Chinese students’ English names: So good to see you again, Rainbow. No, wait, you’re Snow, right?

Because schools like Jianghai College assume (correctly) that no foreign teacher can remember all of those Chinese names, much less pronounce them, every student in an English class adopts an English name.

It might be related to the translation of a family name, or sound cool, or represent a chance to assume an alter-ego.

This practice also produces moments of hilarity, as when I asked my freshmen and sophomores to write down their Chinese and English names, and several started giggling as they struggled to remember the latter. The English names also tend to change, depending on a particular student’s whim, which kind of defeats the purpose.

As of now, my classes include: Shine, Spring, Spirit, Look, Rainbow, July, Summer, Winner, Banana, Luck, Devil, Boa, Sky, Fly, Cinderella and Missing (hope she’s not). Sun Fang is FangFang. Tao Qin is TaoTao. Makes sense. Chen Ting and Hu Ting are, well, Chen Ting and Hu Ting. They’re sticking with what has worked so far.

Just as well. The exercise of having them write their names — Chinese characters first, followed by pinyin and then the English versions — was intended to help me recognize them by their real names this semester. To improve my chances, I brought a camera and took pictures to go with their names.

Naturally, they saw right through the well-intentioned effort. I didn’t need to know much Chinese. The rolled eyes, muttered remarks and grim expressions of many conveyed their annoyance that now I would be better able to keep track of who shows up and who doesn’t.

That, too.

Jay Chou, beer, bribes and other ESL teaching methods

Classroom tactics now tried: 429. At least it seems that way. In my oral English classes for freshmen, sophomores and juniors at Jianghai Polytechnic College — here, the class levels are referred to as grids one, two and three — I’ve settled into a routine of mixing my own ideas, stolen and otherwise, with the “Inside Out” series published specifically for Chinese courses by Macmillan of the U.K.

(It’s a tad outdated with its 1980s pop star references, and uncomfortable for an American teacher with its English idioms. Where I come from, only the Geico gekko “fancies a crisp.”)

Words of warning for fellow ESL novices: So many lesson plans, games and exercises can be found online that it’s easy to become overwhelmed. Don’t get me wrong. My bookmark lists keep growing, but it takes time to organize all of that stuff, let alone to find what you need for future classes. I’m still figuring out how to deal with this issue.

That said, allow me to summarize some of the desperation heaves I’ve hoisted, with occasionally amusing and useful results.

[picapp align=”right” wrap=”false” link=”term=Jay+Chou&iid=3516399″ src=”http://view2.picapp.com/pictures.photo/image/3516399/2008-beijing-pop-music/2008-beijing-pop-music.jpg?size=500&imageId=3516399″ width=”234″ height=”317″ /]Jay Chou: That’s the Anglicized name for Zhou Jiélún, the Chinese pop star who is beginning to show up on American radar. He’ll appear in the upcoming film “The Green Hornet.” To say he’s big in China is to fall short of an accurate description. When I played one of his hits, “Dào Xiang,” on my laptop in more than one class, all of the students — I mean every single one — sang as if it were the Chinese national anthem, revealing the visceral connection they have to an artist who belongs to them.

One of my students introduced “Dào Xiang” to me, and it is catchy. It really stuck in my head. So, I found some English translations, as awkward as you might imagine them, and went to work.

In “Dào Xiang” (稻香), or “Fragrance of Rice,” Jay Chou tells us essentially to stop complaining and appreciate what we have. The Chinese refrain, of course, rhymes:

hái jì de nǐ shuō jiā shì wéi yī de chéng bǎo

suí zhe dào xiāng hé liú jì xù bēn pǎo

wēi wēi xiào xiǎo shí hou de mèng wó zhī dào

bú yào kū ràng yíng huǒ chóng dái zhe nǐ táo pǎo

xiāng jiān de gē yáo yǒng yuǎn de yī kào

huí jiā ba huí dào zuì chū de měi hǎo

The English lyrics, not so much:

I still remember you said your home was the only castle
You continue to run along with the fragrance of rice and the flowing river
Smiling, the dreams when you were young, I know
Don’t cry, let the fireflies lead you to escape
Folk songs in the country, you can always rely on them
Just go home, go back to the happiness at the very start

As a way of getting Chinese students’ attention, it works better than translating American hits into Mandarin, though I’ve done that, too. The web site Chinese-Tools.com provides the lyrics to “Dào Xiang” in Chinese characters and pinyin, with English annotations and a free download of the song itself. Check it out. It’s a good tune.

