[Oe List ...] Fwd: Jaime's March Sym report

[Bill Schlesinger]

Cool.

 

Bill Schlesinger

Project Vida

3607 Rivera Avenue

El Paso, TX 79905

(915) 533-7057 x 207

(915) 533-7158 FAX

 <mailto:pvida at whc.net> pvida at whc.net

www.projectvidaelpaso.org

  _____  

From: oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf
Of Jaime R Vergara
Sent: Friday, March 16, 2012 7:12 AM
To: oe at wedgeblade.net
Subject: [Oe List ...] Fwd: Jaime's March Sym report

 

Sharing with the OE listserv a March report to colleagues with the Symposium
of Realistic Living; 

j'aime la vie

 

*****

 

All of my oral English classes at Shenyang Aerospace University surprisingly
were assigned to the same room so I did not wait until I took over the
space.  All the classrooms follow Russian Spartan minimalism (nothing but
chairs, desks and a green board with a large podium in a lecture hall
format), and ours is no exception.

 

The earth poster was the first to get raised on the back wall, with a map of
China immediately below, flanked by a world and a US map, tapering into a
Roman empire nat/geo spread on the right, a China nat/geo 7,000 yr
historical timeline on the left.  

 

Stage right are large windows looking into the courtyard, and stage left
wall is the other side of the hallway so it got the local regional,
provincial and city maps.  Chairs parted like the Red Sea, with a center
table graced by a broken cup and spilled rice along an old unseathed Ming
knife on the side.

 

Students walked into a room where they are seated facing each other rather
than look up to a Lao Shi (teacher) by the green board.

 

The focus on space and historical timeline in the decor points out a
difference between the Chinese (Putunghua, common language) and English
languages (strict dichotomies are never trustworthy, but this one holds in
general).  The Chinese focuses on space, on the "where" and the "who", while
the English language, rooted on its Greco-Roman lineage's historical
conscious of time, defines its verbs on "when".  (E.g., Chinese has no tense
on the verb, "go" to the market yesterday, today, and tomorrow, while in
English, one "went, goes, and will go.")

 

First context of the first day of class in March is the journey of the folks
from the Mongolian steppes that peopled the Americas long before the
Europeans, and if one listened to the chants and songs of the so-called
Native Americans (from the Inuits to the Incas), they are not dissimilar
from the songs and dances heard in the mountains of Sichuan, Guangxi and
Yunnan, the highlands and barren expanses of Xizang (Tibet),
Xinjiang/Qinghai/Gansu, around the Yurts of Nei Menggu (Inner Mongolia) ,
and the ice lights of Yanbian (Korea in China) in Dong Bei (northeast).

 

Comes the explanation of the iterative cyclical series of natural
"listen-repeat-speak-write-read" method in language learning, indicating
that China formally teaches its students to read and write first, and now
were are just getting around to listening, repeating and speaking.  

 

Our first exercise is mimicking Denean' "As One" from Joyce's bioregional
sounds, amplified slowly followed by passing out a printed copy of the
lyrics.  

 

We introduce ourself as a "global" citizen.  Thus, began the 16-week journey
of university imaginal education on learning to speak English while their
consciousness of life gets a secular Sinocized RS-1 assault.  I suppose, it
is my metaphorical translation of a religiously expressed process!

 

We are having pedagogical fun!

 

  <http://presence.mail.aol.com/mailsig/?sn=jrvergarajr2031>  Jaime R
Vergara 

 

All of yesterday, thanks; all of tomorrow, yes; all of today, let it be!

 

 

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