The Monkey Kings 美猴王

I just had my first English corner. English corner at Web means you, the foreign teacher, are holding an hour long seminar. I see it as a great way to get experience in holding a meeting and speaking in front of a group.

I don’t know how successful it was. It is often difficult to tell just what Chinese people are thinking, because so many of them hold their emotions–happy, sad, angry or ecstatic–inside. If I were in Germany or Italy I’d probably know exactly what most of them thought; but most Chinese people don’t want you to think they disapprove of you.

Anyway, my subject was American comedy and I analysed an episode of Seinfeld with them. The show is based on everyday subjects, familiar things; characters that drive the plot, and not the other way round; relationships; common things made funny; repeating words until they become funny. The reason I don’t know if it was successful or not is that there wasn’t a lot of participation and my students didn’t get a lot of the jokes. But they appreciated a lot of the humour when they understood it, and they learned about what makes American comedy funny, so I hit my goal.

Today was the Monkey Kings second day of teaching English at our new company – Web International. When preparing for a lesson you know the maximum number of students attending but that’s about it. It’s only when you walk into the classroom right at the start that you notice how the group dynamics will play out.

I enjoy teaching classes with 1-4 students and ones with a large number of students. It is the classes with 5-10 students that are the most challenging.

Classes with only one or two students are the easiest and most rewarding. The students are engaged and active. There is no way to coast. Plus, students learn the most in these classes. It helps that the classroom is very small so you are physically close together making it tough to ignore the teacher. It is mostly the same with 3 or 4 students but usually in this size group, at least one person will be more shy than the others which provides a bigger challenge to bring him into the group and engage him.

The toughest classes are with 5-10 students. The classroom is bigger so the students aren’t in the action as much. They are tempted to lay back and let the other students be more involved. The problem is everyone thinks that way so everyone waits for the others to respond. Of course, no one does. The classroom also has one large table which acts as a physical barrier much more than in smaller classes.

People, no matter where you go, want to take the path of least resistance. One usually has to motivate themselves through goals and a purpose in order to choose otherwise. Being the class is only an hour long I haven’t so far made time to find out why many people want to learn English. But it is usually obvious when someone is self-motivated and want to be there vs. when they are only there because of someone else.

After my first couple of days of teaching English I have learned a few points that can help me be a better teacher:

1. Always try to use students names as much as possible. “That’s right Jane” seems to receive a much better reaction than just “That’s right.”

2. Use physical movement as much as possible. This is tough to do with small rooms but even a little movement helps to get the brain working better resulting in better retention.

Some of the challenges I still need to overcome more are:

1. Helping the students avoid using Mandarin in class. One possible solution could be to keep track on the board of the number of times each student uses Chinese. At the end of class there could be a small reward or funny punishment for whomever used Chinese the least/most.

2. The first minute sets the tone of the class. I’ve noticed that if things aren’t engaging in the first minute, it can take ¾ of the class to make that up and get everyone engaged again. I need to work on getting everyone engaged from the get go.

English teaching is quite rewarding as you are doing something worthwhile – helping people advance their skills. You have a direct impact on someone’s progress and also witness their growth first hand.

The Monkey Kings have been in Shanghai getting training from our employer, Web International. It seems like a good school with a solid business model, which could explain its relative success and fast growth. We learned all about how the school works, how to teach better and what is expected of us.

We each taught small classes. The key to teaching these classes is that you, the teacher, limit your presence. That means as little talking as possible. Most teachers want to lecture and some just talk to hear themselves talk. “Flip open those beginner textbooks, turn to the page on compound nouns and knock yourselves out.” But we are teaching conversation. You don’t lecture conversation into someone. So your job is to get them talking to each other, using the language that is the goal of the lesson.

And then you need to strike a balance between accuracy and fluency. Accuracy means getting it right. You can correct people when they make a mistake, but is that really how they learn? There is a part of the class where you should correct them. How do you correct them? You learn by thinking about what you are trying to say. Therefore, if you stop people and tell them, they won’t learn, they’ll just parrot you. Instead, stop them and say the same thing back to them. “We went to shopping.” “We went to shopping?” “Um, we went shopping!” But don’t worry too much about errors, because fluency is more important in language learning–speaking fast rather than speaking properly. As long as you can make yourself understood, you are communicating. So most of the class you want to focus on letting them speak to each other, asking each other questions and even correcting each other if they think about it.

Little talking from the teacher means maximum from the students. Making them think about their mistakes makes them remember them. And giving them the goals of the class and then sitting back helps their fluency. Sounds easy, right? We’ll see how well we do.

We ate dinner at 水天堂大酒店, a good restaurant with a fantastic stewed chicken dish we tried. After dinner, we went to 金鸡湖 (translation: Gold Cock Lake), a big, beautiful lake to watch what you might call a lake show.

