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[Burl Ives]

I have six sophomore writing classes. Based on what I know of Chinese students my lesson plans are ambitious. That ambition--that the students should learn creative writing--was born of success last semester. And it appears to be flourishing. But not with this one damn class.

By Chinese standards they are rude, but I don't care at all--in fact I encourage it--if the students chat in class. It's creative writing after all. If the students are chatting on topic, then they're generating something for the writing. If they're laughing together at what they're written, well hell, they're doing what they should. But this one damn class--with the exception of three or four obviously dedicated and capable members--is a loose gang of monied punks, pissant cheerleaders, and immature zombies. I talk mostly to myself when I stand up the front.

They do write when minimal instructions penetrate. And they write minimally. I have signs that they're more or less capable, but on the whole they have gotten used to sitting out their classes. They're as disciplined as the next gaggle of Valley girls, and they're as ready to make use of what they've learned as the next gormless twits waiting for break. They coasted through the first six weeks of lessons, those being TEM4 preparation where all they had to do was repeat poorly memorised forms. But now they're supposed to follow instruction setting up self expression and I've lost them. And told them so. And I walked out of class yesterday. So now they're probably grumpy as well as being tossers.

So what do you do with that one damn class of privately paid-for, College entrance exam failing dullards who're in university regardless? They're not really dullards, but they've sure set themselves up as such in class, and I don't know how to catch and educationally use their attention.

Given that they are the dummies class out of the six, I suppose I'm supposed to To Sir With Love them and admire their rebel spirit, it being all creative and all--I mean, just think of the time they've spent plastering their expensive mobile phones with pink plastic beads! These female Jimmy Deans are crying out--crying out, I say, they're pleading, they're hoping, they're plain old fashioned wishing--for a... for a... Writing Class?

[james s]

...

[tw]

Looks like me, you and Songbird all have problems with our writing classes or to be exact, we have problems with the students in those classes. I have two HUGE groups of writing students. One group is around 120 students (3 classes) while the other group is around 80. These are graduating three-year Bilingual majors who just can't wait to get the hell out of school and start teaching IN English to continue the vicious cycle. Most of them can barely understand anything I say, even if I were to speak at a snail's pace. Their first writing assignment (free topic) was deplorable with stupid spelling errors (writting instead of writing) and Chinglish. Many were one-paragraph gibberish without any coherence. One boy wrote two, count them, TWO sentences. Most boys could barely write anything more than basic simple English sentences.

I gave yesterday's class a capitalization-and-punctuation-correction exercise to do and after 40 minutes, many had not even completed twenty. I know their last FT was a good teacher and had taught them a lot. The problem here is they don't listen, don't pay attention, and don't want to put in any effort. Most of them would just scribble something and assume I wouldn't read it. They don't brainstorm, they don't proofread, and they definitely don't revise. It's not like they are busy, considering the fact they only have three courses to take this term before graduating in July.

I had a girl showing up in class without a pen. Imagine that eh? Coming to writing class without a pen!

[Anda]

I can't follow them here, as I can have a class going great, then they crash and fight against me, then the next moment they love me and so on. I do conversational scripts on the board with them. My students are supposed to become English teachers in the public school system. In South Korea things just improved steadily but here it's up and down etc.,

[kev7161]

This may have nothing to do with anything, but let me assure you, these patterns start early and I have no idea why. I teach PRIMARY 2nd grade and we have been studying is/are + verb + ing for almost TWO YEARS now and the kids STILL don't get it! I don't know what else I can do.

Please understand, these kids, although not fluent, are several rungs up the ladder from your typical Chinese student who has little to no English every day. They understand my speaking (I think, I hope, it seems so) 90% of the time. Some kids fly by with this kind of basic grammar stuff and some just . . . ??? pffffttt!

Reading posts here about high school and college students and the problems you have with them - - I just wonder if it's, I don't know, a genetic thing? A spoiled, rotten, lazy thing? But it seems I can easily exchange my 2nd grader with your college student and get the same results. So, the frustrations start early, but I'll keep plugging away. Thank god I have a couple of STAR students to make it a little easier.

[vikdk]

[Steppenwolf]

Although vikdk has been my self-appointed hunter and nemesis trying - usually in vain - to ridicule me and thus to gain a status of superiority over me I have to say he has described the Chinese teaching and learning malaise in excellent terms.

I have this week taught my 22-year olds to learn from each other's mistakes by proofreading one another's writings and to learn to identify proper names as compared to nouns by looking at the initial of the words that seemingly are nouns (and sometimes are proper names). For example the adjective "Finnish" is not to be confused with the verb "finish"; even those students who could see that "Finnish" is not the same as "finish" didn't know the country's name "Finland"...

All went well in 7 classes; just in class 8 a rowdy minority of conceited students came to me to "discuss with you some suggestions..." which boiled down to...doing something less challenging and "more interesting".

Here I was showing them a new way of learning English without their teacher selecting for them the vocabulary they have to memorise for a test; I taught them to read for information and to identify their knowledge and lexical gaps so that they can fill these gaps ... by guessing and by looking vocables up in a dictionary...

