Job Discussion Forums

[leeroy]

Hey there folks - I've never been to China and have no intention of going. But, it's 4:00am and I can't sleep . So, here is my essay: Chinese Students Here In London.

There is a massive diversity at my school in terms of nationality, age and social class. I have students from Kazakhstan, Iceland, Vietnam and Venezuela all studying with each other in the same class. It is a fine testament to humanity to see people from such different cultures and far corners of the world all getting on so well together. (While I acknowledge that to stereotype wildly is wrong - from now on please allow me the right to generalise...).

By far, the nationality that sticks out the most is Chinese. They are weird man. To be frank, among teachers and students alike they are noticably unpopular. No-one starts out disliking the Chinese, but there is simply nothing positive to latch onto. They are unfriendly and boring - and even the ones who do attempt to chat have such lamentable pronunciation that anything lasting longer than a couple of seconds becomes a real chore to listen to.

In our school cafe we have two queues - one for "International Food" (maybe Tacos, Burgers, Pasta, etc...) and one for "Chinese Food" (typically meat with rice). The Cafe Guy has clearly noticed that segregating the food is good for business.

We were once talking, myself and 9 other advanced students, about the "Chinese" issue at our school. The Chinese girl was asked why other Chinese students had such unfriendly attitudes to everyone else. She replied words to the effect of

"Our cultures are so different, we don't feel comfortable because we don't know what to say..."

I didn't buy it. Cultures are different - but not so much that saying "hello" as you walk past a classmate in the corridoor becomes an impossibility.

"Xing" - an anti-China Chinese guy offered a rather more stinging insight into Chinese character.

"Chinese people are stupid!" he ranted, "They don't trust each other and definitely don't trust foreigners. Most of them are shy with other Chinese people, unless they can get something from them. They have no reason to be friendly with foreign people." Mind you, he was drunk when he said this...

A Swedish student had another interesting hypothesis - "Asian people don't like Europeans. They think they are better." I didn't believe it at first but I'm warming to this idea. The other day I was sitting outside smoking, when a student of mine (Korean) caught my eye and say hello quickly. His Chinese friend eyed me suspiciously, then asked him "Your friend?" in such a way to imply "WTF?". He glanced back at me, chuckled and said "My teacher!". The girl's face changed from suspicious hostility to deference and politeness. "Oh Sorry!" she squeeled with bowing etc... An awful lot was implied by her behavioue when she had assumed that her mate was being friendly with (gasp) a European...

On our class registers, the first column we look at is the "Nationality" one on the far right (which, oddly, lists the students native language). How many explitives have been uttered as teachers notice the long line of "Chi"s filling up their registers? "Maybe some of them will be from Taiwan or Hongkong" we rationalise... "they might have an atom of personality then...".

But sometimes Chinese students can be fun, teachers love quoting them in the pub later. I'll repeat some for you now...

[Rhino]

well I dont have much time to respond, but I will say that's a rather bold statement to make on a forum filled with people living here. At the same time, no one can argue with what you observe, but my expeience with Chinese people is quite different than yours. I would imagine it would feel strange for them to be in a different country. maybe they are strange and uniformed about the rest of the world but they are deffinately not stupid. My guess is, that they do really well in their classes, especially math.

[Roger]

leeroy,
that was one of your best posts. I enjoyed it thoroughly. And, yes, I can understand and empathise.
Even the rationales you offered - it's difficult to disagree with any single one. Therefore, I suppose all of them apply.

I once had a 17-year old middle-school student who spoke so good English it was a pain to see him labouring under this stultifying system the Chinese have in place. His parents wanted him to go to AUS, and he became my private student until he Australian embassy turned application down - not because they didn't trust his English but because he was too young!
He then applied to the British, and I was mightily surprised and relieved to learn he was admitted to a British college!
Before leaving the country, I asked him why he wanted to study abroad.
His answer?
"If the Chinese want to study in China and remain stupid, let them... I want to study abroad!"
That was in 1996. Many Chinese children get pushed - much against their own desire! - by their parents to move into "the barbarian" world.
How stupid CHinese really are! Tho train their own progeny to look down on foreigners, then to ask them to live among them, study in their schools and be alienated from either side!
But then again, CHinese are "pragmatists" - always opportunistically watching out for advantages.

