unclemartin

假如你不能容易听懂 UncleMartin 的非中国式英语，请勿参加他的课程，也不要随便找他谈论学习英语事宜，因为老师输入中文有困难，这里有其它更合适的老师，他们更能够帮助初阶或较低程度的同学~~~~

I was alerted quite late on Thursday that I had to make a quick trip to Zhanjiang to process some papers personally in a local government agency there.  So, I cancelled all my classes for the rest of the week.

On my arrival in Zhanjiang, I went online and found out that some students had already enrolled in my course.  In order not to disappoint the student, I revived my class for Friday night.  I must thank the Customer Support Representatives of OralPractice.com because they could help me promptly in re-instating my cancelled classes.

What disappointed me however was one student who came on to my on my Skype (she could have found out my Skype ID through introduction or through my other webpages).  When I tried to talk to her in voice in English through KYT (KouYuTong), she could not understand me at all.  I would like to make an appeal here that my classes are for intermediate to advanced students for the following reasons.  Please do not even try or bother to talk to me in Chinese on learning English because it is hard for me to chat with you typing out Chinese.  You find your time better spent reading my blogs if you can understand my simple English blogging.

I don't speak good Putonghua (Mandarin in English).  I have no interest also in working with beginners and low level students.  There are lots of teachers out there who can serve them better at these lower levels.

I speak English almost like a native speaker and I am using living English as opposed to bookish English which is common amongst English learners, students and also Chinese English teachers.  I have received requests from Chinese English teachers to help them change to natural English, but sad to say, it is not an easy task at all.  These teachers are so used to speaking in Chinglish or broken English that unless they can devote a lot of time and effort, I can safely assure you that it is mission impossible in 98 out of a 100 cases.

In the next blog entry, I will talk in detail what I did with a student who is pursuing a finance and accounting degree as her major in Shanghai last night as she was the only student showing up in the end.  She had the whole 90 minutes to herself instead of sharing the time with 3 more students.

[ 本帖最后由 unclemartin 于 2009-11-2 01:14 编辑 ]

administrator

老师可以在自我介绍那底下加上只接收中高级学员。

unclemartin

Thanks for your kind advice ADMINISTRATOR!   It is not really up to me.  I have spelt out clearly in the class details that the class is for intermediate to advanced level students.

unclemartin

I finally solved the mystery of the student who came to me to tell me that she had enrolled in my Friday class.   She left a message with me that she had joined my class.   In fact, she should have told me that she had ATTENDED my class EARLIER.  Yet the interesting thing is she did not arrange for the payment this time.  Otherwise, there should not be a problem at all.

I can safely conclude that this is a problem with the use of English.  There was a communication problem when I tried to talk to her in voice to find out what was going on.  She did not respond properly.  And she did not respond properly when I chatted in text with her on the KouYuTong.   That left me really confused.

I was able to talk to her later on and found out who she is.  The main problem is people use different cyber ID's on Kouyutong, QQ and Skype.   It is not that easy for the teacher to identify from amongst so many other different students who s/he is, unless the student has attended a few classes already to leave an impression on the teacher.