Here comes the Grammar Nazi

Ok let me just say that this job is pretty cushy. I mean yes it is sometimes hard to keep the kids interested and it is often boring to sit around doing nothing for a good portion of the day. But on the other hand a lot of the classes require only basic english knowledge and a lot of the lessons write themselves.

So with the new teacher's arrival I was asked to start teaching the two novice teachers things like basic patterns and pronouciation etc. That was fine, we followed the books the structures were easy....today it got turned up a notch or 10. Now I'm to teach all the teachers for 1 hours a week and this time we're doing intermediate grammar...err crap.

Ok let me just tell you my grammar theory is well not great...ok it's borderline horrible. Today I survived by bullshiting and doing basic things but now it seems as this is going to be a regular thing I'm gonna have to start learning proper grammar. Ok so it's not the end of the world, it will do me good to learn this stuff and yes it will probably make me a better teacher....it will also mean that I will have to spend a good portion of my free time at school preparing for this 1 stupid hour a week.

Today we went though verb tenses. Of course without a grammar book I couldn't even name the stupid tenses and of course I left my grammar books at home so I was teaching from Amy's which wasn't particularly great for me.

As far as teaching English to the Taiwanese there are many challenges faced. The first being that the Chinese don't have an alphabet so even to start with that is a major hurdle to overcome.

The one that I face most commonly is the fact the Chinese language doesn't do past tense. They also don't do the whole hers his etc at least they don't have different words for it. At the present many of my levels are dealing with past tense. I'm actually good at past tense so that's cool.

The differences don't stop there. But anyway back to this teaching the teachers thing. I also put my foot in it and mentioned that I had a lot of grammar stuff on computer. This translated to Amy as I want to teach using powerpoint....so now I need to figure out how to set up the projector etc and also prepare powerpoint presentations. Yes yes foot meet mouth.

So now I'm going to skulk off and learn me some grammar...or watch a movie (hey my next teacher class isn't for a week I have heaps of time....)

I've been warned there's another meeting in Taichung this Thursday (so much for once a month), I'm gonna try and get out of it, hell at this stage I may not even be expected to go...at least I hope that is the case!