It's been almost a whole month since I arrived in China and about 3 weeks of classes. However, I still haven't said much about my classes. So here's the low down.

My schedule is as follows:
Mon 10am-12pm: Freshman Conversation
Tues 7-9pm: Junior Non-Englsih Majors Conversation
Wed 10am-12pm: Freshman Conversation
Thurs 8-10am: Sophomore Writing
Fri 10am-12pm: Freshman Conversation
Fri 2-4pm: Sophomore Conversation
(All my Freshman classes do not start until after the National Day holiday, which is Oct 1-6.)

I have a total of 215 students. The largest class is my Junior class. It has 65 students. They major in Geography, Education, and Electronics-something. The rest of my students are English majors in the Foreign Languages Department. I'm at a Normal university, which means that the students are trained to be teachers. (And no, there is no such thing as an Abnormal university)

The students come from across Anhui province. The province is divided into many counties and I believe that all the counties are well-represented at the school. Some come from other large cities, some larger than Wuhu. Others come from the countryside

The way classes work in Chinese universities is that the students are in their classroom for all courses while the teachers must scurry around. In fact, I was in the wrong classroom when I started my first class. A little embarassing, of course, but it was all a good laugh afterwards.

The classes are quite tightly knit units. As freshmen, they had to go through military training together. Military training involves a lot of marching from what I can tell. Then they are always in the same classes together. So if you were in Freshman Class 1, there would be about 29 other classmates with whom you would enjoy the rest of your university career together.

Each class has a class monitor, an idea I believe which is also common in Hong Kong. The class monitor is like a class president in some ways. They are in charge of all the extra-curricular activities for the class and often acts as a liaison between the class and the teachers when problems arise.

I was pleasantly surprised to find TV's in all the classrooms in the Foreign Languages Building. The TVs receive a cable or satellite feed, I have no idea which, and they are also all hooked up to one solitary VCR. The students have the opportunities to watch the news at 7pm and on Friday and Saturday nights, the department plays a movie across the building for all the classes. The classrooms also double as study-space during non-class time because there isn't many other places to do that.

As for me and my teaching, it has been quite enjoyable. The English majors are keen and eager to learn. They haven't got much in terms of luxuries, but they still manage to learn. The conversation class has been especially fun for me. I walk around when they are practising in small groups and I just laugh at some of the improvisations that they come up with. It can be really amusing.

The non-English majors are a little harder to teach because they are not used to Western-style communicative teaching which needs a lot of participation and interaction. Hopefully, we can meet half- way somewhere in terms of teaching styles and find a happy medium.

As a part of my teaching, I also have student visits. It's a time where I get to know my students better and vice-versa. So far, they haven't been breaking down the door of my apartment, but I hear the Freshmen usually come in hoards. I guess I better brace myself.

Another additional thing some of the teachers do is attend English corner. Many students as well as outsiders come to practise their English. So once they see a tall white guy, they tend to flock to him. At my first English corner, I thought I'd go unnoticed, but then a handful of my students saw me. I was having a nice conversation with them when my buddy, Brian, said there was a Chinese-Canadian foreign teacher here too. The jig was up. Slowly, people started to gather around me and my students were squeezed out. Brian had a previous engagement and left English Corner. That's when the crowd really started to form around me. Yikes!

Anyway, that's my teaching in a nutshell. If I have anything else to add, I'll do so in the future. See y'all.