Class

Imagine you are sitting in your college class one day when your teacher asks "Who is planning to take the final exam?"  Now imagine that class is a foreign language class, and the question was not asked in English, causing you to question whether you actually understood the teacher at all.  What? Why would the teacher ask who is going to take the final?  Doesn't everyone take it?

 

Apparently not if it's a Chinese language class in China.  Turns out since I'm simply taking these classes for my own benefit (and to pass the language exam I will have next year in the U.S.), there is no compelling reason for me to take the exam.  In fact, the teachers are encouraging us to NOT take the exam if you don't need to.  Strange.

 

So I will not be taking any exams this semester.  What a great way to study!  Study for myself and not for a test.

 

The nice thing about not taking the finals is that I have an entire extra week off for the winter break.  Classes will run through December 31 (with no days off for Christmas...), the first and second will be off for the holiday, and then exams will run the following week.  But I will simply be done on the 31st.  And when do classes start up again, you ask?  March.  Yes, I literally have two months off.  How sweet is that?! 

 

Before you all start thinking that the Chinese have such an easy educational system, though, let me explain.  In the U.S. schools usually have 2 (or 3) weeks off for Christmas/winter, and maybe 10 weeks for the summer.  In China, the winter and the summer breaks are both 6 weeks long.  So after I start classes in March, I will be in class straight through until July (with exams, which I won't take, finishing around the 15th of July).  So it's just a different schedule, not necessarily an easier one.

 

So enough about the academic schedule.  What about my classes themselves?  I have had several very entertaining classes recently.  In fact, I can say that I'm enjoying my Chinese classes now more than ever.  We've gotten comfortable with the teachers, and the students who don't really care are no longer coming.  Which does mean that my class of 15-20 is often only a class of 5-8 now, but I'm okay with that.  In fact, Friday we only had four.  Just more chance to practice and learn! 

 

In my listening class the other day, we had an incredibly entertaining conversation about zoos.  Our teacher is approximately my age, still a masters student here, and she was saying that all zoos are essentially the same.  So my Czech friend and I tried explaining to her how zoos in different countries can actually be incredibly different.  We were hysterical over the truth of dog petting zoos in China and our experiences of goats eating our maps in the petting zoos elsewhere.  But I think the most hilarious was when my Czech friend didn't know how to say "ape" so she simply explained what she meant... "almost-a-person monkey."

 

In my reading class recently, we learned that there actually is grammar in Chinese.  I've spent four years studying Chinese already, but it wasn't until last week that any of my teachers actually admitted that there is grammar and a set of structures to the language.  It really would have been nice, though, for my first few teachers to have explained such things.  They could have used English to help us understand!  It's not easy to learn Chinese grammar using only the Chinese language to explain it. 

 

My speaking class is the "worst" of my classes, in the sense that our teacher doesn't actually understand that he should have us speak in class.  But now that we usually start the class with only me and the Czech girl there, it's getting better.  And we had fun learning all sorts of computer terms the other day.  Again, a little bit difficult, since some of the terms I don't even understand if I hear them in English!

 

Finally, my jingdu class is great.  (Jingdu is a term for critical reading, but the class functions as the basic grammar class.  This is the class we have most often, and the jingdu teacher is our primary teacher.)  Last week, our teacher was telling us that since she has been teaching Chinese to foreigners for 12 years, her Chinese has deteriorated.  I could totally relate!  (What can I say, my English has... lowered.)  Her stories about hanging out with her friends and using very basic Chinese were hilarious and all too familiar.  But the even more hilarious story she told us a week ago was about how she had gone out the night before with her friend and had 6 beers, without eating anything except one peanut.  It's not every teacher who will admit to her class that she still has a hangover!  But we were sympathetic... we told her we should just end class early. :)