maxiewawa

Aika came home today with these beauties. They cost her only 15RMB, including the pink socks that are between her feet and her shoes. Aika’s toes have been getting a little chilly lately and these slippers combine warmth with her favourite colour.

I can’t lay claim to the idea of putting shoes on my blog on a Tuesday; that honour goes to iSpyShanghai.

At around 10am, we heard the deafening sound of fireworks.

The practice of letting off fireworks is on special occasions is one Chinese practice that I hate.

I like to think that I’m open minded about other peoples’ cultures and beliefs, but fireworks always get my blood boiling.

For any occasion, no matter how unimportant, someone always feels the need, usually in the AM hours of a Saturday, when the civilised world appreciates a little sleep, to let off fireworks.

If the school down the street wakes me up with singing, or if the restaurant across the road wakes me with music, I don’t mind so much. At least someone is enjoying it.

But fireworks don’t do anything other than make a loud noise. Even the people who let them off don’t seem to really want to. They usually light the fuse, scamper back, and take cover with a grim look.

I just don’t see the point. They’re loud, and don’t do anything other than make life just that little bit more annoying for everyone in earshot.

This is the 6th post in a series where I’m documenting how I’m teaching English to my student. Her first language is Japanese.

One thing that Aika has been messing up lately is numbers. She’s been getting ‘thirteen’ and ‘thirty’ mixed up, ‘fourteen’ and ‘forty’, ‘fifteen’ and ‘fifty’ (etc) mixed up.

It’s not hard to do for beginners too. A lot of the time we leave off the ‘n’ at the end of the ‘teen’ numbers and let the stress of the different words convey meaning.

So my assignment for this week is to get her saying her numbers right.

1pm Busy day! I set out for lunch in track pants, cardigan and a beanie. Plan to have noodles, which I don’t usually enjoy.

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1:30 pm
On the trip to hong kong my Shure headphones broke. the electric lead for the left ear which has been pretty bad for a while almost snapped through. I only had them for a year too.

The earphones are designed so that they loop around your ears. Anyone who has had experience with electronics will tell you that sustained stress on any wire is bad for it. I wouldn’t recommend any “around the ear” headphones from Shure for this reason. They’re just going to break eventually.

Anyway, I have taken them to a little old man who has a stall on TianJin road who fixes things.

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1: 50 pm

when I showed them to him, he nodded, said in a thick Shanghai accent that replacing the lead wouldn’t be a problem, and he has taken them inside his workshop, a tiny dark apartment on TianJin road.

After 10 minutes or so, he still hasn’t emerged; I am worried because when I gave him my broken headphones, they were attached to my not-broken iPod. I’m picturing him now, sneaking out the back door listening to my Korean lessons on his stolen iPod through my Shure headphones that only work in one ear.

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2:23 pm

Another guy who worked in the same shop/stall out the front came out after another 10 minutes. He apologised for the wait and sait that the older guy was looking around upstairs for some tools. He asked where I was from and commented on my nice earphones. I was still a bit suspicious though. Somehow I got it into my head that the old guy was prising open my iPod to switch out the battery for an older one, or the hard disk for a smaller one.

After we finished our conversation and the other guy wandered off, the older guy eventually emerged. My headphones were fixed!

It looks like he has used a soldering iron or something to melt the plastic coating (or some other plastic stuff) and smear it over the exposed wire. Looks a bit rough, but is obviously the reason he took so long. For only 15 RMB I can’t complain. (I would hazard a guess that 15 RMB is about 3 dollars US, but I think it’s about 4 dollars US now… sorry to remind everyone about the plunging value of the US$!)

And there is no doubt that he didn’t touch my ipod at all. When I pressed “Play” it started up again at the exact same spot where I had stopped playback before.

I feel a little guilty now about suspecting him of doing anything shonky.

This is the 5th post in a series where I’m documenting how I’m teaching English to my student. Her first language is Japanese.

My student is getting better at “gonna” and “gotta” but another problem has come to light. She’s applying Japanese grammar to English when using “gonna”.

She’s leaving the verb “to be” out of future sentences that involve adjectives. For example, “She’s gonna happy” instead of “She’s gonna be happy”.

Anyone who has learnt Japanese will know that, there are times when Japanese adjectives function like verbs, and I guess this is the reason that Aika has been leaving the verb “to be” out.

My assignment for this week is to get Aika out of this habit!

This is the 4th post in a series where I’m documenting how I’m teaching English to my girlfriend. Her first language is Japanese.

Gonna and gotta. My student has always got these two mixed up. Over the years I have learnt that when Aika says “We gonna hurry up or we’ll be late” she actually means “We gotta hurry up or we’ll be late”.

So by the end of this week I hope that my English student won’t make this mistake again. Any ideas? I’m going to ask her what she has to do tomorrow. But that might be a little confusing, since ‘gonna’ has to do with the future.

Anyway, I’m open to suggestions.

And I realise that ‘gonna’ and ‘gotta’ are very slangy, and that we should probably say “I’m gonna…” and “I’ve gotta…” but I’m going to make sure that she knows the difference between the two words before moving on to that level.

