Author Archives: John

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 took the 7:55 plane from Beijing to Changsha, and arrived in Changsha shortly after ten. The ride to Xiangtan took about an hour, and when I arrived it was nearly time for lunch. After lunch Hu Laoshi had a Q & A session at the Foreign Languages School (外语学院). The students there were excited […]