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 CTalk 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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