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I recently started a new class for adults in Yinjialin, teaching them basic computing skills. Teaching adults in some ways isn’t all that dissimilar to teaching kids (they still need to learn the same basic skills. And they can also be surprisingly naughty…), but also allows you to touch on topics that you would never be able to do with children, such as discussing agriculture or current affairs.

This is a series of posts that cover different aspects of the class. Today’s post is about: finding students and initial teething problems.

The curious thing is that whilst most adults definitely want to learn how to use computers, it’s surprisingly hard to persuade them to join a class. Most of them lack confidence in their ability to study, saying that they’re too old or that too slow. You have to spend quite some time going house to house, meeting people and explaining that you’ll be beginning from scratch (from teaching them how to turn on a computer) and outlining the uses for computers and how it can help them in their daily lives. Even if they understand all that they still might not sign up. But some do, and that’s enough to begin with. In my first class I only had four students, but word of mouth spread and numbers increased steadily.

One of the big problems has been that even between the adults there exists a generational gap, and it’s divided along the lines of those that were born late enough to have studied Hanyu pinyin, and those who haven’t (previous to that I believe they used Zhuyin 注音符号 to learn pronunciation). As the most common and easy to use Chinese input methods utilise pinyin it’s absolutely crucial that they know it. So right from the get-go there’s a need for two classes, with one a pre-beginners class, spending much of their time learning how to type pinyin.

I also encountered a few problems when I first began that I didn’t really anticipate:

• In addition to the pinyin problem, I also have a student that doesn’t recognise Romanic capital letters. This, as you can imagine, is a bit of an inconvenience when you’re using a keyboard. I had to print a special chart with both small and capital letters out for him.
• For those who’ve never touched a computer before using a mouse can be quite a challenge. Often they’ll not hold it vertically, so dragging up and down makes the cursor move diagonally. In the beginning I let them practise their mouse technique by letting them draw shapes and pictures in MS Paint.
• They also tend to use too much pressure on the mouse key in the beginning. I had to constantly remind them that it was a double tap, not a double SMASH!

I’m happy to say that their own fears about being too old and too slow to learn are utter hogwash. In just the first three lessons they have learnt how to operate Windows, create folders, type, create Word files, save their work and browse their first website.

In my next post I’ll be covering in more depth just how these and other skills were taught. Keep an eye out, or subscribe to the RSS ticker!

                                殷家林成人电脑班：起步

我最近在殷家林给成人开始了一门新的课程，教他们基本的电脑技术。教成年人在某种程度上和教孩子没什么两样（他们也需要学习基本技能，他们也出奇的淘气…）而且他们也允许你谈论你不能和孩子们谈论的话题，像农业和时政。

这是一组系列文章。今天的话题是：怎样招收学生和一些萌芽问题。

令人感到好奇的事情是当大多数成年人非常肯定的想学习如何使用电脑的时候，却很难说服他们来参加课程。他们当中的大多数人对自己的学习能力缺乏自信，说他们年龄太大，或者学的太慢。你需要花费很多时间挨家挨户的去见并且向他们解释你将从零开始（从教他们如何开机开始）并给他们概括出电脑的用途以及它将如何在他们的日常生活中帮助他们。即使他们能够理解所有的这些东西，他们还是不报名。但是有一些报名的学生，这就可以开始了。在我的第一节课上，我只有4个学生，但学生们口口相传使得学生数量稳步增加。

成人水平的参差不齐是我们面临的最大问题之一。一部分人出生较晚，学过汉语拼音；而另一部分人没有学过（之前，我以为他们使用注音符号来学习发音）。汉语输入法是最为常见最易使用的计算机应用，而拼音对于掌握输入法是非常关键的，他们也对此心知肚明。所以在开始的时候就需要把他们分成两个班，初级班的学生需要花很多时间学习怎样输入拼音。

 ( 翻译：胡永宏 校阅：华振宇)