[The Great Wall of Whiner]

Leeroy, I enjoyed your post.

When I was in Korea, the Koreans would say "Ohh, Chinese people are so weird".

When I was in Japan, the Japanese would say "Ohh, Chinese people are so weird".

When I was in Taiwan, the Taiwanese would say "Ohh, Chinese Mainlanders are so weird".


And when I go to Canada, I will stare at them, point at them, and shout "Hey! Laowei!"

hehe

Seriously though, I think it has a lot to do with the fact that their whole upbringing is "study or be beaten with your father's belt" and "form your own opinion, and risk the police to barge into your home in the middle of the night".

That about sums it up.

[osakaittome]

Leeroy,

Let me first start out that I have not spent much time teaching to Chinese people but I have spent more than five years teaching Japanese. Some of your statements apply to my feelings about teaching the Japanese during my first few years teaching in Japan and some still do.

When I tried to ask questions like what do you do at/on the week-end? I enevitably got the response:
" I dido sleepingu"
Or the question
what do you do for fun?
"sleep"
or
What do you think about (ISSUE)?
"I don'to know"

After a few months of this, I was of course really bored, I finally snapped and some co-workers and I tried to figure out why everyone answers these questions with such boring and stupid answers. And if everyone in this country really was weird.
Here is what I have been told:
1 Most Asian people grow up in an atmosphere where it is wrong to speak out or have different opinions from others. As a result they will avoid answering personal questions about themselves or giving frank opinions on politics or issues. They will respond better if you develop game like activities.
2 The Asian education system does not foster communication. Students spend long hours memeorizing and cramming vast sums of useless information to prepare for elementary exams, junior high exams, high school exams and finally the infamous university entrance exams. As a result of all this cramming some people do not develop the necessary social skills that seems obvious to everyone. As a result young Asians will seem immature at times and would rather play games than discuss serious topics.
3 Students will never discuss personal information such as week-ends or what they like if they don't trust their teacher. Teacher's in Asia are infamous for ratting students out if they deem the students actions inapropriate.
4 In my five years of ESL, one as a manager observing classes, I noticed a startling amount of teacher's ask these types of questions. In fact I followed a group of students through three different classes and found that the same students were asked the types of questions you sited as examples in every class. I think the students are sick of being asked this.

Next I agree about the Inferiority/Superiority complex. I asked my wife why sometimes Asian people look at me funny or seem very stand offish. Basically it comes down to, pure and simple, they feel as though westerners look down on them. So they in turn become defensive and develop the attitude that Europeans are childish/arrogant and they inflate their own sense of being to feel more secure. I sometimes think that Europeans and North Americans can be very condecending, arrogant and opinionated. We go to other countries point out their flaws and sit in righteous judgement that "back home we would never do these things". Well we do.

A number of Asian people (including my wife) say things like "I HATE white people!" Of course this puts me in an awkward position and usually decends into an arguement but I can see her point sometime. The world's current environment has giving people of European/North American decent alot of advantages. You don't see boat loads of young Asian grads going overseas earn 3000-4000 US salaries teaching their languages. I think this kind of advantage grates on some peoples nerves, especially when it doesn't seem as though they deserve what they get. Let's be honest most Asians' experience with westerners has been with people who care little about them, learning about Asia or the country they are working in, and more about paying off student loans, where they will take there next holiday and beer (this is a bit of a generalization, no offense to those who come to Asia with good intensions).

