Right on Rheno! Yes it's true that teachers often cop a lot of flak for being boring from students who forget or don't realize their own responsibility in learning.

While teaching in Beijing, in my first year or so here in China, I got criticized on occasion for being boring in class. I just couldn't make the leaders of the schools understand that the students were under obligation to play their part. Yes, I played the game! Doing my best to make the class as interesting and challenging as I could, but I soon realized that Chinese students had spent all their school life being spoon-fed.

Talk about passive learners. I couldn't think of anything more frustrating than, all day, jumping up and down in and around the classroom trying to create some energy amongst dead students, only to get hauled into the office at the end of the day and be told that my class was dull and uninteresting. "Well I have news for you mate!... So are most of your students!", was my reply, in so many words.

Many students in China don't have the foggiest idea that THEY are chiefly responsible for their own study, and that there are NO short cuts! They have to learn now that the only way to learn anything or get on in life in the future is through HARD WORK, which will by the way, be often, boring and monotonous. But here's the point! Study or life in general is as boring as the individual makes it. It's primarily up to the STUDENTS to make their study meaningful, stimulating and interesting. Many just can't see it!

I still get asked on almost a daily basis (and by college students no less, who have been "studying" English for at least twelve years), "How can I improve my speaking/listening/writing...?" Myself in reply? "Hold on a minute has anyone seen my wand?...Oh, here it is!... Now open your English textbook, place both your hands palm down on the pages, close your eyes , and slowly chant, "My English is perfect, fifty times"... Now how do you feel?... I said HOW... DO... YOU... FEEL!.......HOW DO.....H-O-W!...Ahhh!, ...hold on let's... um, try again, ...it hasn't worked...