Hello everyone, my name is Mandy and I am a housewife, to be exact, a stay-at-home mom. I have two kids; the boy is four years old while the girl is only one. When Eason, my son, entered YWIES Yantai’s Kindergarten last year, I began to realise that I had to study English with him together. I decided to register for the parent’s English class. In order to make a fast improvement I enrolled in both the beginner and intermediate classes.

First let me say something about the beginner class. It’s been over 10 years since I graduated from my college. And after my graduation I went to Japan for my master’s degree so I have not spoken one English word after that. I was quite nervous at first, but very soon that kind of nervous feeling disappeared, because everyone in the class was so kind especially the teacher James. Since he would encourage and lead all the parents to speak to him and to each other, we could feel free to say anything even if we needed some time to think about what we wanted to say. Although James is a Korean, his oral English is perfect. His Chinese is as great as his English too! He would give us the lesson in both English and Chinese. Thumbs up to him! There was once in the past weeks that teacher James spoke in a nasal voice, and we could tell he had caught a cold, but he still stood there giving us the lesson with a smile for the whole 40 minutes. One advantage of the beginner class is that every week we had a little piece of homework. I prefer to call this preparation for the next week rather than homework. Just because of this we could be confident when we step to the next class. And after a few weeks’ learning, we feel brave enough to express our ideas in English.

Let’s move on to the intermediate class. Here I met several new friends, and we got along very well with each other. Our teacher Chris who comes from Australia is a very humorous gentleman. His exaggerated and funny facial expressions and body gestures always make us laugh. We are fond of his style. Furthermore he’s been in China for more than 10 years, so in case there are some words we don’t understand, he would give the exact corresponding Chinese words. Thanks for his consideration. In the intermediate class we could talk about a topic freely each week, and every one of us discussed the given topic with a lot of passion and we could express our own views on it. It’s more like an English corner. We also got to know about various Australian cultures and living habits which are different from China’s. We found the discussions quite attractive and interesting.

Thanks to the parents’ English class which has recalled my passion for English learning and the teachers and other parents who inspired me a lot. I not only made some new friends here but also got my English improved unexpectedly fast. Now I can catch up on my boy and teach him a little bit from what I’ve learnt from the parents’ English class!

Hope all the parents in our class enjoy the lessons and other parents are welcome to come. Join us together! We are all here waiting for you!

K4 Eason’s mom