Many days the second part of class, the Kouyu class (or more truthfully the TA "section"), began with TingXie, (e.g. dictation). During the 20 minute break between classes many students took to practicing new words they hadn't fully memorized before (like I often did) or solidifying what they learned and reviewing the chapter's vocab so they didn't end up writing a homophone; in Chinese, many different words have the same pronunciation, which is one of the advantages of a character-based writing system.
EAP China! Robert Klein.