TQ 105 Lina from Shanghai, China

Ten Questions ESL Podcast

TQ 105 Lina from Shanghai, China

I met Lina 18 years ago when I taught in Hangzhou, China and she was getting a master's degree in English. After that she got a job at the best university in Shanghai, Fudan University. Fudan has sent her to the U.S. twice, and both times she visited my parents' house. She became like part of our family. She calls my mother "Mom", and Mom considers her to be one of her bonus daughters. In the interview we totally forgot to mention that Lina was a tour guide four years ago when my mom and sister came to China on vacation. She and her son Matthew spent three or four days showing my mom and sister around Hangzhou. (Lina, thanks so much for taking such good care of my mom and sister before they came to see me in Nanning!) Lina is in the U.S. this summer because her son participated in a choral festival in San Francisco. After the competition they have been traveling around the country, visiting friends of theirs in Minnesota, Michigan, and North Carolina. I have already interviewed her son and will post that podcast episode in a week. Listen as we talk about how to pronounce "Shanghai", how Shanghai is better than Beijing (just kidding, listeners in Beijing!), and we learn about a small but very interesting religious group in the U.S. called the Amish.

At the end, Lina gives three suggestions to English students. Later she told me two more: 4) Don't expect perfection; and 5) If you need to use your English for a test or a class or a trip, don't wait until the last minute to improve it.

Here are some words that we used in the interview that you may not know: revolutionary writer, pen name, rank, a seasoned teacher, Amish, grace, to be exempt, exemption, to forgive, gender, one academic year, personality, reluctant, to err is human, broccoli, cashew, cube, choral, choir, to deteriorate, to lag behind, tremendously, overemphasize, to interact with, dam.