We walked around where hundreds of others were milling. Suddenly, lights of all different colours illuminated the harbour, some on the surface of the water, some shooting forward in swirling patterns and some rising as far as you could see into the sky. Water shot from spouts on the surface, elevated lights turned the shooting water purple, green and red, fire burst from a wall and heated our faces and I stood by, fascinated.

The water swished back and forth, sometimes creating heart shapes, sometimes arching and weaving, always with grace and wild colours. The lights on the water would change colour and pattern as the water flew and the lights in the sky rose and fell. Across the water, we could see fireworks in one direction, an island of green trees with lights under them in another, and a brightly coloured ferry crossing the lake. Suzhou is great!

On the last weekend of May, the Monkey Kings journeyed to Shanghai to attend the Toastmasters District 85P Spring Conference for Mainland China. With over 200 attendees, the conference provided opportunities to learn how to improve your public speaking, listen to the contestants for the district speech and evaluation contest and network.

Darren LaCroix, the 2001 World Champion of Public Speaking, was the keynote speaker. He provided the audience with an inspiring speech about his rise in public speaking focusing on the fact that when he started out, he was really, REALLY, bad.

The first time he spoke in public was at a comedy club’s open mike night. His aunt was in the audience and video-taped his performance. During his speech, Darren showed us a minute of this painful performance:

“Hi everybody. How are you all doing tonight?”

<Audience applause and cheers>

“Has anyone ever noticed how every other small town in New England takes one little, small historical fact and makes it the greatest event in the world?

“Sorry for my voice fluctuating.

<Darren looking at his index cards sitting on a stool next to him>

“I was doing some research. Places like Lexington, you know, the first revolutionary skirmish happened there with uh, what’s his name? I can’t even remember his name. Obviously he was real famous.”

…And it went on like this.

If this had been a clip on The Simpsons people would have been rolling around laughing because it was so bad. It’s a perfect example of how not to do standup.

But Darren used the clip well. He asked if he could start out at that level and become world champion, what could you do?

Many people see successful people and only see the end result. They think he is lucky. They think he is a natural. They think he was born a great public speaker. They don’t see where he started out and the thousands of hours of practise dedicated to his work.

Darren provided useful tips to improve. While he was talking about public speaking, the tips can be applied to the pursuit of any goal.

• The most important tip is NEVER TURN DOWN STAGETIME.
  Darren actually had a mentor tell him “If you ever turn down stage time, I will never help you again.”
• Don’t fall into the trap of comparing yourself to the best.
  When you’re starting out you should only compare yourself to other people starting out, not Jerry Seinfeld.
• Record yourself.
  Darren showed photos of his closet with hundreds, if not thousands, of VHS tapes, DVDs, CDs and audio cassettes containing all his speeches.
• Be humble.
  You don’t improve if you think you already know everything or aren’t willing to fail.
• Crave feedback.

Darren also talked about the World Championship contest. To prepare he reviewed 20 years of contests to find out what separated 1^st place from 2^nd place.

1. They were Masters of the Pause – A speech is a dialogue, not a monologue. You need to give the audience a chance to react.

2. They weren’t perfect – People go to watch humans, not robots.

3. They had a sparkle in their eye – They were so focused that everything else just faded away.

Before starting a speech Darren asks “What do I want my audience to think about differently when I’m done?” It should be answered in less than 10 words. The thought process in the listener’s mind is the most important part of a speech.

What did Darren want is to think about differently after this speech?

Stage time, stage time, stage time.

PS. His first attempt at stand up comedy can be seen on this YouTube clip starting at 1:10.

One of my favourite things about China is how open people are to meeting newcomers. Last night, Matt and I went to an outdoor barbecue to buy dinner around 10pm. I used to go to this kind of place and buy barbecued sticks of meat and bread (羊肉串儿，馒头，等等) in Beijing all the time; and I was thrilled to find there is one near our apartment.

So we bought food from three of the vendors. Vendors often make the food with their family: the first place we bought from was a husband and wife, the second a mother and son and the third two parents and their daughter. We got into conversations with all of them. The third group was doing the usual “you speak Chinese so well!” that we get from everyone (doesn’t really mean anything, since they’ve been saying that since I started learning), and the daughter said something about Americans being good at Chinese and I said in Chinese “we’re not Americans! Not all white people are American.”

It is so funny to talk to lower and middle class Chinese people. They are curious, which is great, but they don’t know much about the world. I can answer all their first five questions before I hear them: I am from Canada, not the United States or England; I am teaching English in China; yes, of course I like China; yes, of course I like Chinese food; thank you, thank you for the compliment on my Chinese.

Either way, the people we were talking to may have assumed we were American but they quickly learned. I’m glad to be among open minded people who I can teach, when so many people in the world are closed minded and think they know everything.