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First day of class.

Today was the first day of class for the spring semester.¬† I think my classes went pretty well.¬† Actually, the biggest thing I was worried about was not waking up in time, since I’d been going to sleep so late for so long.¬† It went okay, though, and I was like three minutes early.¬† Just as I had suspected after reading the scheduling material, my students had translation last semester, NOT oral English, as I had been told.¬† It’s a good thing I read a decent amount of Chinese, or I’d be lost.¬† Even the liason lady didn’t know what was going on.¬† It seems like regulations change on a year-to-year basis in China, without any warning.

One funny thing is that I always ask students how many years they’ve studied English.¬† One guy wrote, “Fifteen years too long.”¬† That was part of an answer written like this, “fifteen years¬†¬†too long¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬† my English is still poor.”¬† I think he’s actually saying his English is poor for having studied fifteen years, but it was funny anyway.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 20th, 2006 at 10:54 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

2 Responses to “First day of class.”

  1. Dane Says:
    February 21st, 2006 at 1:46 am

    MF,glad you resumed your teaching schedule today.how is everything going?how is school?
    and here comes my question as to the funny way of expression of your student you mentioned in the post,when he said “fifteen years too long” in this case,couldn’t he mean “fifteen years is too long for me to master the english?”I mean is it grammatically incorrect or just funny-sounding?
    Look forward to your tutoring.

    Dane

  2. MF Says:
    February 24th, 2006 at 6:58 pm

    Hi –

    It’s strangely difficult to explain why this is funny! To native speakers, it would mean “I’ve studied for fifteen years longer than I wanted to.” This is the sort of thing someone would say if they really regretted something. For instance, let’s say a man and his wife were married for fifteen years, but were getting along very badly. The man is angry at his wife and regrets marrying her. If someone asked him how long he had been married, he might reply, “Fifteen years too long.” So, when my student answered that way, it really sounded like he regrets studying English!

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