No One's Watching

Professional development should begin with YOU, I suppose, but it is a little difficult when nobody is watching what you do. I have been working in China for 17 months now, and no administrator or supervisor of mine has ever been in the classroom while I was teaching. I'm not saying it would necessarily be different elsewhere, but I feel like maybe it would.

New semester starts on Monday! Plans for 09/10 are still up in the air. Many possibilities, but nothing concrete yet.

Idea for Annotated Bibliography on Chinese English Research Published in China

Note: Obviously, I can't do this alone and I need help from people who read Chinese.

1. Identify which journals in China are likely to have "good" research on English / Applied Linguistics.

2. Search databases for articles on Chinese English / Chinglish / China English.

3. Read abstracts. (thankfully in English.)

4. Read articles. (this is the step I can't do)

5. Write summaries of articles.

6. Cast a wider net to all 45 bazillion academic journals in China.

7. Repeat steps 2-6, but during step 3, attempt to weed out articles which are obviously just summaries or plagiarized or otherwise worthless.

8. Publish.

I don't know how feasible this is, but I think it's at least worth pursuing steps 1-3 even if nothing else comes of it.