Little Jonny Goes to School

ASU's Palm Walk has met it's match

Classes started this week. It’s a relief, really, you know? Shucks, we were just so tired of relaxing in hot springs, cruising the boardwalk on the north shore, getting massages from blind people, taking leisurely tours of culture-rich museums, and late night shopping adventures eating endless amounts of snacks and delicacies at crowded night markets. Thank goodness we've got a decent 9-5. Our troubles are over. It's a good thing that the typhoon predictions were way off for Taipei. To think...having to miss a day of classes being trapped with my roommate up here with nothing more than 100 cable channels...I perish at the thought.

 It’s an interesting set up we have for our classes. Most of us in the International Chinese Language Program (ICLP) are here just for the summer and, as newbies here we don’t get to choose our selection of courses. Instead, we’re assigned three different one-hour class blocks during the day. One of the classes is a one-on-one tutorial. The other are full sized classes...

...of four students a class.

That’s right: four students in a class. 1-2-3-4-5, oops I counted too high because no class ever is that small and I didn’t expect to be able to stop counting at four. The format is more discussion group than lecture, and it works like a charm. Tiny class sizes allows for near constant dialogue and participation among teacher and students. Everyone gets a chance to practice the new grammar point or answer a question about a new word or concept. The rhythm is therefore fast paced, and, at least this week, class periods fly by. There’s no time for idle chatter or texting. In fact, we’re not allowed to use a dictionary or even open our textbook during class. We are to come prepared--ready to not miss a beat.

I’m enjoying my classes so far. Apart from the almost unbearably unrealistic conversation dialogues we have to stomach in our Talks on Chinese Culture class, the rest of the material is fairly interesting like listening to and discussing old-timey Chinese radio plays in my morning class.

The brightest moment of every day so far, though, has been my one-on-one class. As fate would have it, I have been fortunate to have landed yet another on-point tutor. Like my tutor last year in Sichuan, Ms. Tu here at ICLP is keen to adapt her teaching method and content to the student (ME!) she keeps things interesting and fun and somehow manages to force me to use new sentence structures and vocabulary even though I hate nothing in this world more than being forced to use new sentence structures and vocabulary. She does it naturally, conversationally, making relevant connections between classroom content and content in my personal life. I’m impressed, I'm excited to go to class.

So far, so good, ICLP.  LM

Today's post is brought to you by Boo, the World's Cutest Dog.