Whether it is the incomprehensible French mumbled by my United States college classmates or the halting spoken English of my current Chinese college students, the results of academic 'oral' language training is often abysmal. Other forum contributors are welcome to enumerate the reasons for this deficiency. Both are legion: the critics of 'oral' language teaching and the reasons for its limited success.

I enjoy teaching oral English to Chinese college students. I have not found it to be a simple process of "applying their speaking and listening skills actively on the basis of what other, mostly Chinese native teachers have taught them before". My TESOL certification at Columbia University in Manhattan required a practicum repairing the spoken English of new Columbia University Instructors recently arrived from Chinese Universities to teach physics or engineering to classrooms full of foreign students, since U.S. students display neither the interest nor the capability to study science. Try to imagine U.S. students studying or teaching physics in a foreign language, something that Chinese students and teachers often do. I try to remember that whenever my frustration drives me to criticize Chinese universities.

I have been taught that the dynamics of "speaking and listening skills" are neither well understood nor easily taught.

I see no reason to specifically denigrate teachers of Oral English in China; I have observed incompetent university teachers putting students to sleep in a variety of curricula. The credentialed native Professors of English in the three Chinese universities where I have taught would do well to improve their own oral English.