English, Fun & Living in HK, Japan and Taiwan

Sometimes, our students make us laugh, sometimes they make us cry!

But one frustrated teacher went so far as to write:

It reads:

Description: I charge 1000nt per hour, and I am only available from 8 to 10 am on a Wednesday or Friday. You should have some actual kind of desire to learn and improve your English. I am not looking for a student who intends to not study, or who signs on a whim, or to use me as childcare, to cancel lessons when they are busy, or who just wants to argue with a foreigner. You must sign up for the whole year. Any cancelled lessons on your behalf will be charged at double rate. Any children you bring with you to the lesson cost 2000nt extra. We study exclusively in your home, where I will expect a fried breakfast. Sausages are best for the English. …To read the rest.

Adult students can be a real challenge if you find them. They are easy to motivate in some ways, but very difficult to direct. They have definite ideas about what they want teachers to do for them, even though they don’t necessarily want to take that advice.

One of my students claimed to be a really conscientious guy. He was a businessman who seemed to have an awful lot of free time. He always wanted me to correct his grammar and help him on his speaking. As a cooperative teacher, I provided that and more. In the end, he was unwilling to follow through on improvements he wanted to make, uncooperative on my own suggestions, and didn’t like my providing him with reading matter, feedback or activities. In the end, this rude fellow texted me with a message saying he didn’t want to continue class after he was ill-mannered enough to leave me waiting for him for an hour or more.

However, there are many great adult students… if you’re careful enough to select them, demanding enough to make sure they show progress, and charge enough to ward off the time-wasters…

Screaming! Tantrums! Arguments!  Is this what happens to you when you try to get your kids to do their homework?  It certainly happens to some of my students when they go home. So perhaps there are some things we can do to help kids do THEIR homework.

Don’t fight – Don’t fight with them.  Don’t turn the whole affair into a power struggle, because you will have to do this every time.  Instead, encourage them to do homework.  Sit yourself down with the books open and promise to help them as much as you can.  Setting an example can be more effective than any words.  Why not do some of your work at the same time?

Encourage Your Kids – Encourage them with kind words and lots of questions that are easy to answer.  Help them with the answers too, if they have problems.  If they can’t answer, maybe they don’t understand the question or they have forgotten. Confidence in doing homework is something children really need.

Take Breaks – Remember their concentration on one task is not the same as yours, they have a very short attention span (except for video-games!).  So take lots of breaks to help them.  But don’t let them take too long a break,  5 minutes is fine.

So, if you have tried other ways and failed, try some of these suggestions.  One of them just might!                                   Kenneth

This interesting story caught my eyes this summer when I read in the Taipei Times when it was published…

Most teachers use materials banned by MOE, poll shows

Nearly 70 percent of junior high school students said they have been taught with alternate “reference” books in class despite a ban on such publications, a recent poll showed.

“This result indicates abnormalities in our education system, as ‘credentialism’ is still hurting Taiwan’s junior high students,” Shih Ying, chairman of the Humanistic Education Foundation, told a press conference yesterday.

It boggles the mind: what the heck are ‘unauthorized’ textbooks? What is credentialism and how does it relate to this story? From what I’ve seen of school textbooks, schools rely on particularly few textbooks for outside reading, and too many for classwork.

I’ve been following Asus since the launch of their Asus EEE PC 700 in 2007. The breadth and innovation of the company’s products underlines the ambitions of this company to reshape the PC (sans Apple) world by packaging the PC in a variety of new forms: UMPC, SETBOX style, Asus Radio, Video Gaming, …

While the video is in Chinese, you will get to see some great gadgets in the video: first up, of course, is the EBox. There isn’t the same level of interest in this device, but I believe it has a number of advantages that will see this become an extremely popular choice for all sorts of un (and under-) served markets: kids computing, older folks, family computing, simpler networking, classrooms, etc..

The price, the size, and the low power consumption make this a VERY attractive computer for the next generation of household computers. You could put one in EVERY classroom for a relatively inexpensive solution if you need a small language classroom with five or six of these machines; networked together, they’d be quite a cool and effective computer-skills teaching classroom.

Also, running Linux would make many aspects of maintenance relatively simple. Replacement would be the option in cases where the hard drive died, though! But at its current price, that might quite affordable!

Have you considered using an EBOX for your classroom?

My Island – Chocolate Island

by Judy

Part 1. The Early History.

Part 2. The Recent History.

Famous Places In Taiwan: Yeliou

by Gillian

What is my island? Where is it?

by June

What is my island? Where is it?

by Wendy

Famous Place In Taiwan: Taipei 101

by Johnny

The Dog Island

by Coco

These compositions were written and illustrated by students who are studying Parade V. Students were asked to write about places from their own experience. Both teachers think the students did a fantastic job!

[audio:http://www.nozkidz.com/wp-content/audio/hungry_monster.mp3]

This is the story of the Very Hungry Monster.

Hungry Monster’s name is Andy.
Andy is very hungry.
He can eat apples, bananas, and many kinds of food.

On Monday, he ate one piece of bread.
But he was still hungry.

On Tuesday, he ate two pieces of banana.
But he was still hungry.

On Wednesday, he ate three hot dogs.
But he was still hungry.

On Thursday, he ate four strawberries.
But he was still hungry.

On Friday, he ate five elephants.
But he was still hungry.

On Saturday, he ate six apples.
But he was very big.

He is big. His stomach bursts out!

This story was created by a student based upon the “Hungry Caterpillar” and illustrated with his own drawings and some help from the teacher. It highlights a lot of creativity on the student’s part, and originality in the way he handled the ending!