October 1984


10-3-84
          I am going in today to show my face to the Business English class. I missed the #23 and school bus last week. I am not sure of the schedule I made with Mr. Lee but I do not think I will see this class again for a while. I will enjoy not having to travel out to Fu Jen so often; three days a week is enough. I have been early to the school bus the past few days but the alternative is missing it and my class.
          I spent four hours with Tom Nash in the Writing Lab. I will introduce audio tapes for dictation-composition exercises. I will also introduce cloze exercises and tagmemics [the science of sentence structure.] I misplaced my tagmemics book, the new little ‘Little Red Book’ of my library (Linguistic Concepts: An Introduction to Tagmemics by Kenneth L. Pike) and I am concerned since I rely so heavily on it for my writing classes. It is ironic considering how much I disliked studying it in my class with Prof. McCartan at Seton Hall two summers ago. I am coming to learn its value and I am interested in mastering tagmemics one step ahead of my students. I hope I will find it today at the university or I must ask Mom to bring another copy with her when she comes here in less than two weeks.

10-11-84
          I am learning how to control fifty students in a university writing class. I cannot possibly mark one hundred papers a week as I would with a class of five. It took me two and a half hours this weekend to mark nine assignments!

10-25-84
          I have been working hard but less than I had been during the summer; thirty-seven hours per week as opposed to forty-eight. I am putting out a lot for the Fu Jen Writing Lab; I am paid for six hours but I have been there ten hours this week.

10-29-84
          After two weeks of teaching fourteen hours and spending ten hours at the Writing Lab, I will be easing up a bit with Wednesday, Chiang Kai-Shek’s birthday. The following two Wednesdays I will also be off as Mr. Lee takes charge.

10-30-84
          I started a 102 class at JJELS. It is a nice change of pace from the 106 class I started out with when I got here in July and the 108 I just completed. We have been here for four months, in our new condo for two months. I like my life. I am happy with what I am doing; glad to do more. It is funny but I do not know how much money I am making. I give almost all my salary to [my wife] and hope she is putting enough away.

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