I have worked at both of these kinds of schools in the last few years, and this is what I think about them. For those of you who aren’t aware, these are the two main kinds of schools that you can get hired to as a foreign ESL teacher in Taiwan. I will be talking about elementary school teaching, not high school, university, or other types of adult teaching jobs that are also available. With a Master’s, you can teach in universities as lecturers, outside of Taipei City (but in New Taipei City). You need a Phd to teach at universities in Taipei.
-So which teachers are Canadian? asks Student A.
-T. Range, T. K, and T. R., answers Student E.
-How about T. Br?
-He’s American, as is T. J., I interject.
-How about T. Be?
-He’s from England.
-What’s the difference between them all?
-It’s the way that they all say “out”. Canadians will say it this way. The English say it this way and Americans say it this way.
(Student E demonstrates to Student A, quite hilariously while I listen in. This whole conversation took place in Mandarin.)
Newborn babies only a few hours old are able to differentiate between sounds from their native language and a foreign one. A new study indicates that babies begin absorbing language while still in the womb, earlier than previously thought.
I’m no longer surprised to see toddlers playing with iPads and iPhones, but I have to say that I’d rather have them playing with something that’s actually made for them, kind of like the Vinci Tab II tablet.
As I left the school for a well deserved break, it was about 12:30 and I had yet to eat lunch, I came up the teaching director of the school shouting at someone in her office. While this might seem a common occurrence at most school, it isn’t at ours. I have never seen the TD shouting at anyone. The school is a family-owned affair. The TD’s sister is the manager, the grandmother and great-aunt also work there and all of the kids go to this school.
As yesterday’s infographic post illustrated, the days of just book in the backpack for students is long gone. Students are hooked up on tech, hooked in with social networks, and downloading a plethora of different apps to do their homework, complete assignments. Here are some of the best student-classroom apps to help get those assignments done like student of the 21st century…
It’s the second week of school, but with a bank holiday last Monday (09/12/11), graduate school started up slowly. It will take until next week until everyone is finally registered to all of their classes. It took me a while to do so as well, because they changed up the system from a program that you installed on your computer to an online version. The online version is better, but you need to know where to go. I finally registered to my classes last Tuesday. I have three this semester:
Topics in Geometric Analysis: This class is with my thesis advisor and we will be exploring gradient flows in metric spaces. We will be using Luigi Ambrosio’s book of the same title. It promises to be an interesting class. Although, it’s not exactly what I’d like to do in my thesis, it’s getting there. I’d like more measure theory, but luckily, my advisor is doing research in the field. There are six students in the class, but only 4 were registered on Monday. I don’t know if the other two will be registering, my guess is yes. Two of my classmates are the other graduate students of my advisor. We are all going to a workshop in Hsinchu in Differential Geometry on Saturday. Since I work most Saturdays, it’s not really a problem getting up. It will be a break from the norm, and I have a keen interest in Differential Geometry.
I’ve mentioned before that I’m somewhat ambivalent about the all-in-one PCs, mostly because they use laptop parts to get to that svelte size, but Apple has announced the specs of their education iMac, which sits at $999. That’s $200 less than the cheapest consumer model. You won’t get Thunderbolt or a Core i5, but you’ll get a decent computer for that price.
