Introducing and using emotions (like happy, excited, annoyed, surprised) and "states of being" (like busy, tired, hungry, and sick) can be done by asking your students "How are you today?" at the beginning of classes, and allowing them to pick from the words shown on this poster. With beginning students, I ask questions like, "Who is hungry?" (in Chinese, naturally) and point to the word hungry on the poster. I then talk with them about how hungry they are, who else is hungry, what they want to