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Home  >  China • Teaching English  >  True Expressions
Posted inChina Teaching English

True Expressions

Posted By Becky Ances Posted on December 22, 2009
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At the beginning of the semester I asked my writing students to keep a weekly journal. Well, I’ve just spent the past week reading the journals. It was a lot of work (about 900 pages) but I loved reading them. I got to know some of the students much better (even the ones I am friendly with) and was surprised to see new sides of their personalities. For instance one of the top student, and a serious academic, wrote all about boys in her diary.
I am an avid journal keeper myself, and I take journal privacy seriously, but I thought I would share a few funny quotes from their diary. Some are funny because of their English skills, others are just cute observations, and others show such creative word choices that are so unique. I continually marvel at how creative some of their writing is despite their limited knowledge of the language.
This student is describing how she was really happy at first and then bitterly disappointed:

I was struck by a big stone and fell to the bottom of happiness.

This is a reaction to the movie ‘Pursuit of Happyness’ written by a boy:

My eyes were red and my heart deeply touched. I never dropped a tear, but I suffered a lot in somewhere of my body and heart without a certain reason.

“Together.” What a wonderful word!

The first five days I kept on working from dawn to dusk, regardless of solarization and drencher.

(I can’t figure out if this person meant ‘burning sun and rain’ or ‘burning sun and drenched with sweat.’ Either way I think it is cute!)

It seems as if I dropped in a sea, tried every means to struggle, and now I’m on the edge of being drawned.

Thousand pieces of the falling golden leaves just like the fluttering butterflies in the sky, then they spiralled to the ground.

I recently found out that I will continue to teach the same students writing next semester, so I am looking forward to continuing down the ‘creative path’ with them. I’ve really seen their writing improve over the semester from choppy and impersonal to very passionate with excellent descriptions. I know that not all students like my class, but I try to keep the writing activities varied and short and I feel like my students are getting a lot out of it.
I’ve now got to get back to grading papers, but I will leave you with this final quote:

Life is like a bar of chocolate. You never know what the next one will be.

So true.

Tags: diary students writing teaching teaching writing
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