This week, the students have been doing their listening exams, and whilst the exams are a vast improvement on last semesters in terms of the level and quality of English, there are still a few errors. For one thing, some of the instructions have clearly been copied and pasted in, as there is the same …
Birthday stuff
It was my birthday this week. Like last year, I had class on the day itself, although this time I was not listening to Senior 1 students’ exams, telling me about their favourite things or what they would do with £1 million. This year, I gave my class a quiz. I did something similar at …
Can you give me an example?
My Chinese classes have recently become a lot harder. We have been focusing on more nuances of grammar, which I guess is good, because it means I am advancing, but it is also more difficult and confusing. For example, in my last class, we looked at gǎi 改, huàn 换, and biànhuà 变化. They are …
My new phone
I have bought a new phone. A couple of weeks ago, my friend (another foreign teacher who I used to work with at RDFZ) sent me a link to a new phone that was being released on 22 May. He told me if I was planning to get a new phone, then that one was …
Does anything change?
I am a member of various WeChat groups for bloggers in China and in Beijing. Mostly, I remain silent, unless something particularly interests me or the discussion is about something I know. But sometimes other members post their latest blog posts, and it can be interesting reading what others write about and also how they …
Approaching the final weeks
Exam season is upon us…. Sort of. Our (and by our, I mean the foreign teachers) seem to be doing their oral exams now, as opposed to the Chinese teachers who do it in the final week. But they do a speaking exam whereby students have to discuss a topic. My classes are doing presentations, …
Harder than it looks
I bought a ticket for the cinema yesterday. That’s not overly surprising, since I watch films a lot. But I bought it online and collected it from the ticket machine, which was only in Chinese. It took me a couple of tries, hitting the back and delete buttons, before I finally got it. Avengers: Infinity …
