Just noticed my resolutions from last year--that seems like it was a century ago. Not sure I achieved any of the goals I had set for last year, no matter how vaguely I phrased them. I can't blame it all on the coronavirus, though. As I have chronicled elsewhere on this blog, not having a Twitter account doesn't mean that I haven't spent time on Twitter. I just do it, I suppose, less efficiently. (But not having an account does probably decrease my time on Twitter overall because I'm not posting, responding to posts, etc.)
I achieved a couple of things that I didn't mention as goals in last year's resolutions, like developing a new course (Travel Writing), revamping my first-year writing course (which went well), co-writing a successful proposal for a "peer connections" exchange program for the mentoring of incoming international students from China (most of whom, as it turns out, will be participating from China), and figuring out how to put together my son's new bicycle with minimal use of colorful language.
This year will be a challenging one personally and professionally. My son will be doing his kindergarten classes remotely, which means we'll have to keep an eye on him so he doesn't swipe away his teacher in favor of YouTube videos. I'll be teaching all my fall courses online, which is both a blessing and a challenge because I've never taught first-year writing online before (and I daresay most of the students have never taken an online writing class before, so none of us probably knows quite what to expect). The peer connections project will continue throughout the fall. I might be involved with a couple of other research projects as well.
I hope to be able to continue posting summaries/discussions of scholarly articles related to communication practices in Taiwan. Those are interesting to me, personally. (I don't know if anyone else gets anything out of it--I might just be displaying my ignorance for all to see in those posts--but I'm learning a lot from reading the articles.) The motivation for doing this came from something I wrote last year when I was preparing to talk to incoming English majors about my career path in English, and I wrote in a brief self-introduction about Taiwan being a place where "communication practices grew out of historical experiences of migration, colonialism, and political marginalization." Being smart, analytical people, several of the students had written questions about this characterization of Taiwan, questions to which I could either give broad, unsatisfying answers or very particular and also unsatisfying answers. So this little summarizing project is an attempt to educate myself in case anyone approaches me with this question again. As I said in my summary of Todd Sandel's chapter on "communication modes" in Taiwan, it's actually incredibly difficult to describe communication practices in Taiwan (or probably anywhere) in any coherent but also inclusive way. (This is something we discussed way back when in my intercultural communication class at Tunghai when we were discussing the overwhelming "whiteness" of some authors' descriptions of "American" communication patterns.) Anyway, if I have time, I will try to keep reading and writing about these articles. If anyone knows of some good articles about Taiwan communication practices (somewhat broadly conceived), drop me a line in the comments!
Speaking of Taiwanese communication practices, I'm trying my hand (my mouth, actually) at learning Taiwanese Hokkien through a website called Glossika. I'm mainly using this site because the Taiwanese lessons are free--they do that for some languages out of their expressed interest in language preservation. I have no idea how "authentic" the language in the lessons is, but I'm not at a point yet that I want to commit to paying for lessons. So far one phrase I've been able to use is "you are lazy," which I say to myself a lot...
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