Asian cultures are different. Look at the major NE Asian countries like China, Japan and Korea. These contries have long histories of isolation from other cultures. Japan and Korea were both closed off from the rest of the world until 1950 as for China it wasn't until years after the cultural revolution that they began to interact with other cultures again. So they will feel awkward interacting with foreign ideas and cultures. Look at our own histories of colonization, it took us nearly 250years to start dealing with other cultures on equal footing. So NE Asia has had about 50. I think they are doing pretty well.

I noticed also you said that the students pronunciation is terrible and that it is a chore to listen to. I think it would be a very good idea to lose this train of thought. The students will pick up on this instantly. I can speak from my own experience. I spent 4years learning Japanese in Osaka and I could see in people's eyes when they could understand or my Japanese was so terrible that it was driving them nuts. When I saw this I felt like giving up and I felt that the people were just being cruel. Yes the pronunciation is probably terrible but help them don't give up on them.

Finally, learning a second language in an foreign culture is daunting at best. Many people are rude, no one listens to you, people shout and ask ridiculous questions constantly. This may be what is happening with the Chinese students. You're point about Chinese being rich and spoilt maybe correct though. The the mainland Chinese who can afford to go overseas probaly are rich and only want freedom and a holiday and studying English is probably just a pre-text for this, mommy and daddy would definately be more willing to fork out cash for English than for a holiday so why not combine the two (If I was still young and rich I would!).

[THUD & BLUNDER]

Chinese students who study abroad are not representative of the vast body of Chinese students who can't and don't. As you suggest, they are mainly rich spoilt brats who in their own country think themselves 'special' because their parents are wealthy and who look down on everyone less fortunate than themselves. (Their parents, being nouveau riche, know no better either.) They probably resent the fact that when they go abroad they are no longer considered special. This is even more true of those Chinese students who are abroad in order to study English, as they are usually younger and therefore more immature than the average Chinese undergraduate or postgraduate.

If they also appear to be boring and too serious, perhaps it is because China is a very conformist society in which individualistic viewpoints have traditionally been discouraged. Stupidly, they are also taught to be nationalistic - perhaps only Americans enjoy waving their own flag as much. This probably comes from having previously cut themselves off from the rest of the world for so long. For them, before they leave China there are only Chinese and non-Chinese.

Also, because 'face' is important to the Chinese, many of them are shy about opening their mouths and, as they see it, making fools of themselves in public by speaking English 'poorly' in front of others. As for why 'face' is so important to them, I believe it comes from the fact that they are taught to believe that the group is more important than the individual. In other words, if they lose the respect of their group, they are nothing. In contrast, we are taught to believe that if we don't firstly respect ourselves we are unlikely to win the respect of others.

Anyway, I sometmes tell my own students the following joke and they always like it (although, just to be safe, I add that I don't think it is any longer true):

A journalist asked four students - an American, a European, an African, and a Chinese - "What is your personal opinion of the international food shortage?"

AMERICAN: What does 'international' mean?
EUROPEAN: What is a shortage?
AFRICAN: What is food?
CHINESE: What is a personal opinion?

.

[naturegirl321]

[struelle]

Much has already been discussed here, but what may be a common irritation to ESL teachers is when the Chinese students don't take the initiative and/or adapt to their new environment, thus expecting the experience abroad to be similar to 'back home' in China. This is also shared by students of other nationalities who, presumably, adapt quite well to an international classroom but find it tough to get along with Chinese.

This attitude of 'why don't they do things like back home' is of course a reversible phenomenon. We've seen plenty of posts here on Dave's, for example, about FTs who complain about the staring in China or the inefficiencies in customer service.

Regardless, the best way to nail this problem is to arrange pre-training for prospective Chinese students going abroad, and to have this training while they are still in China. Qualified FTs can conduct both English language and Western culture classes, as the two are inseperable.

During the training, the following surface elements of culture can be discussed: greetings, small talk, appropriate questions, eating habits, food, dress, festivals, and education systems.

But deeper elements of cultural differences should also be addressed, especially things like privacy, individualism, directness, opinion formation, and personal responsibility.

