Job Discussion Forums

[Atlas]

Today i assigned my students a composition on computers. The assignment was written on the board:

Some people believe that computers are good for education, and some schools are putting them in classes for young children. Other people believe that computers inhibit a person's intellectual, moral and social development. Write a composition discussing your opinions using examples & details.

What they gave me were papers written like they came straight from a textbook-"computer is fun, it is my good friend, you can play and study, i play game", and very little personal opinion, and absolutly no one taking a stand on the issue. The words utter mediocrity come to mind. Not a single mention of the word intellect, moral or social-except the student who copied the words from the board directly and handed it in. [On what planet is that considered acceptable?]

My students are about 17, have studied Eng. for 5-7 years, but use it purely at the level of halting vocabulary. [BTW They all are experts at computer games]. Their parents wanted to give them a future and instead grew a crop of braindead idiots.

Is it immaturity that they cant express opinion, habit that they commandeer the assignment into some familiar rote claptrap, or a symptom of a deeper developmental problem at the social level,or education system [i.e., accepting sh*t work and no accountability-such as teachers selling exams & getting caught--though i have seen cheating widely encouraged, absolutely unpunished, unaddressed, even during exams, as an accepted practice]. Or is it my own cultural bias that i should expect an expression of individual opinion from students in a collectivistic society? Does the crazy waiguoren care more about the burden to chinese society than do the chinese? When you have no power the only thing you can express is apathy, tuning out.

Isn't the imparting of Eng. also the imparting of a new way of thinking? i came here expecting students. What i got was charades, and nonstop indoor recess. I can teach english, but i cant reprogram wooden computers. I am only an English teacher, but these kids don't even know how to be students yet!

Says my colleague: it's communism.

To quote Yaramaz, *sigh*.

Or is this the real answer to my assignment's question?

The sad thing is, this is their last chance before a life of labor.

Meanwhile, in another class, the students wont even pick up a pencil no matter how i cajole and plead and bargain. Next year they will be waiting tables & opening doors-if they're lucky-or living in squalor and not even seeing it. [as one Rule of Acquisition states, you can't free a fish from water]. I can't convince them. They've been told all their lives they are losers and they dont have any power over their own lives-never did. Maybe self-actualization is a culturally-biased paradigm, but it cant be worse than institutionalized ignorance.

But that's a whole other issue. Mushroom farmers-keep them in the dark and feed them shit.

Teaching english is the hardest job i've ever had. Clearing land and digging ditches was easier. At least then you know your labor accomplished something. What do i do all day? I talk to the Great Wall of China.

Did Mao advocate an ignorant populace? Was that Confucius or Lao Tze? Just what is the English teacher's function-because these students will never learn English beyond a pathetic unusable level.

I know 120 words in chinese and i am more fluent in my second language than they are! I am capable of recombining words in genuine communication. I listen and understand better, and my pronunciation, i have been told by different people, is not good, not wonderful, but perfect.

Complacency is the greatest problem. My students haven't the slightest inkling of their personal power. Yet some i have interviewed think becoming a doctor is a realistic career for them-even if they are utterly disengaged in the classroom. They have no clue what life is in store for them, or that they only have themselves to thank for it. They are the waiters and ditchdiggers and housekeepers of the future.

Many of them have never been outside of the city! In 18 years they never shelled out 50 kuai to visit the country. What's worse, they think it's alright, and dont think they are missing anything!


And then i finish a small piece of advice or lesson, and almost feel i imparted something valuable, and they are actually paying attention, and just as I'm making my ultimate point, and almost feel good about it, someone stops me to ask me to sing a song! Great googley moogley!

Institutionalized ignorance-ah, now i understand the lie of the school! It has the unfortunate task of educating against the threat of spreading knowledge. The status quo must be protected.

Lazy-no, inert - and ignorant and complacent.

Next topic:

Recently some teachers were arrested for selling some exams to students preparing for a university entrace test. It was a student who informed the police. Do you think this practice is common or uncommon? Do you think the teachers should go to jail for 2-3 years [they will]? Does this help or hurt students, and what does it do to society over time? Are relationships more important than honest achievement?