Oh and also, I forgot to upload my musical post for yesterday. Here it is.
http://media.libsyn.com/media/maxiewawa/34.mp3

• What do you think of people that eat junk food?
  What do you think of people that try to trick foreigners?
  What do you think of the woman that wants to be the next Japanese Prime Minister?

I’m going to ask my English student these questions when she gets home. They all require an answer in a format that she always has trouble with. Also, they’re all on issues that I think she’ll have an opinion on.

The grammar used to answer these questions in Japanese is quite simple, which is why she has so much trouble with the English. In Japanese we’d say the equivalent of:

Junk food eating people are…
Trying to trick foreigners people are…
Wants to be Prime Minister woman is…

…where as the proper English would be:

People that eat junk food…
People that try to trick foreigners…
The woman that wants to be the next Japanese PM is….

If you have any opinions on these issues, better ideas for teaching this pattern, or just want to say hello, please leave a comment!

Max here.

No English assignment for today. Sorry, put away your pencils and notebooks.

Truth is that last week’s assignment has proved so difficult that I want to take this week to continue teaching it to my student.

To recap, I put together a (fictional) story and asked people to give their opinions on it. The original story is:

* I didn’t have a good day today. I went to a party last night, and drank a lot. I stayed out until late. I woke up later than usual, and ran to work in my pajamas. I arrived at work late, and my boss told me off for being in my pajamas. I was so tired that I fell asleep at my desk, and didn’t write the report that I was supposed to.

Here are some of the answers. Each uses the past participle correctly:

1.) You shouldn’t have had so much to drink. You should have limited yourself.
2.) You should have gone to bed earlier.
3.) Since you woke up late and in a frazzle, you should have called in to let them know you weren’t coming or to tell them you were late.
4.) You should have prepared better for your report.
5.) You should have drank some coffee to wake yourself up.
You should have called your workplace and told them you were sick. You should also try not to make a habit of being hungover and going to work.

My student has been having problems with the pronounciation of “should have” and “shouldn’t have”. There are so many variations: “should’ve, should have, shoulda” and “shouldn’t have, should not have, shouldn’a” and put that together with the complicated grammar… let’s just say I think we need a little more time.

This is why I haven’t put any new learning material up today.

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Finally, I’d like to say a little about this whole series. This is the fourth video in my efforts to teach English online. I have to say that my one student (Aika) is doing quite well. She doesn’t make the same mistakes that she used to, which is basically why I started doing this in the first place.

Her English still isn’t perfect, but now whenever she makes a grammatical error I make a note of it and think to myself “i should make a video of that to try and explain it.”

In actual fact I never get a chance to show her the videos that I make, but make sure that she goes through everyone’s answers. It’s a little painstaking sometimes but it definitely helps.

My one disappointment is that not many learners seem to be responding. Any thoughts? I realise that my explanations are a little… long. Maybe I should be just getting into the material immediately without going through the long boring preamble. Anyway, I’m open to suggestions.

That’s all for today!

I’m teaching English online. If you’re a native speaker, you can help out by listening/reading the passage below and answering the questions that come after it. If you’re learning, I invite you to do the same. You might find the explanation helpful.

• I didn’t have a good day today. I went to a party last night, and drank a lot. I stayed out until late. I woke up later than usual, and ran to work in my pajamas. I arrived at work late, and my boss told me off for being in my pajamas. I was so tired that I fell asleep at my desk, and didn’t write the report that I was supposed to.

• As you can see, I did a lot of things wrong. (I went to a party. I drank a lot. I got up late. And a lot of other things.)

• What should I have done differently?

Put your answers in a reply to this post! Thanks! And if you’re not sure how to answer, I’ll give a short explanation in a moment.

My answers: You shouldn’t have gotten up late. You should have used an alarm clock. You should have written the report earlier.

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Need help? Look at this:

To answer these questions, you’ll need to use this sentence pattern:

• You shouldn’t have (verb). You should have (verb).

The (verb) in each case must be a past participle. Most past participles are the same as simple past, but there are some exceptions.

Verb - Past - Past Participle

drink - drank - drunk
do - did - done
go -went - gone
write - wrote - written
get - got - gotten* (see below for more on this verb)

Thanks for listening. And if you have problems with past participles, don’t worry, they’re quite difficult. I’ve heard non- native English speakers from all over the world who can pass for natives, if not for their incorrect use of past participles. So if you have trouble, you’re not alone.

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*I always teach my students that the past participle of “got” is “gotten”. But in this very video I used “got” as the past participle of “got”. More and more “gotten” has gone out of use… or was it just me?

Which sounds correct:

I shouldn’t have gotten that, it was too expensive.
I shouldn’t have got that, it was too expensive.

• What’s your in your room?
• Where is your computer?

Here are my answers:

There are two couches in my room behind me. There’s a bookshelf and a table too.

My computer is on two books. The books are on a cardboard box. The box is on my desk.

Some Japanese people I know have problem describing locations of things. They get “My computer is there” and “There is my computer” mixed up.

I’ve been trying to correct a Japanese friend of mine’s mistakes regarding locations for years, but with no success. Hopefully with your help we’ll fix this habit.