China

Between staying in Portugal with Niki and returning to Australia, where I'm now, I paid a week's visit to China (Beijing and Guangzhou) where, on behalf of IATEFL's YLTSIG, I co-organised and presented at two teacher conferences. The exciting topics (...) I got to hold forth on were Grammar for Young Learners and Using songs in the English classrooms.

The first Grammar workshop I taught together with a Chinese counterpart, Ma Xin; we did it twice, and later that week repeated the workshop (without Ma Xin) at another conference. The songs workshop I only did in Beijing, although I incorporated songs in the second grammar workshop.

All in all the conferences, organised with national teachers' organisations in China and the British Council (or The cultural and educational section of the British Embassy, as they like to (have to) call themselves) were a resounding success and allowed us to reach out to 1500 primary and secondary English teachers. And, if not anything else, at least I can now say Ni hau, using the appropriate tonal accents ...

It's a wonderfully fascinating language, though, Chinese - and I love listening to its multi-layered tones and incomprehensible flow. I love trying to guess what people are talking about, which is perhaps surprisingly not always that hard when you take note of the situation the speakers are in, their facial and body expressions, and the people they are talking with/to.