The English Corner

Something big is going on at the English Corner on Friday nights! It was such a treat to be able to meet some Chinese students and communicate in English. The corner is less than 5 minutes walk from our apartment -- an unexpected blessing! There were about 90 there, a majority of them university students, and all levels of English. We were surprised by how serious they were at working on their English, and how respectful they were of each other and of us "foreigners." They all seemed so happy to be there.

The evening started with singing -- songs with simple words, like I've Got Peace Like a River. We started singing a capella because there were no musicians, and then this  professor of music at the university who happened to be there went to the piano and was definitely a concert pianist, so that was fun. 

Next there was an English pronunciation exercise. Everyone got into pairs to practice, and we foreigners walked around and sat with a few pairs to coach them. I sat with a group of about six, and we had fun with sentences like "I carried a load down the road," and word pairs like wash / watch, mash / match... They were frustrated with the difficulty of the sounds, but so cute and loved practicing:)

Then an English speaker gave a talk about peer pressure. He got the students involved by lining 10 of them up in the middle of the room, then reading statements where they had to make a choice. One of the most interesting... Would you rather be president of Lenovo or Premier of China? Don't know if it was a question of peer pressure or not, but all 10 lined up under Lenovo. 

He ended his talk with two verses from Proverbs about being wise, and everyone read them and listened carefully.

The evening ended with discussion groups. There were 9 foreigners there, so we each lead a group of about 10. My group was all university students. One of them spoke quite well, but the others still need a lot of speaking practice. We had five or six discussion questions about peer pressure, and I couldn't believe how they all participated, even the ones with very little English. All kinds of discussion about topics like living with roommates,  smoking, and being an example. They were all so sweet to me. They wanted to know all about what I'm  doing here and whether I like it here. When we finished, they wanted a group picture. They grabbed a guy from another group, and he took pictures of our group with just about everyone's phone. Can't wait to see these faces again next Friday:)