Chinese classes

Last month we wrote about a trip to the desert with the foreign students of Ningxia University. But what we forgot to mention was that these lovely guys are our fellow students. We are lucky enough to have the time and opportunity to follow the Chinese lessons for full time students. In our class of Chinese Made Easier you can, besides the two crazy Norwegians, find two diligent students from Romania and five nice people from the US. Unfortunately, we can only follow 9 out of 15 hours a week, but we still feel that we manage to keep up with their pace of learning. At least that’s the current situation. Since we rarely have the time to study at home, I guess that they will lose us at one point. But luckily for us, the teacher, Diao Laoshi, is very skilled and he takes good care of us. Hopefully we are good enough to pass our Chinese exam January 5th.

The Chinese language is very different from the languages we know and have been taught; Norwegian, English, German, French and Russian. So the characters are very difficult to learn, and we kind of gave them up. We focus more on the oral part of Chinese so we can communicate with people when we are travelling on our own in the Winter Holiday.

We still don’t know if we can follow Chinese lessons next term, because we don’t know our schedule yet. But our fingers are crossed and we hope for a positive message from our schools. Why? Aren’t we busy enough already? Yes, definitely very busy, but learning Chinese is an important part of this exchange, and we really want to learn as much as possible.

Preparatory School for Ethnic Minorities

This school is a preparatory school for those of an ethnic minority whose education has not been sufficient to the demands of the Chinese government.

"Ethnic students whose literacy level is not up to the standard will be enrolled first in preparatory classes to receive one or two years' up-grading training. After passing the qualifying examinations, these students will be transferred to the regular classes. " (China Education and Research Network, www.edu.cn)

So after this one year of preparatory education, they can finally enroll into China's different Universities.

The students at this school chooses a major, for example Liberal Arts or Science and Technology. I have one class from each of these two majors and teach eight lessons a week. Each class consist of about 50 students. In Norway you normally teach classes of 16-24 students, so this is a challenge. But it is also very fun. The students are really eager to learn English. Even though my class of Oral English is just a bonus class for the students, they really put their mind into it and try their best. And, really, that's all I can demand from anyone.

Even though this is a Hui minority region, it doesn't mean that my classes only have Hui people. As a matter of fact, I only teach one Hui. But I have lots of people from all over China. They live in campus, but their hometowns are in Shan Dong, Shan Xi, Sha An Xi, Chong Qing, Ji Lin, Yun Nan, Gui Zhou, Guang Xi, Ning Xia, Hei Long Jiang, Fu Jian, He Nan, Hu Nan, Liao Ning, Si Chuan, Gan Su, Inner Mongolia and Xin Jiang regions, which means 18 of China's 34 in total. So through these classes I meet a lot of China, and it's a great experience.

My classes consist mostly of communicative activities, and different ways of making them speak English. This is partly because these are good ways of promoting oral English, and also because my classes don't have a textbook. So I have to start from scratch every day, finding new and exciting ways of learning English. This is also a challenge, but a very fun challenge. It's definitely worth all the work.