the homework. I also teach a class of oral English to teachers who are preparing for a test that will determine if their English is good enough to work abroad. For many of them to advance to the title of Professor they need to go abroad for a year for advanced work in their field. I have been surprised by the lack of critical thinking skills demonstrated by this group. These should be the university’s brightest as they are the up and comers with masters and PhD degrees. The education system here doesn’t develop thinkers, it develops memorizers who can regurgitate the material on exams. The elite schools are better but the masses of students here don’t get a very good education. That’s why so many parents of Chinese students want their child to study abroad. The students here don’t really have pride in their schools. You don’t see students wearing clothes with the name of their school.

I’m also working one on one with a PhD in computer science who will be going to Arizona State University for a year to work with a Professor there. He wants to improve his oral English before he goes there this fall. One of the staff in the English department got a scholarship to go to New College which is located right on the bay in Sarasota, Florida. Not a bad place to be sent for a year! It’s a small but elite Liberal Arts college.

We started shopping for decorating our new apartment but we still don’t know when we’ll get the keys. The building looks like it’s pretty much finished but they won’t tell us when it will be completed. The best guess is that we will get the keys in September or October then we will start the decorating process which will take 2 to 3 months since it includes flooring, plumbing fixtures, cabinets, etc. Then we want to let it sit for a couple months to let all the fumes from the new materials to dissipate. So it will be sometime after the first of the year before we can move in. Hopefully June, 2014, at the latest. Thus I plan to teach for one more year in order to keep the apartment we’re in now until we can move into the new apartment. I’m tentatively planning to retire or at least cut back my work schedule even more in July, 2014. Until next time……