English Language Festival

我 知 道 我 很 久 沒 有 練 習 寫 中 文 了， 可 是 我 現 在 很 忙：這 星 期 我 們 要 凖 備 英 語 節 的 活 動， 也 要 幫 助 我 們 的 學 生凖 備 考 期 中 試。

Translation: I know I haven’t practiced writing Chinese in a while, but I’ve been very busy: this week we had to prepare all the English Festival activities, and we also had to help our students prepare for the midterm exam.

The main part of our job this week was not teaching classes as usual (although we did have to prepare our students for the midterm); instead, it was running the events at the English Festival, starting with an opening ceremony on Tuesday night and ending with the closing ceremony around 6 PM this evening. It was a pretty jam-packed few days of activities for students and teachers alike, ranging from lectures to board games to karaoke (in English, of course). We ETAs were in charge of organizing/running all the activities for students, sort of a practice run for next semester when we're supposed to organize the whole thing ourselves!

First up was the opening ceremony Tuesday night, with remarks by Glenn Shive (director of the HKAC) and a 'scholarly lecture' by Peter Skehan, an English professor from CUHK. He spoke about his/his students' research on task-based learning, e.g. if repetition helps fluency or accuracy, which was semi-interesting for us as teachers, but I couldn't help feeling bad for the many students in the room who probably had no idea what he was saying. Still, being proper Chinese students, they all clapped politely at the end, and then we went off for dinner at IFT, the Institute for Tourism Studies.

The IFT Educational Restaurant

The IFT is an interesting school because it specifically trains people to work in the hospitality industry: chefs, waiters, concierges, etc. The food at the educational restaurant was good (curry shrimp and rice for a main course, with this delicious rhubarb crumble for dessert), but the decor was also quite interesting, like this blue-lit wine storage room. Is the blue light supposed to help preserve the flavor or something?

Days 2 and 3 were super-busy for us, running all the student events. Austin screened a film he had made with friends in India (A Box With a View), plus we had Jeopardy and a UM Idol karaoke competition. Participation was overwhelmingly enthusiastic - we had 17 teams in Jeopardy and over 20 acts for karaoke!

The audience was also huge...

Our karaoke winner, who rapped Eminem's "8 Mile"

Overall, the English Festival could be counted a clear success, despite a few logistical glitches like trying to handle the hundreds of students with their "E+ cards" trying to get stamps for participation points. Next semester will be interesting because we have to plan the whole thing, but I think we've had a good practice run already!