The first semester I had a freshman class of oral English.  There were seventy of them and they became my favorite class even though they could barely speak any English.  Nor could I understand much of what they spoke.  They came to understand me quite well as the semester progressed.

There were about a dozen boys in the freshman class.  They were all sitting on the back row the first day.  Each day thereafter they were seated a little further toward the front.  After a few weeks I came into the class and they were on the front row.  They stood up and began to clap and shout, “Larry, Larry, Larry!.”  They were my pals now.  When we took the mid-class, ten minute break, they would crowd around me in the hall, some putting their arms around me, some patting me on the face, all very affectionate.  If they saw me on campus, they would come running and hug me.

Two came to our apartment one Saturday for some help with an English book.  One, Patrick, ask me if I noticed the eyes of the other one.  I hadn’t but I looked.  His eyes were squinting and blinking.  Patrick said, “He wanted eyes like you.  He had an operation.”

I did what they asked me to do to help them improve their English.

My fifth class was in the evening and was made up of older working  professionals.  I thought they wanted to improve their English, but found out later that the class cred would enhance their employment status.  So when they found out I would give them no assignments, no tests, and a good grade I did not see many of them again.  One of them became a good friend and has continued to have contact with me over the years since.

After a few weeks it was apparent the students needed more English speaking skills before they could do much about the writing of English.  They needed to get English into their minds so they could start thinking with it, and stop trying to translate it.  I urged them to take every opportunity to listen to English being spoken.

I began showing English language films.  The students loved them.  One of the monitors would arrange for them.  There were many available in their media center.  I told them to read things, books and stories of interest to them that were in English.  I made it clear to them that it was alright if we just visited in and out of class on topics of interest to them.  When good weather came in the spring I took them outside to sit in a large gazebo amid the beautiful flowers that had blossomed, and the trees that were leafing out.

They had English texts they used in other classes.  The texts were a great deal about the structure and rules of grammar. The students could recite the rules and formal definitions about the language.  They just couldn’t understand what they could recite, nor could I tell them.  I knew nothing about all of that.  What I could do was speak, read, write, and understand very well the English language just like they could Chinese.  Why could we all do that with our respective languages?  It’s obvious: we were raised with it.

I had five classes altogether. Three were third year English majors who were also intending to become secondary school teachers. I met with these classes twice a week for two hours and for the whole year. I was supposed to be teaching them to be good writers of English. I did not give them assignments, nor exams, nor grades. I asked them to ask me things they wanted to know, or know how to do. I gave them suggestions of what to write about, if they wanted. A few at first, and then more as we went along, began to write about things of personal importance.

Many of these became very touching and moving writings. One student wrote of her father riding a bicycle a long distance each week in good and bad weather to bring her food and warm clothing at the school she was attending. Many of the rural students stayed at the school and only went home on holidays. This was the case for many elementary and secondary students.

I would read and comment in writing on their writings. I said little about the form and more about the sense of how they wrote. A lot didn’t make sense at first, but did more in time. A company had asked the department chairman to translate an advertisement into English from Chinese. The chairman had asked the best English student, who happened to be one of my students, to do the translating. After she did the translation, she asked me to look it over. It was hard to understand what it was saying. I talked with her at length about what it was trying to say without getting it very clear. I took it home and Mimi and I both tried to make it make more sense. We never could make it clear and sensible.

I began every class by asking if there were any questions. There were rarely any to begin with. The students would look down and not respond. One student followed me out of class one day and asked if she could talk to me. We sat down on a two-foot wall surrounding a planting of flowers and bushes. She said, “Larry, I want to tell you how to teach in China. You see, we have a duck feeding system here. If a duck raises it’s head, it gets shot. So ducks won’t raise their heads.” I understood immediately what she was saying. I sad to her, “But I’m not Chinese. I’m an American. I came to teach like an American or what’s the point of me coming to China?”

This student turned out not to be a registered English major student at all. She was an art graduate working on a graduate degree. But, she wanted to improve her English. She had brought a little stool and sat between the regular rows of desks. I hadn’t really noticed her being different at all. She asked if she could stay “to improve her English?” I said she could.