It's the lack of understanding of these deeper elements of culture that cause the most friction for Chinese students who interact with Westerners. Especially if they go abroad, they must be familiar with and understand these concepts or else they will run into a LOT of problems.

Although complex, a language and culture prep course can cover these issues and provide a basis of knowledge and skills they can use before leaving China.

I'm doing a course right now for a group of 12 teachers who are going to Australia and, although the prep is far from perfect, we've already solved one problem: Now the students know they have to take risks and interact with locals to improve their English. They have been officially 'forbidden' from staying in their own groups, speaking Chinese to each others, and eating Chinese food

Steve

[blackguy-n-Asia]

I think you are being too hard on these kids.

I don't have first hand experience in living in another country, but I can imagine how hard it would be to interact with anyone not my culture/language. If I was young (15-19), alone, surrounded by strangers and couldn't speak the language properly, I wouldn't talk much either, let alone chase girls.

[Kurochan]

Especially if you're teaching high school-aged kids, you're getting the bottom of the barrel. Chinese parents send their kid abroad if they aren't smart enough to get into a decent high school. Also, my English ESL friends have told me there's been a lot of complaint that foreign parents are using England as a dumping ground for kids who either have unmanagable behavoir problems or some kind of mental problem. Your kid gets thrown out of high school? Don't lose face, send him to England and brag to friends that he's studying abroad! Your kid too crazy and flunked out of school? Don't lose face, send him to England. There's been quite a problem with students coming into programs, and then the teachers realize that it's not that the kid's English is poor, it's that he's mentally ill. One person I know had a student who flatly refused to bathe AT ALL. This same teacher had a very quiet student from Japan -- it turned out he had been sent there by his parents after he got expelled from school after nearly beating a girl to death.

[garbotara]

[quote="Kurochan"]Especially if you're teaching high school-aged kids, you're getting the bottom of the barrel. Chinese parents send their kid abroad if they aren't smart enough to get into a decent high school. Also, my English ESL friends have told me there's been a lot of complaint that foreign parents are using England as a dumping ground for kids who either have unmanagable behavoir problems or some kind of mental problem. Your kid gets thrown out of high school? Don't lose face, send him to England and brag to friends that he's studying abroad! Your kid too crazy and flunked out of school? Don't lose face, send him to England. There's been quite a problem with students coming into programs, and then the teachers realize that it's not that the kid's English is poor, it's that he's mentally ill. One person I know had a student who flatly refused to bathe AT ALL. This same teacher had a very quiet student from Japan -- it turned out he had been sent there by his parents after he got expelled from school after nearly beating a girl to death.[/quot

That reminds me of the IB department at the school where I teach. The kids there are really bad.They are terribly rude and undisciplined. They went to England for a few months. I told one of the teachers in that department that i would not be surprised if one of them would get kicked out of host family's house. It is interesting to see that the problem is more wide - spread than i had thought. They take a lot of kids that have been kicked out of school.

[Seth]

i'd say it's mostly the fact that they're rich and unskilled. i've taught at a training center for students who want to study abroad and these kids were the biggest bunch of goof offs i've ever run into. The middle school students who i taught who were really into learning english and bright were awesome, but these center students were rich kids in a country where hierarchy is everything. they know they don't need to study hard, daddy will use his guanxi to get them a job. and as someone said, england is the easiest place to get into.

ask anyone who teaches at a private 'elite' middle school and they'll tell you the standard of education at these places boarders on the absurd. imagine what kind of personality you'd develop if you went to school 6 days a week 12 hours a day, no personal freedom or privacy, crammed into smelly, drab dormitories. teachers are also afraid to discipline students so usually the inmates end up running the asylum.

i taught at a school in hangzhou that was supposedly one of the top schools in china, where all the big-wigs in shanghai sent their children. the place was a complete madhouse.

[garbotara]

[ilunga]

[garbotara]