Of course I've known all along that Oral English is considered not a real academic subject in public unis, but recently in the run up to the TEM4 exam the students went into a general slump in regard to their level of spirit, and I finally criticized one of my classes for basically sucking abysmally (though I didn't use either of those words). Ah, I told them that if all my classes were like theirs I'd give up teaching, and that they were making me depressed [it's true. I'd throw in the towel if even a 3rd of my classes were so lackluster]. Later I found out another teacher (Chinese) had given the same group a similar lecture the morning of the same day. When I asked one of the best students what the problem was, after class, she explained that the TEM4 was all important, and without meaning to be disrespectful at all, indicated my class was less important than the obligatory phys ed class. I shouldn't take it personally, that student for one was putting in at least 3-4 hours a day in preparation for the all important exam, and was wiped out.

So, for a few weeks now I've been thinking about why Oral English is considered such an insignificant piece of fluff, and what can be done about it constructively, because, in the real world being able to speak English may be a lot more useful (certainly in opening up the outside world to them) than, say, analyzing English grammar in Chinese.

These are the sorts of reasons I've come up with for why Oral English isn't taken seriously:

1. There isn't an equivalent subject in Chinese. By that I mean when studying Chinese they'll focus on literature or composition… but being able to speak is just a given and doesn't need to be taught, hence it isn't academic, and hence not serious. If there isn't a thick book and rigorous exams, it isn't real.

2. They don't know how to teach Oral English. My guess is they do a lot of the "grammar translation" method and other outmoded approaches. I imagine most Chinese teachers wouldn't have any reason to know how to teach Oral English "as a foreign language" and thus don't realize it's a special skill one needs to get training to do properly, or even know how to go about it at all (it ain't just showing movies and talking about oneself). As a consequence they think it's all just games and singing songs and bullshit-on-a-cone.

3. Sometimes foreign teachers feel that their classes are not important ones. This may be defensive, because the students will usually like the foreign teacher's classes, in my experience most students know its a conversation class and not a paper and pen class. They may also believe their other English classes are the more important to where it will generally make them feel unpleasantly or inflated for the moment they are trying o speak it because their too deep into studying their other English class book rather than learning the skills of speaking English.

4. Foreign teachers come and go and most of them don't stay in the same place for over 2 years. They go to many different cities using whatever methods they choose and lots of them probably are trying a lot of boring bullshit trying to teach a student how to talk, man that's crazy having to teach a person who knows how to talk, speak...

I'm planning on deprogramming the students about their priorities – certainly Oral English is far more important to English majors than is the sports meeting – and am working on subtle ways of doing it besides just trying to make my class as interesting and engaging as I can. I'm looking at counter arguments. These are some things I'm thinking of telling them.

1. Their government thinks Oral English is so important that they invite foreigners to come teach it and pay for our flights.

2. It's the only class with a native English speaker.

3. I make custom lessons for them addressing their actual problems speaking then they wont try, so this lesson is as useless and its like trying to teach a cat to talk.

4. Speaking will be the most important skill for them in the future in any case where there are English speakers involved: international business, tourism, being an interpreter, traveling or moving abroad, making foreign friends…

5. I only give them about a half hour of work (things like dialogues or formulating an opinion on a topic) so they should go ahead and do it well so they can succeed in my class and improve their oral English, but many classes wont say nothing.

I want to subvert it by saying to let the easiest one come first, because they CAN accomplish it and see progress that's actually useful (in fact they will shine in the class if they devote themselves more than half-ass caring).

6. They only have Oral English for 2 years, and only 2 hours a week, for a grand total of 128 hours, which is less than the total hours in a week. Some of them achieve basic fluency in that time, while others don't and if they don't now, when they have a dedicated foreign teacher, when will they?

Wondering if any of you foreign teachers have any tactics you can share to counter the prevailing notion that Oral English is just bullshit. The way I see it now is that students in a 3rd tier city, are lucky to have good foreign Oral English teachers, and yet some of them miss the opportunity to capitalize on this, or even benefit from it at all, because they've fallen for the erroneous idea that they don't know how to talk and that speaking English isn't as important as talking about it in Chinese.