Introspection - Days 5-7 The preceding days have given me lots of food for thought. I have found some good language partners and some which are a challenge. Having talked to at least 10 different people now, I feel I have a better grasp on my next subject matter - accents. Chinese learners who embrace English as a Second Language (ESL) have rather quirky accents. Well to be fair, my Chinese accent sounds very Aussie-fied which is to say it sounds fairly weird. Sometimes, the accents sound really cute like a cartoon or anime character. At other times, it sounds really fake or labourious, like it's a made-up accent. In many countries, language centres have a preference on the accent of their teachers as this is eagerly desired by their students. For example, a language centre may advertise that they only want North-American native English speakers so their clients can talk like George Bush and as a bonus sound seriously-sardonic. Yes, I know it's an oxy-moron. There are also language schools who prefer only caucasian teachers because it is seen as more 'prestigious' and they can charge a higher premium. It's a little bit of reverse-racism. Personally, I've never liked the Australian accent as it sounds too ocker. I have what we call an International English accent. When you've been in a Western country for a long time it's easy to lose your sense of cultural identity and being able to dictate what you sound like is a big part of it. As funny as it sounds, I want to sound like me. Just me and no one else. I'm still struggling with sentence structures when speaking Chinese. I now understand why my students sentence structure looks the way it does. They're just making direct translations as I have been doing previously. It's something I need to focus on. Getting them to think in the correct structure will help them more than drilling pronunciations or learning new words at times. They both have their place but structure is fairly important for preliminary students. Caleb Gattegno's 'The Silent Way' can assist students in forming these structures which are already lying subconsciously in their psyche. It's hard to truly articulate what's on my mind presently. In the past week or so, I've picked up so many new Chinese words, sentences, idioms and colloquial expressions. They're all swirling in my mind like a three-legged race without a finishing line.