Their most common response? A full quote of the above paragraph plus an appended ��is bad�.


Obviously!

[golden monkey]

maybe your next batch of students will be better. i have seen some good students and i have seen bad. it all about motivation. if u can't motivate them, threaten violence...beat a few of them as an example to the rest. i bet they will fall in line, and learn more quickly. seriously though, i have had some great students in the past, and better than that, i have seen some students make tremendous progress. so it is possible. a truism some people here seem not to know, or just plain ignore, is that u can lead a horse to water...etc. these kids need to want to learn english, not just get told by thier parents that its important. that's killer. my parents told me algebra was important...bah! i recommend a bit of first year psycology. if they can be motivated, and then actually see their own progess, that in itself can be a catalist. (sp?) catylist? you know what i mean.

[struelle]

Good assignments, and they are remarkably similar to the written components (discussion essays) of the IELTS test which I also teach.

The good news is that students can succeed in expressive writing, provided they know the mechanics of how to do it. I've had 15-16 year olds in my classes who could express themselves quite well. When I teach to the IELTS test, we have to spend at least 6 weeks going over concepts like:

- paragraph organizing
- essay formatting (introductions, bodies, conclusions)
- brainstorming ideas (most important)
- outlining ideas
- showing both sides of an argument
- using transitions
- contrasting
- smooth grammar and a variety of sentences

If you're going to assign students a complex written composition, these skills and more are essential for them to learn. Expressing opinions and creative thinking doesn't come naturally to these guys. But if you show them the steps and push them forward, sooner or later they can build up their own resources.

[Taiping04]

Yours have been to Suzhou Steve? Mine are in their twenties, and are still thinking about going.
What's your secret?

[Roger]

The TEFL scene of China does need a serious rethink and revamp. The combination of Confucian rote-learning and western humanism doesn't work. COnfucianism is a glove in which humanist hands don't fit. The glove is a straitjacket.

The kids ought to have to learn to think independently, to analyse things on their own. Studying English could be the key to all of this, but it ain't.
There should be no conversation classes any more because they are way too immature and undisciplined to handle dialogues competently. They should learn to LISTEN to what others say, then to think about what has been said, and lastly, to respond after thinking it over.
Instead, we get sputterers of well-rehearsed or not so well rehearsed mumblings taken strait from some other source.

Recently, a middle-school kid of 17 years wrote me a personal letter in which she complained her Chinese English teachers asked them to read too many newspaper articles, so "we have been fed up". Instead, she wanted me to allow all sixty of them to "speak to our foreigner (sic) firends, such as just you..."
Well, I don't favour the idea of having to listen to them all the time, without having a chance of asking any question.
And, I also want their English to improve to the point that I can safely say it has in fact improved.
Instead, all I get is for them to repeat themselves and their faulty English and their faulty pronunciation.

They should have to learn how to write essays, diaries, poems, I don't know what - but they shyould learn to do things independently of their teachers and peers.
And they should get and accept the grades they deserve!
Which should be gtiven by us, not their own teachers!
Wiriting, not talking! It is so much more thought-provoking. ANd, it does make the learner work. What kind of "work" is involved in "talking"?

[Rhino]

Roger that was a great post but dont you think that speaking is an important part of the english language? Maybe there is'nt much work in talking but in my classes I try very hard to make the students think in English and respond to each other. I really respect your posts but I sometimes get the impression that you think oral english classes are a waste of time and that I disagree with just because of the results I've seen in my own classes. I do agree that they should learn to write poems and diaries etc. If I'm wrong about what you think, please correct me. Cheers!

[struelle]

[Louis]

I agree with the idea that you should teach them *how* to express their opinion before asking them to do it. I taught a poem class this week, going over the desired structure (nothing complicated, this is junior school), emphasizing that everybody had to write one, and everybody had to write something different. To my amazement, it worked fantastically with 7 of the 8 groups I used it on (this includes 2 groups that only started studying English in September.) So, with clear instructions, it apparently is possible to get them to do something that isn't copied directly from their text.

