Job Discussion Forums

[Roger]

...do you get such a ridiculous marching order!

My classes are humming now, my weekly routine is neatly cut out. It took some time, though, to sort out some glitches. For instance, some students have a text book (TAPESTRY Speaking and Listening), many don't! HOw is that? Typically Chinese. BUt I can handle that. The book is sky-high over the intellectual reach of my students. Not all, but many, cannot read it. What's complicating the issue is that the book comes with a VCD. That is, the school should provide me with the VCD that is supposed to be included in the package when they buy a copy.
BUt they won't give me that VCD because "we do not have a TV set in the classroom". True! It was suggested over a year ago that they purchase a mobile unit so we could share it among us FTs. They stalled, then rejected this suggestion.

OK, now I have been assigned an extra class every week. It was a pleasant surprise at first: extra work that pays extra. And the students are "Masters". THe course is to end before the spring festival.

I have now gotten hold of the text book they insist I use. It is a catastrophic one!
The publisher is Peking's FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING AND RESEARCH PRESS in partnership with CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS. This is the Cambridge in the U.K., not the other one! The same publisher also cooperates with other Chinese publishers in the making of YOUNG ENGLISH LEARNERS" text books, which some of us have learnt to fear.

The English title of my text book is "Cambridge: Skills for Fluency", and a huge "SPEAKING" in English crawls over the front page. To drive home to the simplest mind what this book is all about it has 2 Chinese characters that few of us can ignore; they proclaim "Kouyu"!

So, how am I supposed to make a gaggle (between 45 and 50) students become in just 2 months "fluent English speakers" after they have been subjected to ten years of stultifying English classroom teaching?

You may think that ten years is a sufficient period of formal preparation but I dread Chinese English students more the longer they have been exposed to their own teaching style. The longer the worse, yet to give them appetite on actually using English in genuine dialogues this university allocates a mere drop in the ocean of time, and it is an FT that's tasked with this most thankless challenges.

Never mind, so far it is routine and dandy But trying to get an idea of how to use this book caused me to have some serious migraine!

It has a Chinese language introduction to students and teachers, which I of course cannot read. (Those lucky ones among you who have a NEW CONCEPT ENGLISH text book may have had the same problem but in your case the matter is easily settled as each lesson is perfectly structured and rather self-explanatory; what's more, the table of contents informs you what the focus is on in terms of grammar points to be reviewed).
Not this book: I select chapter one, "A dozen red potatoes. (Chinese translation - sic!) Giving and receiving presents (translation)" .
Aren't you puzzled over this title? I am. There is a black-and-white picture that vaguely resembles a bottle of liquor, gift-wrapped, with a note "Congratulations" stuck to its front.
So where do the "dozen red potatoes" fit in?

That would have to be gleaned from a TAPE that my employer wisely decided to withhold from me. After all, I would have to borrow a tape-recorder as well, and who knows how long it would last in my hands?

The text that follows the title is not in English but in Chinese - for me another hurdle.

The next page contains a sub chapter titled "Thank you...it's...er...lovely!" (followed by yet another, totally unnecesssary Chinese translation!).

Then the instruction that I must follow (marked by a symbolic key): With another student guess what the present in the photo above might be.

So, my Chinese students must guess what's in the gift wrapper that seems to contain a bottle of booze. I doubt this is going to be a long discussion among the pairs of students; will they converse with each other in English?

Then:
"Do you have any memories of these kinds of presents:
- unusual presents
- presents that you remember for some special reason
- presents that seemed ridiculous (1: refers students to an explanation IN CHINESE of all languages, at the end of the chapter).
- Presents that you wanted to throw away (2: another explanatory note at the end of the chapter, again in CHINESE!).

NExt stage: the use of the tape. My instructions as per this text book are:
Students exchange their opinions on
- who was the present from?
- What was it?
- How did the speaker feel about it?
- What did the speaker do with it?

That's it. How can you work with students when the questions revolve around a dialogue you and they cannot listen to or read?

There is no drill and no focus on any linguistically relevant point in the English language; it is mere guided chit-chat for students supposedly adult, mature and about to enter the world of work.
I will have to conceive of more suitable course contents on my own!

[KarenB]

I had to use this book several years ago in Sichuan, and I know what you mean. I think what I did was take the topic supposed to be covered in the chapter, and then produced a lot of my own discussion ideas or group activities around the topic. I also wrote my own dialogs about the topic, so I could throw in some more vocab and idioms for them to learn, so I could teach them reduced speech and pronunciation, and so they could practice their fluency.

All in all, it was a lot of prep work, but I was able to borrow stuff from other preps I'd done or other books I was teaching from.

A colleague of mine wanted to find the tape to go with this book, and we couldn't find it in either the Xin Hua Book Store or the Creation Bookstore when we looked for it several weeks ago. In fact, neither store even carried the book (at least not the ones on Jei Feng Xi Lu in Haikou).

[friedrich nietzsche]

Hi Roger.
This is exactly the kind of thing I want to get away from, which is why I previously posted on looking for a real school. Why would you put up with this? Correct me if I am wrong, but don't you have advanced degrees and years of experience? Is it not the case that you could be working in an environment with higher standards? I guess I am interested in what keeps you in China.

