visiting my family

i always start my classes by posing a question. i usually get very standard answers to the questions, like if i ask "what will you do this weekend?", my students will say things like- "i will go to Beijing", "i will visit my grandmother" or, "i will play computer games". it can get pretty boring, but i think it's good to do it.

i noticed that when you let the kids have fun with the words they know you can get them to think much more creatively with the language. i think this is something that chinese teachers do not encourage.

today with my private class, i started by asking them what they were going to do for national day (an upcoming chinese holiday). at first, i got similar answers to those mentioned above. but then, one of my students decided to be cheeky and was like, "i will go to America." i was like oh really, well say hello to my family for me. someone said something else and then another little boy said, "i will go to america to see your family." he was so excited when he said it, hahah. then a little back and forth emerged between the two boys about what they were going to do in america with my family. it seemed like it kept getting more disturbing though- going from just visiting my family to finally stealing things from my family. it doesn't happen often when it's not a game but it's nice to see the kids so excited and happy to just try to speak English, even if it's at your family's expense, haha.