[Ace]

Seriously, I'd love to know how you got your classes brainstorming...I'd also like to read the other guy's 'clear instructions'...

When I give instructions to my 22 year olds, usually at least twice, slowly, I also write them on the board (e.g. "Make notes, do not write on the hand-outs! I want them back for the next class") but it only works for half of them.

8 years of English classes and she doesn't understand "Please close your book"? She's not being impolite (or defiant or recalcitrant), she probably just didn't understand...There's an old Chinese saying...aren't you sick of those stupid sayings? Yes, the minister has a big stomach...and China is still being held back because if corruption!

I can hardly keep a straight face sometimes when they tell me they are busy...have you ever, ever seen anyone busy in this country?

If they do so much study, then why are they still so ignorant? I learned two foreign languages and was more fluent in 4 years than they are in eight...and no, I didn't have anyone to practise Latin with - or French either come to that...

They want to talk for the same reason they like listening to constant crap music...it saves them from having to think, to confront their shallow little lives...But conversation classes?

God help me...what on earth can they talk about? "I love my mother" "Chinese food is delicious" "My hometown is very beautiful" "We all eat jiaods -sorry, dumplings - during the Spring Festival" ('Festival'...Mum and Dad, the TV and a bowl of boiled dumplings...)

[kev7161]

When I was in the states before coming here, I took a course in the learning of the Chinese language. Our textbook was this small, thin book that had the English expressions and then the Chinese expression. Our little Chinese teacher (an old man) would teach us the pronunciation and then have us repeat, listen and repeat, listen and repeat. Later, he'd ask us a question in Chinese and then we were to answer in Chinese to the best of our abiities. At the end of class, our assignment was . . . . well, there were no assignments. No workbooks to practice our writing of the language or how to draw the characters. Also, the book didn't go into the mechanics of the language - - grammar rules and so on. Just pronunciation, only pronunciation.

From time to time, I'd ask what the literal translation of a Chinese phrase was so I could get used to the patterns of the sentences. As most of you know, the Chinese language is akin to "Yoda-speak" (Help you I can, mmm-hmm, help you find Yoda!). However, this would throw his lesson off-kilter and often he wouldn't know how to answer me (his English was not so good). He had a very concise plan - - he even had an alarm clock on his desk so he knew exactly when the breaks were and exactly when the class was over.

So, the point I'm making is that this is the way ("a" way?) that the Chinese try to teach foreigners how to speak English -- listen and repeat. Maybe that is what our administrators feel we should be doing as it is the BEST way to teach the comprehension of a foreign language. I don't know, the class became very frustrating for me 'cause I wasn't really LEARNING the language - - not knowing what I was saying or why I was saying it. Granted, this was only a beginning class so maybe more advanced classes get more in depth, but I can only compare to my Spanish classes. We did a bit of everything in that class (pronunciation, memorization, grammar, writing practices, reading comprehension, etc.) and, although not fluent, I grasped the language rather quickly.

[Roger]

I know a few foreign-run schools in China that don't do oral classes, and their idea is, as is mine, that learning how to write is more important than how to speak.
Tell me writing is NOT speaking? It is, albeit in a more disciplined manner. And without the "noise" that accompanies oral production. But you don't really need to "speak it out" (some Chinglish?) as my students tell me.
Of course, Chinese do need to eventually use their mouths to produce English, but first thing, they ned to get wired to the language. Can they get any feel for English if they never stop translating word by word???
The Chinese teachers who teach us their language don't know how we function, and that's why we don't like their lessons. Do CHinese like English lessons with CHinese teachers???

