Dave <geriatric_hobo@hotmail.com> -- 13 February 2005

Imagine a Chinese senior middle school classroom containing around ninety senior grade three students (age around nineteen years). They're packed into the room like sliced bread, half hidden behind huge piles of text books and in the winter, they're also wrapped up like Eskimos and all that can be seen of their flesh is their faces. My job? To spend 45 minutes once a week "teaching" them conversational English. Imagine further, that each week I have eighteen such classes to deal with ¨C that's roughly one thousand six-hundred students each week. Divide the class time by the number of students in the class and I have an average of thirty seconds or so to spare for each student ¨C which of course means I have no time to pay any of them any individual attention whatsoever.

They start work in their classrooms at 0630 each day for seven days each week. They finish work at 2130 hours each evening and then have just 30 minutes for their supper and to get into bed in their (unheated) dormitories before the lights are turned off at 2200hrs each night. They have a two hour break for lunch and a one hour break for tea. They have no form of entertainment provided by the school. No access to television or radio and no time in which to simply socialize with each other. Boys and girls are mixed in class, where they are under the constant eye of whichever teacher is doing his stuff but out of class they are rigorously separated and romantic liaisons, if suspected, are ruthlessly stamped out.

Moreover, it's their last year in school, so those who have no chance of making it, know this already and don't give a damn any longer. So around 15%-20% of the students pay me no attention whatsoever, preferring to read their comics or simply sleep. The Chinese teaching staff look on these students as stupid and unintelligent and consequently transfer them to the rear of the classroom where they simply feed off each other and sit there still and silent, a sullen bunch of self-confessed losers. They are thereafter ignored by the Chinese teachers and left to die on their own.

On asking advice from Chinese teaching staff about these deadhead students, I have been told not to bother about them at all. Ignore them totally and just go in the classrooms at my scheduled times ¨C¡°Talk to the class as a whole and leave!¡± What a great attitude!

The majority of the students in the class want to make sure they will pass their forthcoming final examinations that will seriously determine their entire future. Conversational English does not form part of these examinations so they're all busy mugging up on just about every other subject in the curriculum. This takes care of around 70% -75% of the class.

The remaining 10% are those who are really bright and sharp and who can speak English tolerably well. They all want to be English Teachers, Interpreters, Lawyers, Politicians, and Doctors. These students do all the talking in the class yet number less than ten. For all practical purposes the rest can be thrown out of the room.

The cream of the crop are hived off into "Class One" where no deadheads ever go. In THIS classroom it is like a dynamo. All the students glow with enthusiasm and when asked to speak, never have to be cajoled, persuaded or shamed into doing so. So I know for sure that SOME of this age group are real people but they are less than 5% of the whole.

Chinese children in primary school will literally fight each other for the chance to stand up and show how well they can speak English ¨C leastways they did when I was running their classes - yet when they get to junior middle school stage they seem to lose confidence in themselves and everything they stand for and they are glued to their seats. To get Chinese students to stand up and as much as fart is a significant task that requires every ounce of persuasion I can muster. Although I am not an ¡®entertainer¡¯ I have to spend the first 10 minutes of speech time or answering time shuffling sideways up and down classroom aisles designed to allow free passage only to Chinese teenagers ¨C yammering away like a game show host having a bad day ¨C in order to get them on the move.

They have absolutely no interest at all in world affairs, except those where the Americans are having a hard time, such as in Iraq. They are obsessed with the subject of Taiwan and prepared to talk volubly (if badly informed) about it but only as long as you sing their tune in return. Any suggestion I make that the twenty five million residents of Taiwan be consulted to discover what they want for their future and my students'eyes glaze over.

They once would talk endlessly and proudly of which Chinese athletes won gold medals in the Athens Olympic Games but now, six months down the road from Athens they have no recollection and thus no interest in Olympics either.

They show almost no sign of initiative and very little interest in anything. They expect other people to do literally everything for them and even when asked what THEY think they should be doing in a conversational English class they have little or nothing to suggest. They won't enter into classroom discussions or debates because they're scared of losing face even when they see a few other students in the same class standing up and NOT losing face. They will, however, perk up noticeably if I put on a game such as Hangman or Twenty Questions. They like to see me doing cartoon sketches and drawings on the blackboard and if I were prepared to sing them songs (which I am not!) and show them how to dance (nor that!) they will positively love me for it ¨C but all these people are young adults, not children. Under Chinese law they have passed the age of suffrage. So at their age and stage what will they learn about English from such irrelevancies as these?

Unfortunately I have to take as I find and with one thousand six hundred such students each week to have to deal with, I have had enough of them. I shall honour my contract until its expiry at the end of June and then find myself another job teaching primary school children or much younger teenagers who in my limited Chinese experience are much brighter and nicer people altogether. Who are more intelligent and more attentive. More willing to learn and more cognisant of the importance of learning. All in all a much smarter and enthusiastic bunch of students than their final-year counterparts.

Is this failure on my part? Or is it failure on their part? Or is it the Chinese vision that needs a tweak or two?

Anyone else in a similar situation?

