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[wawaguagua]

My previous (and first) university encouraged me to pass every student. "It's too much trouble for yourself," the head of the department would say. "You'd have to test them again in the beginning of the next term. You can just give them the bare minimum score." Ethically, that's terrible, of course, but I just went with the flow.

At my new school, immediately within the first two months of starting my job, I have many students approaching me asking me to give them make-up exams for the one they failed last semester given to them by my predecessor (who returned home). At first I'm just surprised at how many failed students there are - The previous foreign teacher must have been a real stickler. After that, I get annoyed. One reason for my annoyance is that it feels like this is extra work beyond my contractual obligations. Another reason is that the students are somewhat forceful and have a strong sense of entitlement - They demand to know my schedule so that they can choose which chunk of my free time is most suitable for them.

Finally, I head to the department chair to inquire about what's going on. He insists that as the successor of the previous foreign teacher, it's my obligation to do her make-up exams, just as she supposedly did make-up exams for the guy who came before her. He also informs me that the make-up exams are not counted as overtime or any kind of paid work. I ask about the necessity of failing students in my own classes this semester, and casually mention the goings on of my previous university.

The chairman says that another foreign teacher who recently left, who taught at this school for seven years, was very strict and usually failed four to six students in each of his classes. He also noted that failing students is good because (in his opinion) it will motivate the students to work harder in the future. I asked him what happens if the students can't pass the make-up exam, and he said that the students will get another chance to make up failed courses right before graduation time, so I shouldn't worry about them getting expelled for poor grades or anything.

So, now I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed and anxious about the future. Do I really need to have a "failure quota" to show that I mean business? Why should I let lazy students create more (unpaid) work for myself in the next term doing the make-up exams? Isn't failing students and giving myself all that extra work ultimately pointless if the students will all eventually pass through at the end of their four years?

To make matters worse, some of the students who didn't pass have good reason that they didn't. Working in Xinjiang, a good number of students are minorities who never formally studied English prior to coming to university, or only studied it very briefly, all while concentrating on learning Chinese, and probably using Chinese as the medium of instruction (which is not their native language and would probably just make the subject very confusing for them - Imagine learning Arabic from a native Spanish speaker who doesn't speak a word of English). One of the boys, an ethnic minority, is functionally illiterate - I gave him a simple read-and-repeat dialogue script and he couldn't even pronounce the most basic English words.

So, my question to you is, how often do you fail students, and what are the consequences for failing them? When I ask about consequences, I'm more interested in what it means for you rather than what it means for the student, but any knowledge of the latter would also be interesting to hear.

[buravirgil]

(1) Mopping up after another foreign teacher's discretion would gall me, but I'd never let on how I felt. If I really liked the position, I'd suck it up and take the balance. I'd be in no hurry that's for sure. Schedule those make-ups whenever the hell you want. It's their preparation that's tedious, but having accepted my lot, I'd get on with it.

(2) No teacher should have a quota of anything.

I'm at a 3rd tier university. My students are largely externally motivated, so part of my charge (to use an old term) is to engage and motivate students to see progress and success where precious little indicates it. There are many misgivings about "fluency" among Chinese students and teachers. Their expectations are, on a whole, unrealistic.

Nothing in your conclusions is nonsensical, unlike the contradictions of your chairman. He's merely rationalized a position that's convenient. Admins tend to do that. You're clearly not incentivized to flunk students. And it's been my experience that make-ups are common practice. That said, I've witnessed differences of opinion among foreign teachers about what "standards" should be our priority to impose. And were I working at a 1st or 2nd tier, I'd be prone to agree in theory because standards are important-- when they're recognized by an institution and their realization has a protocol. But that's largely not the case as I've witnessed it. Once accepted to an institution, failures are rare.

I provide a ranking. The promise I make is centered around attendance and participation. "Do that, and I haven't come from across an ocean to flunk you." Which places an onus on myself to take assessment seriously. Such as familiarizing myself with standard deviation, median, and mean. When my scores are unsurprising to students (in line with their expectations as compared to others), there's little chance of complaint. Barely passing a few, versus one, maybe two, final scores of a hundred, is sufficient motivation in my opinion. Applying measures that finely distinguish the bulk of students beneath a curve is challenging, however.

Your chairman may have made a case to rationalize the policies of a past foreign teacher, but admins are greatly subdued by an absence of grievance.

[wawaguagua]

Thanks, your explanations are very helpful. I was mainly worried that, in the case that one class might have no students who fail, the higher ups might question my grading system.

Admittedly, however, it is weakness of mine is that I'm very lenient when it comes to grading, even when the students clearly haven't been trying very hard. It's something I'm working on, but I don't ever want to get to the point where flunking poor students gives me satisfaction, as it seems to for some seasoned teachers.

My lowest level class, however, it a bit of anomaly. Half of the students are Han majority students who, like most students in China, have been studying English from primary school. Most of them are there for lack of trying, having zero motivation. The other half is minority students who, as I said, either never studied English in a formal setting or only studied it from Mandarin-speaking teachers (who spend most of their classes speaking in Mandarin to explain grammar rules) using textbooks written in Chinese intended to be used by students whose first language is Chinese. These students are also clearly unmotivated, as there are plenty of diligent minority students, mostly from other majors, who achieve a very high level of English communication in just a year or two studying on their own. However, I still feel a bit of sympathy that maybe they've just given up because the system being used to educate them isn't working.

[buravirgil]

You're welcome, but I'll risk your gratitude and contend what you mean by "unmotivated" or "zero" rather than externally so.

All students are possessed with motivation. It's just that external ones are more difficult to manage and less productive than internal ones, and can have negative effects. But humans are wired to seek affirmation and accomplishment while avoiding failure. Communicative theory addresses this with an input hypothesis, or i +1. In more classical terms, formative assessment (and diagnostic testing) address many of the same issues without the disputed distinctions of acquistion and learning, or subconscious and conscious habits.

In plainer terms, all students are motivated to demonstrate what they believe they've mastered (to a point) and resistant to progress when there's risk of being "wrong". Creating a space/dynamic/exercise that straddles these somewhat obvious and well documented states is the challenging craft of what teachers do because it's a social service, or human-to-human endeavor, and fraught with nuance. It's amazingly fragile and enormously rewarding.

My thrust being don't lose sight of the psychology of individuals, or groups of individuals, for all the institutional constraints blocking you. The burn-out in this field is not modest. Your sympathy is promising; applying it is hard work.

[schwa]