I guess, and some literature bears me out to some extent, the way Chinese larn their first tongue shapes their approach to learning any subsequent language. Learning to write Chinese is highly repetitive, and it can be done in a mechanical, shall we say: robotic, way, unthinkingly. This is how they learn their Chinese vocabulary, and of course, they are so inured to that they transfer this technique to learning English.
This way contrasts sharply with how we learn languages, including our first one. We learn to identify the clusters of sounds as represented by Roman letters - phonetic representation of spoken language. Admittedly, English is not "transliterated" very phonetically, but try Latin, Italian...
Next, you have to get to grips with the DIFFERENT FORMS of the same words - grammar and syntax. Our French teacher had us write exercises using one verb with all the different personal pronouns in front, conjugating it from "je" down to "elles". The verbs and their FORMS AND PRONUNCIATIONS changed from personal pronoun to personal pronoun. This is NOT done in China in regard to English (although there would be but two forms for most verbs). This is, I presume, the major reason why Chinese don't respect the Subject-Verbg Agreement rule at all.
I am right now reading a mountain of university student "essays". Frankly, what I am seeing is extremely DISAPPOINTING. I am only marking spelling and grammar errors, but even so, I have already come across several students (so far, 100 essays read) that failed!
One assignment was to transform a BIOGRAPHY into a CURRICULUM VITAE. We had done that in class, and I thought they had gotten the message. To my amazement, a similar biography was transformed by most, relatively adequately, into a CV, yet about 4 students simply copied the text and put "CV" on the top of the paper...
I even wrote on the form the students had to use for their essay "Maintain margins of approximately one inch, or some 2 centimeters. Failing to maintain margins will cost you 5 points off the maximum of 100 points".
While they were writing their 180-200 word essays (or the CV, as the case were), I noticed a few who were writing from the very paper's edge to the other edge... I pointed it out to them - they looked so aghast I thought they were going to faint.
Now do tell me: how mature are these people if they cannot learn such simple things that we had to learn at primary school?
I made them pay one kuai and start on a new form!

I often feel, Chinese are not in control of their minds - their bodies with their habits are in control of them! Vegetables!

[struelle]

This was quite an insightful post, Roger. You are gaining more face again here

Yes, the way Chinese learn their L1 contrasts very sharply with how we learn ours. There are few wholistic and/or creative methods to learn Chinese characters, believe me I've tried! It seems that the way to master them is by memorizing and repetition.

The only creativity that I know here is learning how simple characters are combined to make complex ones. But even if you see these building blocks, you still have to memorize the sound that each composite character makes!!!

To take an example, how to write 读 (du), the verb 'to read':

(1) Begin with 头 (tou - head)
(2) Add a 'heng zi' on top, turn it into 买 (mai - buy)
(3) Throw a cross on top of buy, then it becomes 卖 (mai - sell)
(4) Put a 'word' radical on the left, then it's 读 (du - read)

Every combination here makes a totally new sound which must be memorized. Even 'mai' and 'mai' have different tones. So there's no way around the repetition.

I've only slogged my way through a few hundred characters, but imagine how this process works for students who do years of this during elementary school.

Simply put, you're right, in that Chinese students have to put this method aside when learning English as it's as different as night and day. Conversely, Westerners who study Chinese need to put aside English habits and start hacking away at those characters.

Steve

[kimo]

Roger, you once said something to the effect that students need to hear a word before they see it.

[AsiaTraveller]

Does Roger really believe that writing and speaking are somehow equivalent and interchangeable, with writing being simply "more disciplined" and therefore more beneficial?

Then no wonder he's such a complainer.

Wherever did he learn this? Any halfway decent TESL/TEFL training program would have taught him the distinctions involved in teaching EACH of these productive skills.

Roger has already demonstrated (for example, in the thread "A DAY IN THE LIFE OF BEIJING") that his reading comprehension skills need some work. I imagine his teaching might suffer as well.

[Atlas]

some of my students are very good, but others have developed their writing and vocabulary skills to the great detriment of oral usage. For example, one thing I do in all my classes is write the following words on the board and ask them to say them:

well
where
we're
were


and more often than not, there are problems. Some of my students pronounce these words as if they are a single word, "welr"; but what's worse, they think they understand these words perfectly, and yet to listen to them hurts my ears. Part of language is being understood when speaking, is it not? A student should be able to say any one of these words and have the listener understand which one is being referred to.
But reinforcing writing to the exclusion of oral practice does very little for the actual use of language.

Then again, maybe actual use is detrimental to the aims of the test-oriented education system.