Training in Provo #1

Both Anne and Clyde contribute to this blog.

Monday, 08/04/2014

For the first day only, we were offered breakfast before our training began at 8AM.  I think there are about 72 teachers this year.  Maybe 10 are return teachers (who don’t have to show up for this training session again) and a handful are single men or women.  Even though we are not set apart like regular missionaries, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland oversees us.  We are legally forbidden to talk about the Church to anyone with a Chinese passport

Our purposes in the program are to:

1) Provide a professional service by giving Chinese students exposure to native English speakers

2) Promote understanding and establish a presence in China for BYU (and the Church)

3) Expand our cultural experience and awareness of the People’s Republic of China.

Our training runs from 8AM to 5PM every day with some evening activities.  We have a daily 45 minute lesson of survival Chinese.  I’m not sure I (we) will survive.  Their language has four major tones and one neutral one ((kind of like singing).  One is high and flat, two is ascending, three swoops down and then up, four goes down sharply, and the fifth is short and neutral. The same word can have five completely different meanings, depending on which tone you use.

Just because we can speak English, doesn’t necessarily mean we can be good at teaching it.  It might be like saying, “I have teeth, therefore I can do your dental work.”  But English is the international language of competition, and China is all about competition.  They start teaching their children English at age 2.  But even after years of schooling continuing through college, they still have a problem holding conversations in English so that is where we come in. 

Other subjects of the day were lesson plans, travel plans (only one suitcase each!!! - but we can take two if we want to pay $100 per person/per suitcase/per trip), tours we can take while over there, and Chinese History and major philosophies.  That evening we all went to a home in Springville for a “BB-Q” of grilled turkey breast.  A young Chinese man temporally working at a McDonald’s in Orem was our FHE speaker.  He had been an interpreter for a teacher last year.  He said that in China their slang for Americans is “big nose”.

Tuesday, 08/05/2014

In referring to our Chinese students, our program director, Brother Ballentine said, “They learn English by speaking English”.  Today we were given ideas for setting up our first day of class (we teach 2 hour blocks per class) and how to get the students to interact. 

We learned to count in Chinese (but not very well).  They sent in several IT BYU studenst to teach beginners how to do Power Point on our computers.  A health nurse talked about immunizations.  Anne has one left to get when we return to Houston, but several people were surprisingly unprepared.  A former China teacher talked about technology and what we would need over there.  Clyde learned a thing or two.  We returned to Orem to visit with Clyde's sister's family (where we are staying) for a short time before crashing in bed.