Poor dogs

In addition to the 12 classes I teach weekly, I also lead two “English Corners.” These classes are made up of the best four students in each class (as chosen by their Chinese English teachers). Although there has been a room assignment problem during every single English Corner and getting things started has never been easy, these have quickly become some of my favorite class periods. I love working with a smaller number of students (32 in each class) at a higher level. The students are far more driven to learn English and a majority are very lively and participate. I’m able to have the students do more interesting activities in class and get them up out of their seats.

Because the Chinese school system focuses on the one “right” answer to every problem, there is little room for creativity and students tend to struggle when I ask them to come up with something on their own. It has become my personal goal to allow (and, in some cases, teach) the students in these smaller classes to be more creative. In order to get them talking and get their creative juices flowing, we made up stories as a group last week. I started the students off with a prompt like, “yesterday my mother moved to the moon,” and had them make up the rest of the story, one sentence at a time. They came up with some pretty interesting ideas. Surprisingly, eating hair and talking bugs was an integral part of the plot in both classes. It must be a Chinese thing.

Building off the activity from last week, I had them come up with a stories in small groups this week. The prompt was, “yesterday my mom bought me a dog,” and after 10 minutes to prepare, I had the students share their stories with the whole class. Here is one example. I left their mistakes to give you an idea of the level that the best students are working at.

I have a small dog, it’s white. Yestoday we going to naterpark [nature park], The naterpark have many animal. It’s very happy, I’m happy, too!
-written by Shuke, Ford, Anita, and Andy.

You may think it’s not much of a story, but I can’t express how pleased I was when they shared that story with the class. I’m happy when they stay on task and speak English, so I guess it doesn’t take much to thrill me. Here’s a second example.

If I have a little dog. I will playing game with it! and I will give it name. It name is “Mike Jackson hot dog.” Last, I will eating this dog. The dog is very healg [tasty].
-written by Tom Brown, Roy, Harry, Jake, and Tom.

The dog that was eaten in the last story was not a hot dog, but an actual dog. Another story featured a dog name Alice that was consumed by the student’s father. In fact, the dogs in four out of the five stories became dinner before the story was finished.

While it is common to eat dogs in China, it is uncommon to eat animals that were formerly pets. The dogs that become dinner are raised on farms for their meat and are available for purchase at the market. According to many of my Chinese friends, dog meat warms you in the winter and is enjoyed by most girls. Although I am worried about staying warm this winter, I don’t think I’m going to try that specific method.

The stories just prove that apparently I need to think more closely about the animals I choose for my story prompts, if I don’t want to the animals to dinner at the end. Actually, I’m not exactly sure what animal would be safe choice. Maybe giant pandas...