Teaching In China:

On Friday February 1, 2008 at 1:00pm I attended a lecture that was given by Jennifer Thompson in Cooper Hall. She gave a lecture about her experiences on teaching English in China. I found this to be interesting to go all the way to China to teach English. Ms. Thompson told us that we did not have to have a English or a teaching degree to teach English in China.

Ms. Thompson showed a power point presentation on the different places she visited in China. She had several slides of the open live market place you could go to purchase fresh meat and vegetables. She told us that she doesn’t only eat Chinese she also eats regular meat and vegetables. She did say that they use a lot of grease to cook with. When she first moved into her apartment she spent several days cleaning up all the grease. Ms. Thompson also mentioned how friendly the people were and all you would have to do is just smile. She showed several pictures of her apartment where she had a Christmas party, she had invited several of her colleagues and several of her students. They have never seen a Christmas tree and they were excited and so now from that experience they now celebrate Christmas. She herself does not speak Chinese that well but she manages. I believe she mentioned that she has been in China for about 3 years and she plans on being there forever.

Ms. Thompson does not use books to teach her class, she teaches oral English. She started by asking her students to come up some English names, after asking her students to do this they came up with some names that you would actually laugh at. She had to ask several of her students to start thinking about business professional names and they eventually changed their names.