Resident Alien - A blog about my life in China

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Where to begin?
I thought I was well prepared for class, I knew exactly what I wanted to cover, I knew what I wanted to say to the students, and I had notes that I could refer to. I was not nervous, which was a surprise to me; well at least I was not nervous as yet. I decided to try to get to class early so that I could hopefully meet some of the students before class began. I figured 15 to 20 minutes early would be sufficient. Wrong! I got there at 7:40 (class was not scheduled to begin until 8:00), but every single student was already there. This threw me off, and I suddenly started to feel a bit uneasy with the sudden hush that came over the class, followed by a few gasps and then murmuring. I looked up at the class, and at least 90% of the students were just staring at me in awe. I quickly looked down, and proceeded to take my notes out of my bag. Basically I aimlessly shuffled through my notes, trying to look like I was busy. I noticed that my hands were shaking, and it is likely that a few students sitting towards the front of the class also noticed this. I looked at the time, 7:50. I was beginning to regret getting to class early, what in the world was I supposed to do to kill ten minutes?

I slowly looked up at the class, again they immediately became silent. With a nervous laugh I quickly raised and dropped my hand as a gesture to the class and said good morning. They all laughed and smiled and replied good morning with enthusiasm.
I then said: Since everyone is here, I am just going to start class early if that is ok with everyone.
There was no reply, just more staring.

I began by introducing myself, I wrote my name on the board, and they read it as I wrote it. (This is something that slightly amused me throughout the class) They then all said something like good morning Hugo Diaz. I talked a little bit about Iowa, Trinidad and myself. I then passed out three sheets for them to write their Chinese and English names. While they were doing this, I wrote 5 statements on the board. Again, I could hear them reading aloud and trying to sound out the words as I wrote. It was a little distracting, but at least if brought a smile to my face. I collected the three sheets, and said that I would explain the statements that I had just written in a few minutes. I then went around the class reading off their Chinese names.
I butchered at least half of the names, and there was a lot of laughter and consequent corrections.
I then explained that there were two reasons for me reading off the class list, the first was to try to get the pronunciations correct, and the second was to show them that even though my Chinese was not good (it was horrible to say the least), I was still making an effort to learn, and that I was not afraid to be laughed at. I told them that they needed to be just as brave to get the most out of this class, and to pay no attention to any detractors. I then talked about the 5 statements I had written, they were for an icebreaker that we were going to play. Three of the statements were true and 2 were false, the class had to vote on which ones they thought were true and which ones they thought were false. After they determined which ones were true they then had to vote on which one of the three they wanted me to talk more about. I should mention that after I explained the first part of the game and asked if the instructions were clear, no one really responded, they did not even shake their heads. It was a stark contrast with the beginning of class where they seemed so enthusiastic. I felt like I was talking to myself, which did not quite help the minute amount of confidence that I had to begin with. I repeated the rules, and just assumed that this time they understood what I said.

Thankfully, when I asked them if they thought the first statement was true, they proved to me that they did in fact comprehend the instructions. So the first part of the game went over smoothly, and I was glad to hear a lot of giggling and chatter each time I asked if something was true. The atmosphere in the classroom was getting more relaxed now. For the second part of the game where they had to vote only once for which of the true statements they wanted me to talk further about, I at least got some confirmations when I asked if the directions were clear.
They appeared to be warming up to me now, and I felt almost completely relaxed.

I thought that I had talked about myself for long enough, and I decided to move on to the student introductions. I had a set of predetermined topics that I wanted them to talk about which included things like family, hobbies, how they spent their summer etc. I needed to write these on the board, so I played a song while I wrote to avoid the dreaded silence. I think that this idea went down really well with the students, but for future classes I altered my song selection based on recently gained knowledge. The song that I played on the first day was How is It Going to Be, by Third Eye Blind. For my other classes I also played Yesterday Once More, by the Carpenters, this seemed to be a song that most liked. Subsequently when I played Yesterday Once More in my other 3 classes, the students would actually sing, or hum along at various points of the chorus etc. This made me chuckle and smile each time.

After the song, I had each student stand up and divulge some information about themselves using the topics I had written on the board. I was both pleased and slightly deterred with this portion of the class: whereas the student talking was clearly happy to have a chance to talk and not at all apprehensive, many of the other students were talking amongst themselves. I guess that when I think about it though, I certainly prefer the talkative ambiance to the deafening silence that was characteristic of roughly the first 20 minutes of class.

We did not manage to get through all of the students, so I told them that we would continue this at the beginning of the following class period. I also gave them a small homework assignment; yes I know that it was mean, especially since it was only the first day. I did, however, really need to have some writing samples so that I could have a firm grasp on where they stood in terms of their grammar level etc. This was necessary for me to design lessons that would suit both their spoken and their written level of English. At least I also told them that it would not be graded, but that I just needed it to make some assessments.

Overall the first day of class got off to a slow start, but things definitely picked up, and by the end of class I sensed that the students were more comfortable. I know that I certainly was!