New Tutoring Student

I’ll start teaching Derby Mandarin on a weekly baiss startng this afternoon.

UCLA Confucius Institute

Today is my momentum.

After completing 2 phone interviews this morning, I got a physcial interview at Beverly Hill Lingual Institue tomorow. And later when I was preparing for lunch, I got a very late reply from San Francisco State University regarding my request about 3 months ago.

The good news is, Confucius Institute is recently open at UCLA, which is only about 20 minute bus ride from my place. If I ever consider pursing a Chinese teaching credential, that will be a good place to go.  

The 1st Confucius institute was open in Soul, Korea in 2004. Within 3 years, the Chinese Language office has promoted up to 120 institute around the world. Even though I’m from Taiwan, and always a strong advocate of traditional characters, I’m afraid that Taiwanese government has lost the battle of promoting Traditional character in this movement.

Too Fast?

Repost old blog entry #5 

September 23, 2006

Too fast?

Done a personal survey among my students today. The most common feedback from them are– friendly, cheerful and nice personality, dynamic teaching skills, never a dull moment (one student said that, yeah, I’m an entertaining hostess…), patient, bilingually beneficial to them. However, almost all of them put this answer on Q2:

• Q:What do you dislike the most about this class? 
• A: You speak too fast! 

Maybe I’ve been far away from the lower level of English proficiency for a while, so I can’t remember the pain the 2nd language learners have to suffer from the fast speech of the instructor. Oh, yeah, I clearly remember one of my previous grammar professors back in college, Professor Hilbert, she is absolutely the champion of speaking fast on campus. Not only in class, in real life, she speaks even faster. I guess she’s been holding herself back really hard in class already.

That’s the reason why I want to get some feedback from my lovely students–to make myself a better teacher for the next cycle.

Always try to advance my career. Yeah, like the pyscho test Jesse gave to me yesterday,  my imaginary ladder on the movie theater screen is the sturdy, old, solid oak one. The one looks like the monstrous one in the public library, that can be steadily fixed on the floor, with wheels, helps you reaching the top of the bookshelfs and take you to any books you want to get. The underlining meaning of the ladder is– how you see your career. Which seems to be the major comfort and sense of security I can provide myself for the rest of my life.

Being professional; stay professional. It must be easier than stay beautiful. After all, I’m already too sexy and pretty for being a teacher.

Tutored Irina,aka my new TOFEL preparation student from Taiwan, this afternoon. Still feel good step into the familiar, same old campus. Glad that I help her a lot in grammar. She told me afterwards: “I wish I can know you earlier so I can suffer less from my classes… Hong should introduce us as soon as I got here!!” And she handed me the tutoring fee in a cute envelope with a thank you note and personal signature stamp on it… That’s a totally Asian way to show respect to the teacher. No matter what kinda of teachers that might be.

Depressed Turtle

Repost my old blog Entry 3 

June 09, 2006

Depressed Turtle

I hate to admit it, but the fortuneteller was right again. I did meet some intelligent people (aka 有識之士) since this summer.

4 of my students now:

• G. is an ABC, speaks Cantonese, and provided me many useful comparisons among Mandarin/Cantonese/Taiwanese. And she has a fixed tutoring schedule for me to make things easier. She also inspires me to get in touch with business world.
• A, also an ABC, went to MIT for Bachelor and Master, received his Ph.D. from Stanford. Always teaches me some hi-tech terms and offers me ride home (though I never let him do so…)
• T. went to Berkeley for bachelor, Stanford for Master, and are going to Wharton for his MBA (Wharton is the top 3 best public university in the U.S.). Always buys me coffee if we met at Starbucks, and is willing to travel to campus to save some troubles for me to get to downtown. And even though we only had one-hour session (when his brain was not working well…), or meet for 20 mins for discussing for materials, he would pay me the full amount of 90-mins hour pay.
• M, the pianist, knows 4 different languages before he contacted with Mandarin. He really helps me to learn more about languages from his cross-linguistic perspectives.

Below is what M’s analysis of 2 Chinese characters from his e-mail:

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鬱: depressed, gloomy

龜: turtle

When I thought of the turtle character, I was reminded that turtles have four legs, just like the four corners of the earth.

