大家好！Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve written a blog…hopefully I can do a better job to fill you in with everything that’s going on in my life.  So now I’ll do my best to catch up.

After my first exciting year living in China I went back to the U.S. for six weeks.  I flew from Beijing to Newark, New Jersey (New York City area) to spend some time with some good friends.  From there I went home to Ohio and enjoyed my best summer so far…lots of friends, delicious food, good weather and of course Lake Erie.  One of my best friends got married as well so I was lucky enough to be around for that.  I have a missed a few weddings since living in China, which are some of the only times I feel homesick while living here.

After the six great weeks in Ohio it was time to come back to China to meet up with my old American friends who I met in the 2005 Wuhan University Summer Intensive English Program.  It was great to see them and their 武大summer students enjoying the four weeks together.  If you have not participated in this program, and you’ll be in 武汉 next summer, I recommend you try it!

From there a few of my American friends, Pete and Heather, along with two of my Chinese colleagues, Lucy and Eva, traveled together to Mongolia…Outer Mongolia that is.  We spent two weeks camping, riding horses and camels and enjoying a much different way of life.  If you ever think about going up there be sure to pack warm clothes and an open mind!  Things are much different up there!  If you like the outdoors and camping, away from tour buses, Mongolia is the place to go.  If you like comfortable hotels and tour buses I suggest you go somewhere else.  J

And now almost two months later classes are flying by.  I’ve been busy meeting all my new students who are mostly sophomores here at Wuhan University.  I usually have about 900 students per semester so it’s a lot of work to keep them organized and busy.  I’ve also tried to make it to English Corner on Wednesday nights in 梅园 as well. 

As you can see I’ve been studying Chinese when I have the chance.  It’s amazing that day by day China is opening up to me as I’m able to read signs, billboards and so on.  I figure this is the best way to help understand how my students feel when working with me in the classroom, which brings me to my English studying advice for this blog.

I’ve been asking my students to write two or three English goals they would like to accomplish this year at 武大.  For almost all of them this will be the last year of English instruction so they need to decide what they want to do with their language skills.  As I tell all Chinese students here, English can be a gateway into many opportunities in the future, and will certainly be useful to you once you graduate if you choose so. 

But you need to focus on exactly what you need to improve.  Saying “I need to improve my oral English” is too broad and too big.  I say the same thing about my oral Chinese, but instead I become more focused:  First I need to continue building my vocabulary, so I study my current lesson vocabulary and try to learn ten other words each day; I can always improve my pronunciation so I read my lesson dialogues until I become comfortable and fluid with them; I also speak as much Chinese as possible when I’m not in English classes or with my students.

I ask you to try the same thing.  Focus on a couple things you know you need to improve, like pronunciation, vocabulary, listening and so on.  And THEN come up with some ways of HOW you’re going to accomplish them, something we call ACTION STEPS.  For example:  “I will spend 1 hour every day reading out of an English novel”, or “I will listen to one CNN news MP3’s every day”.  So very simply you first need to make reachable goals and then determine what you will do to reach those goals.  Put the goals on a piece of paper and tape it to your bed, your desk or somewhere else.  I know you are all very busy here with your major studies, but this is the only way your English will continue to improve…YOU need to do it!

Well that’s it for now.  Hope you are enjoying the fall here in 武汉！再见！