John Gordon’s English Weblog

I’m sitting in Sculpting in Time (雕刻时光) enjoying the wireless Internet and getting ready for the Cultural Communication Class I’ll be teaching over the May holiday. The more I think about this class the more I am excited by its potential. My wish is that the class can provide an open forum to discuss cultural issues and cultural differences.

My experience is that many students in China vastly overestimate the difference between “being Chinese” and “being American”. In fact, we’ve got more in common than you may think.

The focal point of the class will be the following five statements:

• we live in a multicultural world
• understanding cultural communication can help you succeed
• many students feel that culture, not language, is the primary barrier to communication
• it is possible to communicate effectively in multicultural environments
• the key is to learn about other cultures and how cross-cultural communication works

(more…)

This weekend I had a somewhat embarrassing and in retrospect hilarious experience. A fellow from Liaoning TV asked me to go on a show called 生长 and talk about songs students like to listen to on campus. They also wanted me to sing a Chinese song and an English song. I’m terrified of singing in front of people, but I agreed to do it because I don’t like not doing things just because I’m afraid.

For the Chinese song I chose Xue Cun’s 星期三的第二堂客, which I find light and funny, and for the English song I chose Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl, because I think it’s a fun song that every generation since the sixties has discovered and claimed as its own. Also, both songs are pretty easy to sing.
When I got to the recording studio, however, I discovered that the music they had was different from what I’d heard before. The Brown Eyed Girl music was a horrid Muzac version that was barely recognizable, and the Xue Cun song was set to a keyboard instead of a guitar. I’m musically-disadvantaged, and I quickly realized that I wouldn’t be able to adjust to either of them. In the end, I worked with the keyboardist to struggle through the Xue Cun tune. My version was both out of tune and off beat, and halfway through I forgot the words. For the Van Morrison song I substituted the Wesleyan Fight Song. Yes, the Wesleyan Fight Song.

The conversation part was fun, though, and, in retrospect, I’m glad I had the chance to share my school spirit.

In other news, Catherine and I successfully completed our move to the new apartment yesterday. We’ve still got a lot of unpacking to do, and it feels strange “going home” to a new place, but we’re so excited about the new home.

Maybe I’ll post pictures…

Hu Laoshi and I had a lecture last night at 北京工商大学 out in 良乡. It was a long way away! The students were great though, and I’m sure we’ll be back. We may have a 四级 course starting out there soon.

We’re moving to our new apartment tomorrow, so we’re up late packing. I had no idea we had so much stuff until we took it all out to start packing. Now we don’t have enough boxes!

Hope we don’t lose anything on the way over to the new place.

This is the second article in a series on ten different ways that you can improve your English. It took longer than the week I promised!

The second tip in our series is “Set Specific Goals”. Once you know why you want to learn English, you can start thinking about where specifically you want to be with your English.

In this tip we’ll talk about two important aspects of setting specific goals.

1) Knowing where you are now
2) Setting your goals

Knowing where you are

In order to set realistic goals for where you want to be, it’s important to find out where your English level currently stands. I remember hearing a of a quote that went something like this: “If you don’t know where you are on the map, you won’t know whether to turn left or right when you walk out the door in the morning.”

There are several different ways to gain an understanding of your current English level:

One way is to do your best to carry out an honest personal assessment of your own English level. Write down your answers the following questions:

• How easily am I able to communicate with people in spoken English?
What type of English materials are easy for me to read (newspapers, magazines, books, textbooks)? Which materials are more difficult?
• How much of an English movie can I understand without Chinese subtitles? Without English subtitles?!
• Do I feel comfortable writing in English? How easily can I write a letter? An email? An essay?

Another way to get an idea of your level is to take an English exam such as the IELTS. Doing so can show you where you stand relative to other English learners, and give you a yardstick to measure against as you improve in the future.

Setting your goals

Your specific goals are directly related to your reasons for studying English. Here are some examples of long-term goals.

Writing down your goals can help you focus on them, and will encourage you to work harder to reach them. Share your goals with your friends, and they can support you to work towards them.

Up next… Find a Partner.

As part of our English Salon program at local universities, I gave a talk and had a discussion with students at Bei Hang University about Cross-Cultural Communication.

The students were great, and very willing to participate. The format of the talk was similar to the talk I gave at school on Saturday, but we had more time to get a little deeper.

Each session of the ten-class course I’m teaching over the May holiday will focus on a different area of culture (campus life, family life, the workplace, etc.), and each class will include the following basic parts:

• A review of the cultural background in the US and UK
• A review of the necessary vocabulary
• A discussion of differences between China and the US/UK
• A discussion of how to deal with some specific cultural situations

I spoke for an hour today at school about the language of intercultural communication. About fifty or so students came, which was exciting and a bit surprising.

The lecture was a sort of an introduction to the 英语交际文化速成 I’ll be teaching over the May holiday. Today’s session covered two main points. First, we talked about how to define culture and language, and how the two relate. Then we moved on to a specific communication situation: how to greet someone.

The class will follow this basic format, but should be more interactive. We’ll talk about the broad questions, and do an introduction to various aspects of American and British culture, and then we’ll focus on specific situations and the language that arises from them.

While I’ve referred to it peripherally, I haven’t specifically mentioned the fact that I’ve been hosting an evening radio show called English Evening (英语之夜) on China Business Radio (中国人民广播电台经济之声). It’s broadcast every evening from 9-10 pm. In Beijing, you can listen to it on 96.6FM, and it’s also available in other cities across China. If you can’t get it via radio, you can also listen to the last two weeks’ programs online here.

I started doing the show about three weeks ago with Liu Feifei, who also does programs with CCTV. We worked well together and had a great time, but she had to leave the show last week because her other commitments keep her too busy. The new co-host is a woman named Cynthia, who is back in China after many years in Canada. She does a great job and we have fun working together.

If you’re interested, listen to the show and let us know what you think. You can send us email at englishevening - at - cnr - dot - cn, or leave a comment on this blog. Currently, the format of the show is us talking about various current events, interspersed with popular music and some special features.

I’m on the plane now, and will post this when I get home.

I’m in an aisle seat, but looking out the window made me remember how much I love flying, especially watching the cars, roads, fields and buildings get smaller and smaller as the plane heads towards cruising altitude. Once up in the air, I’m transfixed by the clouds. I like to imagine that I’m looking at another world, full of white mountains.

Of course, now I can get the same view (minus the clouds) from Google Maps, but it’s not the same.

The earth never ceases to amaze me.