Eureka!

I've discovered a way to learn Chinese while teaching! A simple, yet coy, operation where both parties can share a language exchange. My students and I have formed a successful symbiotic relationship. Here's the catch: My Chinese lessons are all in English. Sometimes terrible, broken English.

But that's just it. My students are at a level which they are both able and competent enough to use their English abilities and run with it beyond their comfort zone. They don't need to stick to the grammar patterns we've been learning, but they rather say whatever is on their mind using what they already know.

This is an idea that I've taken into consideration in the past few weeks:

I've stopped trying to teach, as one might conventionally think of teaching; filling someone's head with facts. Instead, I've started teaching by asking "how," and "why," and "what if" questions.

Try to remember what you learned when you were in kindergarten. Really. Try. Or don't, because it doesn't matter. The purpose of kindergarten is to build a foundation for education. I would put a large sum of NTD(New Taiwan Dollars) on the claim that my students won't remember what a stethoscope is or that a giraffe's tongue is 50 cm long(almost 2 feet...gross). However, assuming they continue their English studies, I hope that it will benefit them knowing that if someone asks them to describe a trip to the doctor, they have the confidence and ability to take a situation that happens in Chinese and recap it in English.

It's during these moments, which Oxford seminars has appropriately labeled "magic moments," when you, as a teacher, realize that the kid has just uttered a series of English words by utilizing every tool and every resource they've ever learned from you. It's pretty incredible listening to a kid try to tell you something, then stop mid-sentence because he realizes he doesn't know the English for the word he wants to use, start from the beginning and take a completely different approach on the same thought, using what he does know, and ultimately achieve his goal, which is usually teacher comprehension and satisfaction.

However precious these moments are, perfection is hardly the aim and almost never the result. And this is where my Chinese lessons come in(you either forgot or thought I forgot what I was talking about).

For months I've been teaching English without understanding exactly who I'm teaching it to. I've been trying my best to abolish what my class now refers to as "Baby Sentences," which I've come to realize are only literal translations from Chinese to English. Cue the lighting of the epiphanic light bulb because my job just got easier. After a few conversations with some of my Chinese speaking friends, they've translated the Baby Sentences back into Chinese, and I can understand what the students are trying to say, therefore making it easier for me to correct them.

"There have cockroach." This sentence pattern drove me nuts! That is, until I realized what it means. There (that place, i.e. the wall) have (in this case we'd say 'has,' as in 'in its possession') cockroach (species of indestructible insects that are ever-present in my classroom). "That wall has a cockroach," or how we'd probably say it in English, "There's a cockroach."

And what I extract from the situation is the Chinese grammar. In Chinese, it seems like everything "has" something; here, there, he, I. With the same approach, I've learned grammar patterns that make sense out of "I give you see," "So big check," "He used me," so on and so forth.

At the end of this long-winded post, I can only compare myself to the very kids that I teach. I, too, but at a much lower level, am taking words that I already know and using them in sentences that I've picked up on. While this may come across as logical, because yeah, it is, but like so many other things in life, without that "eureka" moment, logic just doesn't seem that logical.