Does money talk?

That's the title of Unit 7 in the New Horizons College English textbook we're working through in my class tonight. Last week, one of my students complained that I don't give them enough time to talk in class. Now, I love it when students say this to me because (1) I'm the teacher, I finished my bachelor's, I sat through several ESL trainings, I have been teaching now for three semesters and (2) When I ask them to talk they sit and stare at their desks or fiddle with their phones. So as I planned my lesson this week, I wondered to myself, "What can I do this week to give them more opportunities to talk. So I'm going to do something that I am pretty sure will fail, but just so that they know that I tried, I'm going to try.

I'm going to ask them to get up from their desks, move around, and talk to a class mate they've never talked to before. Hm. In the word of guanxi, I wonder if it's possible for a foreign teacher to enter the room and mix-it-up.

And not only that, we are going to discuss the topic that is at the center of every Chinese students' heart: money money money.

At the beginning of a new year, I ask my students to introduce themselves by thinking of a sentence that says, "My name is ---- and I like ----", where their name and the thing they like begin with the same first letter. For example, "My name is Ellie and I like Easter." You'd be surprised how many students answer, "My name is Melody (or Maria or Mark or Michael or Mina or Minnie) and I like Money."

So we'll see how tonight goes.