Trading on English

Tonight I had my final class (and dinner) with my students from the Yuan Ta stock trading company, almost all of my students were members of their risk assessment department, and let me tell you, they were one smart group of people!



We went to a great Italian restaurant called HAAS, which had really good pasta. I told them they had to speak English for the whole time we were there, and they did it! They even ordered in English from the poor waitress, who didn't speak English, but understood enough to understand their orders. I felt sorry for her, but I guess it turned into an English class for the waitress too!


The class was organized by their boss, who wanted to improve their English, and we had a lot of fun practicing, chatting and telling personal stories (especially scary ones!) Unfortunately their work schedules and English class just weren't working out, so we ended the class after just one session.


Here's a picture with their Boss, Sybil, who dropped by during the latter half of the dinner. She's a really talkative and energetic person, I can see she's never lost her love of learning, and is trying to pass it on to them. Her English is actually extremely good, so she didn't participate in the lessons except to help them practice from time to time.



The dynamic duo of Yi-Chen and Irene. We regularily had to stop the class while Yi-Chen recovered from a fit of laughter, usually because I'd drawn something on the board or someone else said something funny. Her dream is to travel to the US and watch the Taiwanese pitcher of the Yankees play in New York. Irene's English is still developing, but I have no doubts she will develop it far, because she's very outgoing and talkative. Irene is bright and friendly girl, and her homespun stories were half the fun of each class.