Thoughts on IUP

IUP truly does give you a lot of freedom. Not only can you do whatever you want with your time outside of class, you can also discuss almost whatever you want in class. For instance, today in danbanke (one-on-one), even though my lesson was on the Chinese education system, we talked about the 2008 presidential elections while still using vocab and grammar structures from the textbook. And even in hebanke, because it's such a small class, there's a lot more room for discussion, too.

I will admit that sometimes the teaching is a little stilted. It really does depend on the teacher, if he/she is flexible enough to pursue the topic at hand while still directing you to use vocab and grammar from the lesson. My danbanke laoshi, Song Fang laoshi, is amazing!! She really tries to cater the lesson to my interests, and listens very patiently while I explain complicated things like how the lesson on being healthy (written in the 80s) is completely wrong about the causes of the common cold. She has also drawn me little diagrams of how I should place my tongue, since I have trouble distinguishing s/sh, z/zh, c/ch sounds. Everyday, I also get a little post-it to remind me of all the words I mispronounced and slowly, but surely, my accent is becoming much more accurate.

Two of my hebanke teachers are also great. My classmates in my reading hebanke and I get along marvelously - I think our teacher, Li Lu laoshi, is pretty amused by our silliness, but our comraderie makes for much less awkward situations. For instance, we were practicing the measure word 一番, which is used for periods of time. Example: 高兴一番 (to be happy for a while)， or 打扮一番 (to get ready - ie. get dressed, put on makeup, etc.). So she asked one of the guys in the class, "if Wen was to 打扮一番, how would she look?" [pause] [everyone (myself included): uncontrollable laughter] my classmate: "If Wen were to 打扮一番, she wouldn't be so ugly." [more uncontrollable laughter]

My classmates in my listening hebanke are much more serene (they're also much older, one is 28 and one is 30), and so we don't laugh quite as much, but we have very lively and mature discussions on topics like feminism, spending habits, parenting, etc. Unfortunately, we're all a little thrown off by the teaching method of one of our teachers, Zhang Yilin laoshi. She is the most regimented of all my teachers in terms of sticking to the textbook. To liven things up, she tries to crack jokes or ask funny questions, but they don't always come across and we end up in awkward silence. When we have difficulty saying something, she is much more eager than our other teachers to finish our sentences, oftentimes not the way we wanted to finish them. Also, she overly stresses the details of the recording (for instance, last week's lesson was about people's reading habits and the future of books, and she kept asking us which person in the recording liked which book). It was really frustrating because details like that don't help us learn vocab/grammar. We're contemplating whether or not to go to her and discuss this, or go to Zhang Kai laoshi, who oversees the teaching here and encourages us to go see him with any concerns, however minor, that we may have. I think we'll wait out this week and see if we have specific complaints/suggestions for her.

Last week, Zhang Kai laoshi called a quick assembly and stressed that we're at IUP to learn 方式 (method) as opposed to 内容 (content). If we can't say what we want to say (content) correctly (method), then we should say something simpler but correctly (ie. choose method over content). So sometimes, class will be boring. I agree that that's a very valid point, so perhaps some of our frustrations stem from saying something we don't really want to say because we don't know how to say what we really mean. In any case, the teaching method in classes is something IUP is definitely working on. Charles Laughlin is the new director and is meeting with all the students this week to get to know them, find out our concerns and suggestions, etc. I met with him today, and that was definitely one of the things he wanted to address.

Otherwise, though, I'm loving IUP. Food around Wudaokou is amazing - my classmates and I are currently working our way to all the restaurants around Qinghua, at least the places our teachers recommended. The teachers are also super approachable outside of class. Last week, two of us played tennis with our teachers. This week, Chinese table will be playing mafia with all of them!