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You are not alone, Dave!
Chunping Alex Wu <chunpingwu2001@yahoo.com> -- 13 February 2005

Dave-"hobo":
Believe or not, not only you were not alone, most of us are like that, but not many mentioned. The whole Hiring-A-Native business is a farce. All the motivated students except those in the remote West don't need a Native when they all have access to all the affordable media. I know most of us the 'foreign' teachers are doing whatever we can to help the students, but the administration is not really supportive. How many of your libraries have English/English dictionaries? How many of the officials talked about and shared your problems with you? How many cared about your qualification? How many of them understand what a certificate realy meant. They just want 'to have' foreign teacher, they don't really care how much we can do to the students. Most of the parents would be satisfied if the school 'have' foreigners teaching their kids, they never know how much their kids got. To be quite frankly, that's a huge waste to the country's economy, both in the fund and in the existing Chinese human resource bank.

Alex Wu,

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Flogging horses
Dos -- 14 February 2005

I wouldn't 'blame' yourself for anything Dave, you seem to be doing about as well as you could possibly do in that situation. If you want smaller classes you can try for a private school, but some would say they are generally 'dodgier' than state schools.

Work with the ones you can, no point flogging a dead horse!

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Anyone esle in a similar situation? To an extent yes!
Anon -- 4 May 2005

Dear Dave,

I felt that I had to reply to your post. I understand completely and utterly. I also see that you are disillusioned with teaching these students. It sounds as though, you are trying to conquer the problem and I admire you for that.
I am working at a private school and teach every level from the small children (5 and 6 years) to high school level. I do not mind teaching at the private school, as the classes are small and the majority of the students are willing to learn.

However, I also teach at a middle school and find it increasingly tedious and difficult. Some of the classes are really creative and want to learn English. The others are just a waste of time in my opinion.

I don't know why I bother, because it appears as though the students would rather talk amongst themselves, do homework or read comics. They can get really noisy as well.

A lot of the problems stem from the fact that the class sizes are far too big. I have about 70-80 students in each class. The classrooms remind me of Victorian England, where the teacher is on a raised platform, giving off the superior-inferior impression.

I do not like this style, as the difficult classes have no motivation and seem to be under the impression that the teacher is always right!

I feel like a gameshow host myself, running up and down the aisles, trying to get them to speak in English not Chinese.

I have tried several ways to make my classes more interesting, from games to quizs to roleplays. It really annoys me, that some Chinese English teachers have said all I do is play with the students in my classes. They prefer the spoonfed approach of choral repetition which I loathe and detest. It is not really teaching the students anything at all. They seem to think that the students can learn many new phrases/sentences/words and so forth, based on the text book. It is not very ideal as some of the students have difficulty with simple pronouns and sentence structures.

I wish that I could teach the five, creative, motivated classes oral English and let the other classes be. However, this is not going to work, so I am just going to battle forwards, thinking of new ideas minus choral repetition.

I wondered if anybody here gets the impression that we native English speakers are not always welcome in some schools and universities in China.

Personally, I do not care about earning lots of money, I see the need for ESL in China and think it is about time this spoonfed approach was thrown away. Do I have a point?

Thank you.

Take care. >-|

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I've the same problems here
RhenoThai -- 15 May 2005

Welcome to TEFL. This is one of the reasons I preach for newbies to get a fake certificate first. If it works out and you like it, you can get a 'real' one later. If it doesn't and you get pissed off and go back home, at least you've not spent a wad on a useless piece of paper. What you describe is EXACTLY what I'm going through in Thailand. I've had all sorts of 'behavior' problems in my class. So many, in fact, I now believe I'm not really a teacher as much as a glorified babysitter. Well, that's not me. I wish now I MYSELF would have gotten the fake certificate before jumping in. I dropped 1600 on a cert and regret it every day I'm here.

At my school, I see a class at MOST twice a week. Each class is 50 minutes, and many of my students come late. Stragglers often come up to 30 minutes late. In a 50-minute class, that is quite a chunk of time. It's no surprise my students haven't learned much, and coupled with the fact they NEVER practice outside of class, I know they never will learn much. Who needs it? I'm moving on to Korea, then Turkey. I hope it works out in Korea. If I go to Turkey, that is the last straw. I'll be retiring if I find more of the same there. I'll use my TESOL to start my next BBQ back in the states and forget I ever tried to teach these brats one iota of English. I wish I could get the 1600 back I spent on my cert.

It's not over yet for me. I still have two more places to try. Good luck.

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These problems are caused by........
SiamSap -- 15 May 2005

Your classes are giving you fits because:

1. The 'system' where you are sucks. Students are not encouraged to study/practice/do homework outside of class. They have been led to believe by their elders that this is unnecessary. If only. Teaching TEFL is an uphill battle, and most people where I teach haven't caught on to this fact. When one is learning an L2 in his/her L1 environment, it is MUCH harder to learn, as the exposure factor is much more limited. This means they must practice, practice, practice. At my school, my students have proven time and time again they are not willing to do this. They believe they can come to my class for 50 or even fewer minutes a week and become fluent in one semester without any other effort. Dream on.

2. Asian students seem to have an enormous inferiority complex that saps their confidence and drains their motivation. They have to convince themselves they CAN learn English if they want to learn it in a reasonable time period.

3. Cheating is a viable option. The 'cancer' of cheating must be rooted out of Asia's educational systems. Even my adult Thai students cheat in my classes when they get the chance.

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