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norwalkesl · Joined: 22 Oct 2009 Posts: 366 Location: Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-China

I am looking to make up some activities for my classes and want to know from other more experienced teachers what the average Senior HS student in China knows about. These students spend most of their time in school so they do not develop many outside interests, have not been anywhere or experienced much of anything.

Some subjects I have in my list are:

-NBA
-Yao Ming
-Kobe
-(Lebron) James
-Computer Games
-QQ
-Cell phones/mp3's
-Cooking in their dorm rooms

I am seeking to grade my subject matter so that I am talking about topics that 16-19 yo Chinese students can relate to.

Suggestions?

Voldermort · Joined: 14 Apr 2004 Posts: 597

Maybe you can ask them if they can survive on only 5RMB a day? Then extend this topic to include if eating "cheap" food is enough to surfice? Then go on to discuss if the elderdly, in China, could live on 150 yuan each month (without offspring's support) then bring in the topic of senile foreigners moving into their country, preaching the 'Farmer' lifestyle, everyday asking for his 'subordinates' for help, crying when complaints arrive and in general being a complete 'Dunno Im a China Knowitall'.

If that fails you could always learn to play the 'guitar'!

MisterButtkins · Joined: 03 Oct 2009 Posts: 1221

The movie "Titanic" is really popular with the girls here. Also, a lot of them like Brad Pitt, but they might not know his English name, so you may want to bring a picture. Jet Li (Li Lianjie) and Jackie Chan (Cheng Long) are both household names, so you can talk about them. You can also ask the kids about what music they like.

norwalkesl · Joined: 22 Oct 2009 Posts: 366 Location: Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-China

XiGua · Joined: 13 Dec 2009 Posts: 91 Location: Hunan

norwalkesl · Joined: 22 Oct 2009 Posts: 366 Location: Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-China

Look up the meaning of "many"...

XiGua · Joined: 13 Dec 2009 Posts: 91 Location: Hunan

"many" isn't a defined number. I don't know what your point is but my statement still stands. They have many interests. Guess you still haven't gotten to know many of them.

If you want them to have 200 interests then i'm sure you don't even have that many, I probably don't either.

randyj · Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 10:55 pm Post subject:

There's not much students at this age do not understand. For example, Friday in a second-year high school class a student was miming （哑剧）to his classmates. One attractive girl responded to his gestures, but could not quite grasp the entire meaning. In frustration, he innocently blurted, "You know what I want!" The entire class of about fifty erupted in laughter.

Halapo · Joined: 05 Sep 2009 Posts: 140 Location: Jiangsu, China

What is with the crying from both FT camps...
I had some good debates with these:

"Women should not be soldiers"
"Is bottled juice as good as fresh juice?" (nutrition)
"Shanghai should be the new capital of China because..." ( they really hated this one at first, so I made it "Why should Beijing be the capital" ( the capital of china has moved a bunch of times in 5000 years).
"Build cities up, not out" Urban sprawl & the environment
"Canadian Seal hunting, Australian Koala overpopulation, Japanese whaling ships and Panda/Tiger poachers"

I would remind you, they are fairly smart, and they talk about these things in their Chinese current event / sociology class. They just don't know the English words.

I would also remind you, even their Chinese teacher have trouble getting them to be interested in anything. When I sit around with the other teachers at lunch, and lament how they didn't like a class I spent a week getting ready, they just laugh and tell me, "they don't like anything, they don't want to learn anything, they just want to get through the day without being scolded and get their homework done, and pass the entry exam".

And these are not just the English teachers, these are history, music and science teachers too. I also feel that these teachers have a passion for teaching ( as most of them speak English very well and yet teach other subjects ). They resent that they must "mass teach".

Oh, I had a who class go to this one little question "Who is your favorite teacher?" I was just asking for fun to, it wasn't even the warm up. But they started debating the merits of each teacher, so I told them I wanted to know too, please speak in English. Just promise not them you wont tell the other teachers and keep that promise. They write reviews to the head master anyway, but still, trust building and all...