There is much academic debate concerning the teacher's use of a student's native language in the process of second language acquisition. My personal opinions on this subject are certainly less valuable than the linguistic research that you can locate on this debate.

But that was not the point of my post. The language teacher's personal experience learning a second language, be it Italian in college or French while living in Paris (or as SB suggests, learning Chinese in China) acts to inform the teacher about the process that his students must struggle with while learning English as a foreign language in China. I believe that this is crucial insight into second language acquisition. Reading about or watching golf on TV will not enable you to play the game, and certainly will not qualify you to teach it. Actually learning a second language as an adult, actually playing golf, WILL give you skill acquisition awareness, valuable if you wish to be a better teacher.

My students' 'poor' spoken English is accompanied by 'poor' listening skills, somewhat adequate reading comprehension and rudimentary writing skills.

But these English skills that they possess in many ways exceed my abilities to communicate within their, or any other, second language.

And it's quite likely that several of my students have native Chinese language skills that are superior in comparison to my own native English language skills.

My evaluation of student performance is always tempered by this realization and by the difficulty I personally have learning and utilizing Chinese.