Date/Time: Sunday, 8/28/2016, 10:30am.
Location: Bagel Bagel on West Pensacola Street.
Topic discussed: Background, interests, studies, food, and family.
Cultural and/or linguistic topics you and your partner learned: The
approach to teaching English in China, the differences in food between American
and Chinese cultures, tenses of English verbs.
I
met with Ruyi for a cup of coffee in a crowded café filled with other students seeking a caffeine boost. Having just recently arrived from northern China
where she completed her studies, Ruyi is now pursuing her Master's degree at
FSU. The conversation involved lots of pauses, smiles, and laughs over our ineffectual
attempts at communicating an obscure idea. During our talk, I was struck by how
Ruyi had to constantly and consciously apply rules garnered from textbooks to a
casual, flowing conversation. When the mechanics of her speech became apparent (as
she worked through tenses), she shared that in China, English studies focus primarily
on rules, so students do not get much opportunity to focus on speaking. This echoes a common
thought in texts regarding the practice of teaching English in Asia: paucity of
practice compared to emphasis on rule memorization. Our practice went quite
well though, and I was happy to know more about her. Overall, our conversation made me
distinctly more conscious of the work entailed in formulating speech when students
do not have sufficient practice to make at least some aspects of it automatic.
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