Job Discussion Forums

[denise]

chinagirl--

I think I understand your sentiment. I do think that it would be unfair to say something like, "all [fill in a nationality] people suck because I taught one of them once and he/she was a meanie."

I don't think that's what this thread is about, though. I got a sense of most of the posts that they were just based on personal observations. I think all of us, whether we admit it publicly or not, make judgments and perhaps even generalizations (unfair though they may be) about our students.

My colleagues and I always talk about our classes and students--much of it is venting, since the students are (and this is of course just an observation based on personal experiences!) generally unmotivated and unwilling to participate. I do enjoy being able to commiserate (crap, how do you spell that?!?!?), and I think that's what this thread is all about.

But maybe that's just me...

d

[J-Pop]

[denise]

J-pop,

Cool link!!

d

[scot47]

Thanks Chinagirl. I am amazed at how easily people can lapse into stereotyping by nationality.

But here is another angle. For a truly awful experience try teaching a foreign language to children in a state school in an anglophone country. Wow !

[Roger]

Chinagirl,
we all are aware of the danger of stereotyping people, but the fact is that we are not talking about nationalities; much rather, we are making observations on national cultures, good and bad.
The raw material of humans is virtually identical anywhere; you can teach a Chinese to become a perfect French speaker provided you can do it the way a French speaker does it. Acquiring a language also is acquiring some behavioral patterns typical of the target lingo.
On this very day, I am teaching in a Chinese kindergarten, surrounded by local teachers none of whom has anywhere close to adequate English communication skills. Yet, they are teaching "English". The results - you guess!
However, the adults in their interactions among themselves have adopted a behavioral code that is foreign to them: every time someone enters an office they have to politely ask "May I come in?"
Isn't it funny that total non-speakers of English have to use this phrase when they want to enter the office of the headmistress who speaks not a single word of English except, perhaps, this phrase, plus "yes!" ?

They borrowed this phenomenon from Singaporean partners. The SIngaporeans, as we all know, are extremely polite, very well-organised, extremely good at English, extremely orderly - in short, they are highly westernised.
This makes a big impression on Chinese whom we all know to be chaotic, undisciplined, disorderly, extremely unpunctual, and so on.
We also generally agree in saying that Singapore is...bland, boring, uninspiring... much like most western countries.

If only the CHinese adopted western teaching methods too - our jobs would be a lot more fulfilling. There would be more English speakers in this nation where supposedly 300 million young people are studying English.
The stereotypes that I use in describing people refer to the conditioning they have received in many years of being schooled in their own style. That's what makes Chinese students "blobs" as someone put it (I would not necessarily use this term, but I can understand why it was used in that post).
I have experience with many Chinese whose intellect and mind have been awakened just in time so they became less culturally-deformed!

[scot47]

Let's turn this on its head.

WHICH NATIONALITIES MAKE THE WORST TEACHERS ?

US, Canada, NZ, Australia, Ireland, UK ?

[MartinK]

...

[denise]

[scot47]

Denise,

Show me a post where I have said "All X are Y" and I will withdraw it !

I may have said that there are many insensitive people from America in TEFL but I have never generalised. A fine line but it is a line !

If I may ring the changes on an old line "Some of my best friends are Americans."

[struelle]

[Wolf]

[scot47]

Wolfie is right I think.

It is fairly well accepted now that ability to accept other ways of doing things and saying things is a necessary precondition for learning another language.

Another important trait is the ability to try something, get it wrong and correct it.

[chinagirl]

Denise,

I agree with you that for the most part everyone is just sharing opinions. We do all have opinions about our students, for sure. I just like to err on the side of tolerance. I currently am in the US. My ESL classes are heterogeneous, in both nationalities and personalities. Avoiding judgements helps me to look at my students as individuals.

I'm glad that this thread has not yet descended to mud-slinging. Hooray!

[arioch36]

[psychedelic]

Some Koreans are okay, but the rest are the WORST..complaining about any little thing. If there's something to complain about, they'll do it.