[latefordinner]

My sympathies, Roger. Back in SARSdays I got the same series (books 3 and 4) and didn't get the tapes. I'd like to say that I improvised brilliantly and crafted fascinating and instructive classes out of the material at hand. Well I tried. The truth is that between 2 classes, 3 students were comfortable with the material, and perhaps another 6 were able to keep their heads above water. I alternately challenged, cajoled, flattered and badgered all that I could out of them, and sometimes enjoyed the results. The other 30+, well I like to think that they picked up a few tips on how to write a coherent sentence, but I wouldn't bet the farm on any of their IELTS scores.
I maintain to this day that the single greatest problem I had was the systemic misassessment that placed students in these classes long after other FTs had noted and struggled to deal with their problems. The excessive translation into Chinese and poorly edited presentation hurt, but the texts would have been quite survivable if only students who couldn't handle the material had not been pushed into the course.

[Henry_Cowell]

[Roger]

Thank you, KarenB, for your empathy and solid good advice! I can see you have worked through many a challenging classroom situation! In fact, your ideas are pretty much mine - but yours, obviously, for stating them here first.

Friedrich Nietzsche:
In reply to your question I can say this: I taught at an international secondary school in HK for 2 years; it was both a holiday away from the sometimes abrasive mainland Chinese environment and an enormous liability as I had much higher goals to attain without the least local support. Luckily, my students made it past the post in the final exams (British GCSE, held under a different teacher and monitored from London).
At that time I had just purchased a home property on the mainland and married a Chinese woman. The first of these two was an excellent idea, the second my worst one in all my life...
Anyway, you can gather from these biographical facts why I keep teaching here. Making weekly round trips between some Guangdong destination and HK isn't really my cup of tea (you have to think of how many passport pages that is going to use up in a year!), plus the time you spend on China's murderous highways...

I had an excellent offer from an Aussie institute in Shanghai but I had to keep them waiting because I had to first take care of domestic peace at my home; this is now achieved thanks to a court session that ended in divorce.
As you can see, life is the same in China as elsehwere - full of ups and downs. I wouldn't want to move house just because I have had a spot of bad luck in terms of romance and marriage; as for schools you can't always be choosy. I will eventually do a more menaingful thing.

And Henry,
your black humour is noted. There isn't anything to say since you are obviously still a struggling newbie veteran of just half a year in China. Let's shoot the breeze over some Tsingtao in a couple of years - when you have learnt something from your job and your immersion in Chinese life.
Thank you for your time!

[Henry_Cowell]

[Brian Caulfield]

I'm using those Tapestry books . Have you noticed how contrived the dialogues are . "Roger tell me about your daily schedule?" Well I wake up everyday at 6.30 them brush my teath Bla bla bla . It is like those beginning books in any language that teach you things like " This is
is a book . This is a pen . I am a man." I mean English people never say these things so why do we teach them ?

[Roger]

Henry my old sport,
I do maintain my offer to exchange your and my views on teaching in China at a later date, not now; has it occurred to you that your experiences you are currently making here are vastly different to those you made 33 years earlier?
But I do encourage you to share with me, and everyone else, your experiences in the cult revol China of 1972. That sounds very appetising to me for more reasons than just one!

As for TAPESTRY, not sure what book you were talking about. I have before me 2 tomes of that series, namely:
- TAPESTRY: Listening & Speaking,
and
- TAPESTRY: WRITING.

I can assure you such banalities as your dialogue do not occur in either.

L&S, for example, comes with a VCD (I mentioned that above) that has excerpts from CNN TV programmes. It is all very American native English, nothing contrived. Topics include:
- High-tech communications - a curse or a blessing?
- Humour - can laughter be the best medicine?
- Being an immigrant - culture shock and adaptation
- Exploring American culture - McDonaldisation of the world

Many more highly-controversial and abstract themes.

The WRITING book has no dialogues at all: it actually teaches students to write notes, keep diaries, asks them to follow examples of how to write a description of images, essays, narratives etc.

Both books are "interesting" - for the dedicated learner and even for a teacher.
The question is whether Chinese university grads, totally devoid of any passion at their stage in life, can muster enough zeal and actually browse through the book in their SPARE TIME rather than merely sit in the classroom trying to synchronise their reading aloud with the teacher's reading aloud...

[Henry_Cowell]

Roger, you have absolutely no idea what I did in 1972, just as you have no clue about most things today. And we have exchanged views on teaching several times in the past. You've failed each time. No need to repeat that experience.

[friedrich nietzsche]

Hi Henry,
One of the things I would give my right arm to have experienced is China in the 70s and 80s. Is there any chance that you could write something of your experiences?

[vikdk]

I first came to China in 87 - one of the biggest differences street noise - in the old days those bike bells sure were deafening during rush hour!

[friedrich nietzsche]

How has teaching in CHina changed over the years? How have the Chinese people changed? Are there some good things that have been lost?

[vikdk]

I never taught - just a backpacker - but we did end up sleeping in a village school in yunnan while trying to be incospicuous - lots of places off limit in those days. when we woke up the next day and went into the playground the kids ran away in terror - never seen a loa wai before - longhair and beard didn't help either we eventually got to go into the classroom to say hello - but those kids were kraping themselves litterally!!!!

other thing was anybody who wanted to enjoy themselves had to break the law just about every day since you wern't allowed to use RMB but had to use a tourist currency called Foreign exchange currency the original FEC - anyways that meant any switched on tourist found the nearest currency black market and exchanged the FEC (locals could buy foreign goods with FEC in the friendship stores) for RMB - it was suposedly illegal for us to use RMB but nobody seemed to mind and we could change up to 1 to 10 making a huge saving!!!!

thinking about it breaking rules also seem to give huge advantages today

[Roger]