Debrah Roundy

Hi and warm greetings future Reader, English Writing and Neurolinguistic Program Explorer.

I am having a wonderful time exploring China. My name is Professor Debrah Roundy and my Chinese name is Professor Rong DiaJia (教授荣黛佳). Please call me Professor.

Why am I in China? I retired from teaching school in Rupert, Idaho, USA several years ago. I did not want to sit and get old, I wanted to make the world a better place. I found out about a group called BYU China Teachers out of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, USA. BYU places retired teachers from the USA and Canada in China to teach English. We also get to learn more about China and tell the people at home when we get back. It is a cultural exchange. Instead of young people it is older people, like my husband and me.

This sounded like just the thing my husband and I wanted to do so we signed up. We are glad we did. We found out the students from Shanghai Jiao Tong University are very good. They strive to come to class on time and get their assignments done. They work hard because they want to have a good future. It has been a wonderful experience meeting so many highly motivated students that we wanted to return a second year, which we did.

We enjoyed it so much we have signed up for a third and now a fourth year, but this time at Tongji University. We will explore a different part of Shanghai while we are here and enjoy sharing culture with our students at Tongji. We really can make a difference.

While at SJTU I developed my own curriculum. I love to innovate and my curriculum is unique. It incorporates many activities to make writing an interesting and fulfilling challenge. The students really liked it. They got to know themselves better and to better prepare for their personal future. They learned to assist each other to make their peer community all better with the aim of improving all. I developed it to be individualized to meet needs and desires of each student individually. This is important because my students came from all over China with varying degrees of English ability. Students started to come back to me with good reports. My teaching lessons were making a difference in their lives. Another teacher, Kevin Liu, expressed interest in collaborating on a project to publish the teaching materials. That day I was teaching my students an NLP method for making a well-formed outcome and achieving it. I could not resist and we quickly drew up a TOTE model and were off and on our way. To write with clarity I used the NLP Meta Model which as far as I am aware has never before been presented in a college writing text book yet made such a difference in my students. I invite you to be a student who works with us to make a difference in your life. Start today and purchase a student book and enjoy the challenges presented. Teachers, get the teacher's manual. All you need is there for you. Write me and I will even email you a free slide show you can use in class. You are invited to add to it your own pictures and make it yours. Just please credit Kevin and me on the title page.

This last year I concentrated more on NLP. It is an interesting way to acquire English acquisition skills as well as life skills that will make a difference for a life time.

Happy reading, writing, listening and speaking English.

Several more books are planned so keep your eyes on this series.