so midterms are coming up, and my students are freaking out. now, i'm always one to procrastinate to the last minute, even the last second, but i'm afraid i'm getting teacher-y in my old age.

tonight my 8th graders have an oral exam. they are given a topic, and they are meant to speak 10 sentences on that topic. i have wondered today if i could do the same thing in chinese. the answer is certainly not. well, maybe if it was about food.

the frustrating thing to me is, they have this native speaker in their midst for about 2 and half months, and they do nothing. but come the night of the exam, they want help on speaking. i stopped my lesson plan and tried to switch to something that might be beneficial for an oral exam, but i quickly realized there was nothing i could do with thirty kids that could be helpful. so i continued on.

one of the activities in this week's lesson plan is an icebreaker type thing centered around sleep. you have to find someone who...overslept this morning, had a nightmare recently, sleepwalks, etc. one of the things i stressed was that you must speak english. the questions were basically laid out for them, all they had to do was knock it out of the park. frustratingly, the only class that complained about the exam was the only class who had trouble speaking english. now that i type it there seems like there might be a correlation there.

so after the activity, i slowly lectured about how this is how you get better at speaking. if you want to do well on your oral exam, don't come to me the night of, just try to speak in class. that's it. i think i got a little fired up about halfway through and might of lost them, but hopefully the first part registered.

i guess i'll see when i get the grades. yeah, right, like they'll let me see grades.