Job Discussion Forums

[tarzaninchina]

This is for college or university level oral classes, but feel free to broaden this thread if you like.

I'm sure you've seen lots of high school students in army fatigues around the country in September and late August. Apparently this was in response to Tiannanmen Square and was implemented to root in (as opposed to rooot out) discipline in the classroom.

All of that said and done, I found a creative way to work this into the classroom. The basic idea was, in the first two classes, to get students to start talking and get a feel of me. Seriously, I just wanted to emphasize that they should listen to me as well as participate. So, I came up with the following military marching chant. Big hit actually.

Standard Chorus:
Sound off
1,2
Sound off,
3,4,1,2,3,4,1,2
3! 4!

Verse:
If what you see is what you get,
We are only young students,
What we really want to be,
Is something more than you can see.

Chorus

Great for vocab (including commanding officer and berate), lets them feel better about having done drills all the time, establishes your authority, and when you combine all of these things: to get them to want to participate. Plus, they'll usually want you to sing (which was the case here). If they're not in unison or don't sing properly, they will find it funny (which they are supposed to for this exercise) if you mock-berate them by fretting your eyebrows, shaking your finger at them, and say 'dededededede'.

[Sinobear]

Uh, if you didn't know...University students must take one year of "political indoctrination" which involves military training. Private colleges are exempt from this...although I think it's a good idea. At my former college, we were partnered with a state-run school. Every September, the partner school's students turned rabid nationalists who hated foreigners (for three months) then became quite friendly once their lessons reached the Norman Bethune/Wilder Penfield "Canadians love and help Chinese" stage.