Learn English with Teacher Joe

Okay, I finally got to see Olympic events this weekend. In my new job I have Sunday and Monday off. On Sunday, I went to Chaoyang Park and saw two quarterfinal matches of Women’s Beach Volleyball. Two tall, beautiful Chinese women in bikinis beat two tall beautiful American women in bikinis, setting up an all-Chinese semi-final. That guarantees a Chinese team will win at least a silver medal for the first time in the history of beach volleyball. After that match, I watched two tall, beautiful Brazilian women in bikinis defeat two tall Australian women in bikinis in the other quarterfinal match. I think I’m becoming a fan of women’s beach volleyball!

On Monday, I saw boxing quarterfinals in the Workers Gymnasium not too far from my apartment. I was surprised to find the stadium barely half full at the beginning. When the Chinese Super Heavyweight easily won his bout with a smaller Kazakhstan opponent, only about a third of the stadium was full. I think boxing is much more interesting on TV anyway. It’s so hard to see the punches as they happen. Olympic boxing now uses a computerized system so we can see the five judges points come up on the scoreboard as they make their decisions about what is a good hit and what is not. Unfortunately for the spectators, when they look up to see the scoreboard, to check if a punch was really a successful punch, they miss what comes next. On TV you not only get the commentators explanation, you can get instant replays, in slow motion even.

A friend of mine here in Beijing has a blog and wrote an interesting post on his Chinese students’ reaction to the Games. You can read Matt’s post here. He is a very thoughtful writer, so be sure to read to the very end of his post.

Hi Everybody,

The Olympics have finally come to Beijing! I watched the opening ceremony on a large-screen TV in one of Beijing’s biggest parks. It was quite spectacular. China has already won two gold medals, in weightlifting and shooting. The games are off to a great start.

I just remembered that I made a list of some Olympic vocabulary (click here to see the article) about a month ago. I think some things could have been better. For example, I wrote that running sports are refered to as “track and field”, which is the usual expression in the U.S., but they are more often called “athletics” in the Olympics. I will have to change that in future versions.

Let me know if the article was useful for you or not. If you have any other suggestions, including words or expressions to include, please let me know. We can discuss all kinds of improvements in the comments section, if there is interest.

This week we talked about reading and writing with our students. I did some writing exercises in a couple of classes, but in my current school I never know who will show up to class, so it’s hard to build on previous classes. I gave them some advice on organizing our writing and we practiced writing clear sentences that focus on successful communication. I then remembered my old suggestion for a very common way to organize written paragraphs (click here to read) which is very general advice but you can use it in so many situations.

It’s too bad we did not have enough time to discuss writing in detail. I have no idea what I will be required to teach next week, but if I have a chance to continue with writing, I will certainly do it, even if it’s just one small exercise. It takes quite a bit of attention to write well, but anyone who tries can succeed. If you want to know all of the best advice I give to students, click here now!