Adventures in Guangzhou!

That seems to be very common here. For the people that do spend the time to truly learn some English, they are limited to the basic greetings of "Hello, how do you do?" or "Good afternoon, how is the weather?" I don't know where they get these from but it's a difficult habit for them to break. As such, it has been a breath of fresh air to hear students walking up to me saying, "What's up?!" I laugh and say "not too much, you?" They are definitely still getting used to it though as sometimes I will say "where are you headed?" and they will say "not too much." Baby steps, ya know?

The best though, is that I've taught my kids the following exchange:
-Hey buddy, what's goin' on?
-Chillin'.
That might be my favorite right there. Besides the fact that "chillin'" is a very common phrase with younger people in the states, it's also one that I commonly use, in the right context of course. This is also somewhat of an homage to my friend Paul (spent time in S. Korea on a Fulbright) who taught his middle schoolers to begin every class with a similar greeting process. Gotta love it.

So we graduated from basic salutations and moved on to a full conversation. I modified an old PiA lesson and handed out the following dialogue to my class, with instructions to read out loud in pairs:
Chris: Hey, 'sup Jordan? Where you headed?
Jordan: Oh hi, Chris. Not too muchâ€"'s goin' on with you? I'm off to the library to hit the books.
Chris: Oh, bummer. I was gonna ask if you wanted to go grab a drink or shoot some pool.
Jordan: Yeah, sucks. Thanks thoughâ€"woulda been fun, but if I don't do well on this Chinese test tomorrow, I'm totally screwed. You know how rough that class is!
Chris: Yeah, dude. Yo, why are you taking Chinese anyway? Isn't that language impossible? Why don't you just do Spanish or something?
Jordan: Hey, believe meâ€"I thought about quitting. Thing is, Pat is in that class and we've sorta been hitting it off. I think I'm going to ask him/her out this weekend.
Chris: Oh man! You mean Pat Rodriguez? Wow, she/he is so hot! That girl/guy is smokin'! You're really going to ask him/her out? Boy, you're bolder than I thought. Maybe you're moving up in the world!
Jordan: Well, we'll see how it goes. I'm not counting on anything. Truth be told, I'm actually pretty nervous about it.
Chris: Aww, don't be nervous. If you let him/her know that you're nervous, you'll scare him/her off. You have to make him/her think that you're, ya know, THE MAN/THE WOMAN. Know what I mean?
Jordan: Oh I hear ya. But come onâ€"like you're one to talk? When was the last time you asked someone out? Exactly.
Chris: Okay, okay. You made your point. That's pretty cool though. Lemme know how it goes.
Jordan: Will do. Okay, I gotta bounce. Later.
Chris: Peace.

Since almost every other word is some kind of idiom or slang, they then had the task of trying to decipher this dialogue and figure out what everything means. I tried to explain the concept of using the context to figure it out, but I think that has been lost on a good number of them. Regardless, I have been able to lead groups of students step-by-step through a process of discerning meaning from this so-called gobbledygook.

Some of my better classes have "translated" virtually all of the phrases in one class period. Others have struggled quite a bit more and come up with some hilarious responses. For example, one class was convinced that a "hot" girl was a dangerous girl. I laughed pretty hard and told them that they may be right but that that wasn't quite what I was looking for. Heh. Another class suggested that to hit the books was to sabotage them. Hmm. Not exactly. Suffice it to say that it's been a really fun lesson.