But these obnoxious little brats thought this was not enough fun and it was "too tiring". What did they want to do? "We joined this class in order to practise spoken English..." Ah, really? So why do you not speak English with each other? Why do you not answer any of my questions directed at any of you? "Because we don't understand you..." "Because we don't understand Chinese speaking English..."

Well, that's why I consider those oral classes a waste of timne! If you don't want to think outside the box and make an extra effort don't expect me to go out of my way!

I do you a big favour by listening to you without the benefit of actually understanding much of what you are trying to express in English! For your English Corners - try to spread it to your daily life and speak English in your dorms, in the canteen, during breaks... you really don't need me for that purpose!

They were somewhat surprised to hear me speak thus, but they could hardly contradict me. Trouble is they expect a MARK for their sitting in class; I will grant them one - for making an effort at LEARNING that which they singularly failed to learn much, much sooner!
Like distinguishing between "to finish" and "Finnish"... (Funny that they know 'Finnish" only thanks to the existence of NOKIA cell phones that have been around less than ten years in China!).

[adamsmith]

imagine what would have happened if you used Danish as an example, the girls would have gained a pound (kilo) and the boys would have asked for a Baiju to go with it.

I know what you mean step, it can drive a sane man to drink imported french wine (bottled in China)

[Neilhrd]

I have experienced similar problems with huge variations in attitude and study skills between different classes supposedly at the same level. In my case this is in state run middle schools.

I believe that part of the problem is the system of "looping" used in Chinese schools to allocate teachers to classes. Each class is given a "home room teacher" at the beginning of their primary school career. That teacher stays with taht class for the whole 6 years unless he/she leaves the school. If a class are lucky and get a home room teahcer who knows what they are doing they develop into a good class with good discipline and study skills. If they got a clueless home room teacher then by the time they reach middle school they are lost.

How students and teachers are allocated to classes is a mystery. The Chinese teachers in my school won't discuss this openly but hint at corruption presumably involving rich parents buying their children into classes with good teachers. My school have tried to use assessment tests to grade students by ability and attitude only to have the results countermanded by the government.

In some cases home room teachers go further than being incompetent. Some will tell students behind your back not to bother with English homework because it is not important/undermines Chinese culture etc. Some will even ridicule your teaching methods/criticise your school in front of the students. Other tactics include deliberately sheduling timetable classes to prevent your students attending English classes, hiding the keys to rooms, equipment etc to give the students the subconcious message that English doesn't matter. This is only a small minority of Chinese teachers but I am speaking from personal experience here.

If you have got a class which has been given this kind of treatment in the past it is almost impossible to turn the situation around because these students know that you, as an FT, have no disciplinary power unless the Chinese authorities consent and back you up. They also know that they will be passed at the end of the course regardless whether you agree to this or not.

So my advice to the original poster is don't stress yourself about your class from hell. Just do what you can and try to create ways for those students who do want to learn to do so outside the classroom, creative writing assignments, internet based homework using authentic texts, going to English corners etc.

[vikdk]

Although teaching can�t help being a profession that utalises the interaction of personalities � we must be very careful about trying to maintain vestiges of professional standard and dignity � even when posting on the subject of classroom problems. In other words - even though using these forums can act like pressure valves that release the built up stresses of our every day work - we must really guard against taking what goes on in our classes too personally.
In this vain I�m sure Steppenwolf would be the first to concede that in his last post he started to totter over the edge of that abyss where personal dissatisfaction starts to get the better of professional judgment. After all when you start to use this type of language

[Steppenwolf]

[tw]

[Shan-Shan]

[johnchina]

Students at my school complained about having to
a) speak English in a class clearly defined as a "Spoken English Class" and b) write in a class clearly defined as a "Writing Class".

The result is that now a "Spoken English Class" will comprise 2 to 2 1/2 hours of a teacher talking and a "Writing Class" will comprise 2 to 2 1/2 hours of a teacher talking.

Words (not even the worst ones) can describe my feelings.

[Songbird]

I am SO happy to hear all this talk of our adventures in writing classes....it makes me feel so much better to know others are struggling with teaching this too, so thank you !

John, preach it brother! I'm having this SAME issue with 2 of my Tuesday classes (incidentally, they are the 'lowest' level classes). Admittedly the classe are crap with my planning (I'm still trying to figure out exactly what I'm doing ) but they refuse to make any effort anymore. A couple of weeks ago, I even spied the monitor, clearly writing to me (but my name wasn't on the paper or anything) about how they should write about 'their feelings' and 'springtime', instead of learning the specific skills I was currently teaching. I played dumb and walked on by, expecting her to hand me the paper or discuss it at the end of the lesson with me, but nope.

Besides (now there's a Chinese word ), even if we DID do what she suggested, they would STILL whinge and whine.....god help these brats! In 2 weeks it'll be 10x worse, they've been completely denied their May holiday due to the upcoming inspections, for that I really do feel for them.