Then I realized that in all over those corners there are people who are miserably unhappy because of the USA, which, for example has a military presence in 120 of the 180 countries of the United Nations.

And before I was born, the USA had already fought 145 wars, most of them undeclared wars, and then I recall that the USA has been at war ever since I was born, and that the USA, where people know only how to make money andhow to kill people, piggishly gobbles resources and shows an environmental policy on of “war on terra” and threatens nuclear destruction of the world and is alreayd polluting the entire world with depleted uranium.

So that the turtle brought to mind the pressing need to dismantle the American empire before the USA destroys all life on earth. Which it probably will– and soon.

 Should not the turtle be depressed?

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Isn’t he something?

I’m lucky to keep being educated by people who are kind & smart and I’m making money out of them….

Old Blog Entry 2

May 13, 2005

I have 3 students now~

I can’t believe this kind of good thing will happen to me.

After posting my ad for teaching Mandarin on www.craigslist.org for almost 3 weeks, now I’ve got 3 students. Practically, all my Monday through Friday afternoon schedule are booked in June.

Isn’t that wonderful?

At least, I won’t be BORED after graduation and be able to make some U.S. cash in June.(if it goes well, I can make about $1,000 in June, just enough to survive here…). Then I can focus on finding a full-time job b/4 I have to return to Taiwan to finalize my divorce after July 5th.

The fotuneteller was right. Forget about public schools. I’ll be better off serving in private business. My goal right now is to find a full-time job teaching either ESL or Mandarin anywhere in CA. (if I can find one). Or as my career counselor advised me before, I should try to find a teaching position in some big companies (such as Google, Microsoft, GM– whatever Co. who has the close business relationship with China now…). They must have the education center which provide some Mandarin classes for the employee working in China.

Repost my old blog entry on March 09, 2005

Chinese curriculum & landlord

2 things interesting today.

1. I followed my classmate Jen to her CHINESE 101 class to see how horrible this class is presented. The instrutor is an American male today, speaks pretty good Mandarin, very knowledgable in Chinese (I poped out 2 tricky questions to test him… Ha Ha), got his Chinese education done in Taiwan, taught in an OK way in class, sometimes quite entertaining. But, some problems observed:

• Too much new vocabulary and new sentence patterns in 50-mins class time. 
• Too less drills/practices/activities among students.
• Students are lack of enthusiasm to learn.

When I heard my classmates complained about how much they have been suffering from the Chinese class they’re currently taking, I had somehow suspicion on what they’ve described. Not until had I had the close obervation today, I was not suprised at all. (They told me another teacher, Miss Wong, is the total bi-o-tch for teaching them on Tue. and Thurs, who is also from Taiwan…)

Why can’t those teachers I met at the university and city college use a more fun,diverse and inspiring way to teach students in class? Why do they have to murder all the fun and joy learning a new foreign language? Especially Chinese, it supposed to be fun learning the culture and interesting sotries behind those ”tricky” characters… I wonder how many of my poor fellow classmates will continue taking advanced Chinese class next semester, or just hate it forever~

I began to have the idea of revolting the boring way of teaching Chinese outside of China.

Secondly, I know I’ve never liked anyone I knew from Mainland China. After being seperated for 56 years, Mainland Chinese and Taiwanese have lived in totally different political & economical backgrounds, we’d never be the same people anymore ( I think the same analogy applies to English/Americans/Canadians).

My Chinese landlord (immigated from north-eastern China, 山東 Shan-Dong Province 13 years ago) threw away my housemate’s heater without even thinking about inform him first. He blamed him as the “evil young man” living in the house, who uses the old-fashioned heater to not only try to burn down his house and cause the blackout in the house all the time. He also accused him as the sole reason for the increasing electricity bill for the past 3 months.

Is there any RESPECT in his dictionary or crazy mind?

I’ve tried my best to talk him into not doing so. No use. I could only translate what he meant to my Japanese housemate after he returned from school. Of course, you know how VERY angry he turned to be now …

Anyway, my poor housemate was calling his another Chinese friend over to translate for him so that those 2 people can have a huge fight later and settle part of the problem down.

I don’t think I’ll have a peaceful night. The on-line fortuneteller was right. This will be a very chotic year for me. What’s wrong with all those stars in the sky? Couldn’t they just orbit in the right tracks?