I've been bitching since september about how useless my students are in tutorial discussions. Well, actually, they are not that bad. It is really just two classes out of ten that piss me off a bit and not even every week at that. So now, I confess. I have been wrong and bad, judgemental and condescending.

It is the last group of the week which is the worst. They really look as if they are about to shit themselves when I ask them to speak. But even this group, if I allow myself to step back and undertake an objective tally, has improved a great deal over the weeks.

Other exciting developments this week include my newfound ability to use pinyin (拼音) Chinese input!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And I didn't even know I know Putonghua!

Okay so I still have to look up every other word in the dictionary but it is more user-friendly, user being me and not anybody else, than learn those blasting codes for the other input methods. Plus I find my PTH has really improved massively since I started learning to type in pinyin! Well, yes, that improvement is really mostly in my MENTAL PTH as in I didn't really TALK to anyone actually using PTH but still, you are a smart cookie and you know what I mean, right?