Emails from my students

"Hi Polly,

OK, we will begin with the numbers and your name. As I will have IELTS test, I think you can help me get prepared with my oral. Actually it's simple, you can just act as my oral test examiner and I talk you some topics. Sometimes I am so nervous facing examiner that I can't speak correctly. Consequently, you can help me get rid of this kind of fear and alter my prounciation. I am a little shy and insufficient of self-confidence.Thank you so much for your help.

:)

White"

Another student:

"hi poole,

i think that it is a bad speech tonight,
excited, cant think when i give out the speech, not fluent, miss many points,

i dont know why. i would try to use another speaking method to present in the next training time
(i cant come in wed )

(actually i want to poing out that the ones who need to pay the tax not only refer to locals, but also tourists.
the obersity problem in tourists give no impact to our society, why should we make a tax from them?)
(the economic section , i am trying to make it easy to understand, so that i provide the example of gold ring and gold necklace,
but i will try to avoid the proper noun using next time)


however, i want to know sth:
1. i am actually know more on contonese debay, i am the member of cantonese debay team.
i know the rule of cantonese debay. till now, i dont really understand the rule of english debay, here are my questions
2. i actually dont know how long should i speak, the time that provide in chinese debay is 4 minutes.
but i learn that it is 7 minutes today =.=
3. there is somone stop the speaker who is speaking? if it happens in the chinese dabay, definitely not =.=
can you tell me more about this rule?
4. will the english debay has a section of Q&A? we call this section 自由辯 or 台下發問. how about english debay?

Quote from Amy:

"Today, I asked my student what the magic word was, and he got really upset and scared, because he thought I was testing him. He said, "I'm sorry! I don't know what it is!" And was really embarrassed.

Debate Tournament

My debaters had their first debate tournament this weekend. I am very proud of them. It's hard to watch people that you have trained competing. I am so much more nervous for them than I am before I give a speech!

There were a lot of humorous one-liners, but I was rolling on the floor for the "This house believes that police officers should not entrap pedophiles" debate. Both teams consistently throughout the round pronounced 'pedophiles' as "Philadelphias".

I started my Mandarin classes last night. The first few days will be terribly boring, as we will be learning the pinyin system. My classmates are quite interesting. One is a helicopter engineer from Finland who flies helicopters for wealthy people between Macau and Hong Kong; another is a Las Vegas transplant (exotic dancer), others are from Japan, Portugal, Mongolia, Brazil, etc. so it's like the UN of language courses. A psychology phD student asked for my help in editing his dissertation, which I am excited about.

Hope all's well wherever you are :)

Mid Autumn Festival at Hac Sa

Happy Birthday China