Before signing a teaching contract at a medium-sized public junior college on the outskirts of Shijiazhuang, I asked how many students at most would be in my classes, all of which would be spoken English, to be taught in ordinary classrooms. As I was assured the biggest of my classes would have no more than 40 students, I signed up.
But you can imagine my surprise and anger when my first class had almost 80 students. Why so many? Because two classes had been combined as one for the purpose of studying spoken English. When I took this up with the teacher in charge of foreign affairs, he said it was nothing untoward, and that the previous foreign teacher had happily taught big classes. He added that the contract was still intact as it didn't contain any clauses re maximum number of students to be taught by me in any classroom , so I had no grounds for complaint!
But fortunately for me, rather many students are now playing truant regularly, to which I'm more than happy to turn a blind eye! As time goes by, the number of students missing class on purpose is steadily rising. No great loss as most of the skivers can't speak any English at all. Besides, it gives me more time to concentrate on those better ones who can be bothered to attend.