Furthermore, I worked on showing students that it’s okay to use hand gestures, excessive body language and wacky facial expressions. The students really started getting better the second half of the course. It helped that I finally met them where they were at and moved forward.
Debate is a course that is meant for students who took public speaking. A lot of the debate skills are built on top public speaking ones. I adopted a lot of the same methods from before. For one, I picked debates where I could find speakers that spoke slower. I was deliberate in my debate topic choices. I didn’t pick anything too ideological or taboo in China. A lot of articles I almost had them read, or debates I previewed beforehand, argued against China’s human right violations or repressions against the freedom of religion. Young Chinese students aren’t blind to these things, however. They all have access to the internet and most of them are really into western culture. They wouldn’t be alarmed by these articles if I showed them, but I didn’t want to get in trouble with the university administration. The university's perspective is different from that of the students. The university is open to having the students debate and talk about controversial topics as long as it isn’t persuading them against China and eastern traditions. This all may sound intense, but the class is a lot of fun and the students are really bright. There’s a lot of potential for our final debates coming next month.
On my first day of biblical culture I gave the students a test. Out of 75 students, maybe five passed. At the end of the exam, I looked at a few tests and told them it wasn’t graded, I just needed to know where to start. Chinese students are great at memorizing information.
