26th Feb


Lisa was ringing me, "Emma please can you do me a favour? Please can you read my oral essay and help me improve it? I'll email it to you"
Lisa had been away from school taking part in Star test training. Felix and Freda passed and can now sit the exams at the school, Lisa unfortunatly failed last time, so finger and toes were crossed that she would pass tomorrow evening. I checked my mail and was suprised. Lisa's English is good, but writing it down, everything was jumbled up. She had to write about what her training had given her and she had the outline of what to say, but it wasn't put together properly. After sometime I finished re-writing it for her and writing a few lines on another question about, Professional Ethics (thank goodness for Wiki!) Lisa rang again "Wow, that's alot. Thank you, thank you so much my lovely sister" I smiled, "Anytime Lisa!"



27th Feb


When Felix and Freda had their training, the Professor asked the question of 'What did you learn from the training?' and that's why Lisa was preparing such an answer. There wasn't any need. They asked her questions like, 'How is your husband? How does he get to work?...' I think just seeing how her vocabulary is. None of that matters anyway, all that matters is she passed :D


28th Feb


Intersting wesbites:
News of China that doesn't always make it into the media and locals reactions: www.chinasmack.com
After reading my blog, Linda (TA at school) decided she was going to write one too to improve her English: www.offexploring.com/linda-shanghai


DD Dragon is a franchise of schools all over China. If you opened a English Training School, you could contact DD and buy their books, equipment, have their training styles etc. Felix did this but has since become more dependant, changing the school to All Young School...
Walking upstairs I gave Lisa a bag of Cherry Tomatoes (her favourite) "Well done Lisa" She hugs me and introduces me to two ladies sat at the desk. There were from DD Dragon and were at All Young to observe my teaching. They were going around all the DD Dragon schools in the Shanghai area, reviewing good and bad ones for their website. Hearing this I became pretty nervous, not wanting to get it wrong for Felix.
I did my 40 minute lesson downstairs in Room 3 just as I usually would, that's all I could do! Freda said because they see many foreigners teach they'd have some advice for me, but unfortuntaly I didn't have time after the lesson to speak to them, as I had to go and prepare on the blackboard for Jellyfish class, so Freda asked for me...
"They said your tempo in the lesson is at a good pace. You have good interaction with the children, you know them well and you can see that you clearly enjoy teaching young children" "And any advice for me?" "Nope" "Really? Oh wow!" "They didn't even guess you'd only been here for 2 months, they thought you'd been teaching for many years" I was so happy. Pleased that my teaching is at a good standard for my children and that Felix will get a good view. Phew! :)


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