Chinese whispers is not Chinese!!

I have started teaching some English classes, but i think you can rather call it speaking English classes. What you will find when it comes to Chinese students, they are really good with written English. Due to them having such a complex language, i think they find English rather easy. Sad to say that their spelling is better than mine i sometimes find. I constantly have to check myself, my spelling etc. before i write something on the board for public view. Good thing my laptop has a spell checker and dictionary... you never know what spelling they might walk out with. Most of the time all we do in class is speak, work on pronunciation and intonation. If some of you don't know what these big words mean, i learned them in China!!

Every day there are these moments where it is just me and about five female teachers in an office, and i find it my duty to entertain them. These ladies work long hours!! Me being a foreign teacher just walk in, say a couple of things in English and the students love me. If the students don't like me, then i just throw in a couple of Afrikaans words and if that doesn't work a couple of Spanish words. After that i am like a god!! These poor ladies need to work a bit harder for the students to like them.

One of my classes i teach is at a business college. So i decided to teach some leadership skills, seeing as i spent 2 years in a Leadership College. Communication being a skill, especially for woman, i decided to go for.... wait for it.... Chinese whispers!! Yip, a game that was invented in China. How can i go wrong?? Maybe we are mistaken to think that this game is actually Chinese?? So i started to break the students up in a couple of groups and started spreading the word around. Maybe the Chinese don't understand the concept of whispering?? The word was spread all right. I don't need to explain to you that the game didn't last long, i am pretty sure if you listened closely you could hear them!

So much for Chinese whispers! I think we will need to work on a new name for that game. Maybe something like "Chinese don't whisper!"

(Linfen, Shanxi Province, China)