Among the lessons I've learned are:
-Don't teach a subject like passive- vs. active-voice unless you really, really, have a handle on it your own self.
-Prepare more material than you think you'll need. Odds are good you won't get through even your original intended lesson. But if you do, it sure sucks to stand up in front of the class, looking back at a half dozen eager faces going, "Ahem... so... uh... yeah. Who likes words?!?"
-Chinese early-twentysomethings don't give a turd about Lance Armstrong and the rest of the Tour de France. So, you know, like most of the world. They're just a whole lot better shielded from Lance's ego here. Using an article about Lance's tweets to now former-teammate Alberto Contador as a teaching tool proved interesting only because it was written in English. Ahh, if only we could all live in a world where Lance, and his insistence that no one in the world was aware of cancer before him, was invisible to us.
-Given the opportunity to choose our own names in another language, how many would be just a word that kinda sounds like our own name (Shang = Sean?), and how many would be well thought-out. Of course, many of my students and our local friends are Lilys and Lucys (soundalikes for Li and Liu), but there are also lots of Summers and Sunnys (both certainly happy names), Davids and Johns and Thomases (usual fare), Emmas and Christines (popular sometimes for their associations with their famous eponyms) and a collection of flowers (Daisys, Jasmines, Blossoms). Then there is Merlyn, who chose his name out of his love of books, reading, knowledge, and all things wizardly. And Ocean, whose Chinese name contains a character that means, "the Sea," but who also acknowledges oceans as sources of both abundant life and abundant mystery. And Phoebe, the young man who--yes, young man, not lady. It's doubtful he's a fan of "Friends"; more likely, he's drawing upon Greek mythology and Phoebus for his inspiration. My favorite name, however, is a no-contest: "Devil-May-Cry". DMC fancies himself a troublemaker. He got it almost right. Come a time, though, I may urge him to go with Margaret's suggestion of "Loki."
I guess it's too late to change my name to "Han Solo" or "The Dude". Maybe "The Ice Planet of Hoth" is still available.
Hmm.
Given a choice, what name would you choose?