Her English name was Carrie. Carrie became like a daughter to us. When she received her masters degree we were the only ones to attend her art presentation which consisted of a room full of paintings, one of which she presented to us as a gift. When I told my classes about a bike riding accident I had, she followed me out of the building to tell me how older men rode bikes in China, and of how her father would not let her ride a bike among other riders on the street until she could ride very slowly without tipping over. She was very solicitous of me. Carrie went on to get a Ph. D. in art from China’s second most prestigious university.

I officially retired from BYU on August, 31, 1998.  On the 26th however I was standing before a class of Chinese students at Shandong Teachers’s University in Jinan, China.  Mimi and I would be in China till June, 29th 1999.

We went to China as members of a group of sixty being sent by the Kennedy Center at BYU which had been sending teachers to China to teach English for over ten years.

We left Utah by flying to Los Angeles, then to Japan where we stayed over night, then to Beijing.  There we were met by a group of representatives from Jinan who took us aboard a train and on to Jinan.  We were fascinated with the country we passed through going to Jinan.  It was very Chinese.

The day after arriving in Jinan we were visited, and welcomed, by the dean of the Foreign Language Department, a man, and the Secretary of the Communist Party, a women.  When they were leaving the dean told me, “I like your style.”  I kept remembering what he had said when I later learned I was being reported on to him by students in each of my classes who were called Monitors.  They met weekly with him.  Mimi had some monitors as well.

The monitors were also members of the communist party, and typically the only students to be so allowed.  It was considered a privilege.  One of them, a girl, Rachel, told me in class one day, eight months later, “Larry, you have destroyed everything we have been taught about you!”  You mean, “This foreign devil?” I said.  “Yes, you foreign devil.  We just love you!”

Yes, I thought the powers that be might not like my style of teaching, which was to emphasize student thinking and encourage students to ask questions.  So I was surprised at the end of the year when I was named the “Teacher of the Year” in the Foreign Language Department at a faculty banquet.  Mimi was also named the teacher of the year in the English department.   Another surprise at the banquet was the Chinese professor who taught communism telling me “he would have liked to have had a class from me.”   He said also, “The students really like you.”  The students had told me they didn’t like him.  In fact, “they hated him,” they had said.   “Thank you for telling me that,” I said to him, “ I really like your students, in fact I love them.  What wonderful young people they are.  What great things they can do for China. I’m so glad I came to China and have had the privilege of being with your students ”

Baseball is for all ages!

Are you a baseball fan?  Most of us are.  There is something about baseball that brings out the best in people.  Maybe we just enjoy being outside.  We like the sights, sounds, and smells of the ball park.  In the United States, we have a seventh-inning stretch. It’s a great time for all the spectators to stand up, stretch their legs, and sing a song together.

The food sold at ball games are concessions.  In the US, we buy a lot of hot dogs, soda, peanuts, popcorn, and cotton candy at baseball games.  What kinds of concessions are sold at baseball games you attend?

I found this great video on YouTube that shows a funny fight at a Korean baseball game.  What do you think is happening here?

First, how about the word FEVER.  A fever is when your body is hotter than usual.  We measure temperature in Fahrenheit, so a normal temperature is 98.7 degrees.  If my child’s body temperature is over 102 degrees, I usually take them to the doctor.

When we measure someone’s body temperature, we say that we “take” their temperature.  So I might say to my child, “Come here, I want to take your temperature.”  And if it is too high, then I say, “You have a fever.”

When my child has a fever, I give them medicine, such as Tylenol or Motrin.  This medicine helps reduce their fever and it helps them to sleep (which is VERY good).

If you have a fever, you might get the “chills.”  This is when your body temperature is rising rapidly, and so you feel very cold.  You might even begin shaking.  We call this “the chills.”

When the fever ends, we say the fever “breaks.”  Often my child’s fever will end suddenly, and so I know their fever has broken.  I am always relieved.

I hope you survived this past winter without having a fever.  What is a high fever in Celsius?  How do you stop a fever?