Well It's almost the end of week seven and I've been asked for the first time to help peopple with their english studies. This week the office had their first "English Corner" session in the Shanghai office and asked Bruce and I to help out. The aim is to have regular sessions where all staff must speak only in English, so as to improve their spoken and conversation skills. Although the team I work with deal with clients from all countries, most of the staff in other teams deal mainly with other Asian countries so English is not required everyday. We were first approached on Monday to ask if we would help out and told of what they had planned, a role play situation followed by a brief presentation by us on British Business Culture and then a question and answer session. On Tuesday the group involved in the role-play (Japenese business clients meeting with Chinese suppliers) asked if they could have a practice session with us. We ran through their parts and then gave them advice on pronounciation and sentence structure. Then on Wednesday we met with the rest of the team for the session.
The session didn't go quite as well as planned but produced a lot of ideas on how to improve it for the future. Unfortunately they had been unable to use a meeting room and so we had to congregate in the office space which wasn't ideal and made it difficult to hear everyone. Plus with being on different sides of partitions some of the team didn't feel included in the discussion. The role play went well and the group had made a huge effort to put everything we had suggested into practice. In the feedback they said that they had found it extremely useful to go over their parts with Bruce and I and to learn about the sentence structre. They said that the sentence structure and words they had used were based on the English lessons they had received and were correct according to the tutors, so to find out that this wasn't how a native speaker would phrase things was very helpful. Plus they learned the correct way to pronounce 'funeral'. Although now everyone says it with a scottish accent!
We also had an impromptu office party this week. David, the team leader, found out that he has been awarded a scholarship to study for his MBA so bought the whole team pizza for lunch! It was great fun and a chance to speak to some of the team members that I don't have regular contact with. Plus I finally got an excuse to take photos of the office and everyone I work with.
Well its the last weekend here in Shanghai and I am definitely going to make it to the insect market this week. I missed it before but am determined to go for a look tomorrow morning. Regardless of the weather! Our impressive heatwave has finally broken and we've had some pretty impressive thunderstorms for the past 3 days. But then what's a little rain to someone from Scotland!
Bye for now.Lindsay x