Bribes: Some ESL manual must advise against going this route, but I was getting desperate to raise the interest level. A bag of treats, i.e., small stacks of Pringles and Oreos, or the Chinese brand equivalents for a couple of yuan apiece, is guaranteed to spice up any sort of language game. Believe me, games must be made part of your ESL arsenal here. Here’s hoping the bribes, er, prizes are tax-deductible.

Props: Yesterday, I cracked my first beer in class, a can of Shanshui with one of those old pop tops that actually comes off. I wanted to give the students an image of the word “hangover” (sù zuì) that would really stick with them.

The weather has turned cold, and many students are sneezing and sniffling. Hence, this teacher’s edition of show-and-tell, featuring a bag of remedies brought from America (NyQuil, Benadryl, Extra Strength Excedrin, Breathe Right nasal strips, Imodium A-D, Icy Hot patches, etc.) And the can of beer. And a brief explanation of America’s pill culture.

I also wanted to find out what the Chinese do for things like a cold, or găn mào. One student: Dress warmly, sleep a lot, drink a lot of water. Another: “Nothing.” (Where’s the instant gratification? The first student is a friend with a cold, so I corrupted her by handing over the bottle of NyQuil.) As for a hangover, one student’s response on what to do: “Go back out.”

The Breathe Right strips were very popular. I may need someone to send more.

Mock arguments: I’ve had more success lately getting notoriously reticent students to test their English by having teams face off over some made-up issue to which they can relate, such as snoring roommates and shopping for athletic shoes. (We pay the price on the tag. The Chinese negotiate.) Honestly, I couldn’t care less how well they spoke. It’s a major victory getting them to speak.

 

 

The importance of bīng

In the short time I have left, Chinese vocabulary priorities must be set. Under no circumstances can I forget “bīng” — no, not the search engine — when in need of “pí jiŭ.”

So this is essential: 我想要杯冰啤酒。Or, in pinyin, “Wŏ xiăng yào yī bēi bīng pí jiŭ.”

Or, “I want an ice-cold beer.” Leave out the “bīng,” my tutor tells me, and you’ll probably get room-temperature beer. And there’s only one reaction to that:

屁话.

Begins with an “s,” ends with a “t,” rhymes with “skit.”

That my tutor would include the word on my to-do list of 160 practical phrases to learn means she must have known me in a previous life.

Bye for now, or 再见 (zaì jiàn).

1st Chinese lesson

让人惊讶的次数.

Type “yikes” into the MDBG Chinese-English Dictionary translator, and that’s what you get. In pinyin, which is essential to non-Chinese speakers, that would be: ràng rén jîngyà de dí cìshù. I think.

Now, enter that into the special van der Horst translator, and it comes out: What the hell am I thinking to take a job in China? Coming off a dread-equals-inertia day, though, the lesson appointment gave me a much-needed jolt of momentum. Met with Fang, a delightful and patient Chinese tutor. (Thanks, craigslist.)

Alert to fellow Chinese-speaking wannabes: Forget the squiggly characters. It’s the tones that will kill you. There are four basic ones for a Mandarin syllable (plus a fifth “toneless” tone, differentiated by pinyin accents, and believe me the differences are subtle. But the differences in meaning are not.

Fang worked most of an hour and a half just getting me to pronounce mā (high and long), má (rising and long), mà (low and short) and mă (falling and short) correctly, and let’s just say I’m tone-deaf, though she diplomatically described me as “talented.” To me, they sounded like ma, ma, ma and ma. An entry in The Chinese Outpost notes that by simply saying, “Mā mà mă ma?” you can ask, “Did mother scold the horse?”

In the case of my late mother, no doubt an extra “ma” could be added to get: “Did mother scold the horse’s ass?”