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Ms Bean
Joined: 11 Oct 2008
Posts: 110
Location: Wilmington
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 Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2008 8:19 pm Post subject: |
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| Hansen wrote: |
FTs, let's not take ourselves too seriously. |
Good advice to follow.
I take my job seriously as do the majority of my students (with the exception of the one class previously cited. I inherited that class from another teacher). If students (Chinese OR American) don't come to class, they can't pass.
End of argument.
It is interesting to note that in China, because I take roll and give regular tests, students come to class. MOST take an interest. Those who take no interest and put forth no effort receive a grade to indicate it. I don't know about other foreign teachers, but every Chinese school I've worked for has required that I issue a grade. It must be for a good reason. |
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arioch36
Joined: 21 Jan 2003
Posts: 3589
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| Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 9:10 am Post subject: |
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smiten
| Quote: |
Lhenderson.
There should be more FTs like you working in China.
I can't stand your attitude, but you are exactly what the Chinese deserve...
Am I being harsh?? |
Yes much too harsh ... but on who? |
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eddy-cool
Joined: 06 Jul 2008
Posts: 1008
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| Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 1:39 pm Post subject: |
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[quote="Ms Bean"]
| arioch36 wrote: |
Arioch36,
I must chide you in your lapse in basic linguistics!
You're a frickin' mess!
But now let us speak of psycholinguistics: If you've read Carnap, Chomsky, and Piaget, and can actually understand some of the nuttiness of it , you are eminently qualified to teach in China. In fact, if you have a handle on psycholinguistics AND have a sense of humor, then you are perfect for China. Please know, however, that the west misses you.  |
You don't need Chomsky or Piaget or Krashen to successfully polish the pronunciation of your students; what you do need is a thorough grasp of phonetics and the IPT.
English pronunciation of Chinese students is problematic precisely because their teachers do not practise speaking. Bad pronunciation is deeply ingrained (fossilised') through mindless daily reading-aloud practice. The students transfer their Chiense pronunciation to English. It is easy to identify their problem areas if you can decipher IPT and transcribe their spoken English properly in IPT. Unfortunately, nary any laowai teacher is familiar with IPT. |
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Ahchoo
Joined: 22 Mar 2007
Posts: 606
Location: Earth
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 2:37 am Post subject: |
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| Ms Bean wrote: |
| The red pencil (and the color red in general when used in conjunction with correcting papers) has been red lined from western education for over twenty-five years. It was deemed to have "traumatizing and stigmatizing" effects sometime in the late seventies. |
Nonsense.
| Quote: |
| It was deemed to have "traumatizing and stigmatizing" effects sometime in the late seventies. |
This is being debated in Australia at the moment, with sensible people rolling their eyes.
Lets give everyone a gold star and pass them, wouldn't want to traumatize the little tykes by telling them they're wrong. |
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Songbird
Joined: 09 Jan 2005
Posts: 630
Location: State of Chaos, Panic & Disorder...
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 10:45 am Post subject: |
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Ggggrrr........
Did my final culture exams today, and
1. Caught a couple of students cheating- one definate, one suspected (sitting far apart). Had a quick look at their papers once finished and both have failed it anyway, but regardless, they get a big fat 0 for cheating!
2. Ran into some of the students later (with one of the said cheaters  ) and they had a whine about how hard the exam was. Actually the exam was so embarrassingly easy I wouldn't show it here (ie. 'Who is the current President of America?', 'Name 4 famous writers from the UK'...). They had their big sooky lalas, then I reminded them that EVERY week they were to take notes in class, interrupt me WHENEVER needed to ask questions, repeat something (I am very approachable, and my students do say this), and review their notes each week in their own time. Gave them websites to read over (even directing them to Wikipedia). Wrote lots of stuff on the bb for them to write down. So what went wrong?
Okay- I had 21 questions of the same vein as the two I said above, they had 2 hours to complete it. I also included mapping- 'put London on the map' . Alright, shoot me for being too easy! BTW, these are 2nd year uni students! |
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Katja84
Joined: 06 May 2007
Posts: 165
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 1:02 pm Post subject: |
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While I wouldn't normally agree with marking on a curve, is anyone doing that in China? I'm just thinking it would be easier in the sense that you choose who is going to get the better grades and who the worse grades, while the administration is then given the chance to say how many students they accept to fail. When we are not given marking criteria anyway, perhaps grading on a curve is the best way out to ensure we are not marking more harshly than the Chinese English teachers?
| Ms Bean wrote: |
| If students (Chinese OR American) don't come to class, they can't pass. End of argument. |
In the UK, attendance at lectures is very often not obligatory (while attendance at seminars are, but often not monitored). If some students learn better in their own time through their own strategies, I'm not sure I would immediately penalize them if they preferred to study on their own rather than come to class. I certainly wouldn't if they missed only a couple of classes. But then again it depends on university rules I guess.
| Quote: |
| ('Who is the current President of America?', 'Name 4 famous writers from the UK'...) |
Are these questions that you had specifically taught them (i.e. had they read through their notes they would have known the answers) or just things you expected the students to know? Because if it's the latter I'm not sure I would think of them as particularly easy. I'd be able to name 4 famous writers from China only because I have lived there - had you asked me about 4 famous writers from Japan I would have struggled to come up with one! As for who is the current president of America, if it hadn't been for Obama's insistance on not yet being president I would definitely forgive students for thinking he had already been handed the post. And a Latin American student might have given any American president as the answer (or indeed they might have argued that America doesn't have a president because America is a continent not a country). |
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Ms Bean
Joined: 11 Oct 2008
Posts: 110
Location: Wilmington
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 2:15 pm Post subject: |
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| eddy-cool wrote: |
[
You don't need Chomsky or Piaget or Krashen to successfully polish the pronunciation of your students; what you do need is a thorough grasp of phonetics and the IPT.
English pronunciation of Chinese students is problematic precisely because their teachers do not practise speaking. Bad pronunciation is deeply ingrained (fossilised') through mindless daily reading-aloud practice. The students transfer their Chiense pronunciation to English. It is easy to identify their problem areas if you can decipher IPT and transcribe their spoken English properly in IPT. Unfortunately, nary any laowai teacher is familiar with IPT. |
eddy-cool,
I was kidding. |
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Ms Bean
Joined: 11 Oct 2008
Posts: 110
Location: Wilmington
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 2:42 pm Post subject: |
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| Ahchoo wrote: |
| Ms Bean wrote: |
| The red pencil (and the color red in general when used in conjunction with correcting papers) has been red lined from western education for over twenty-five years. It was deemed to have "traumatizing and stigmatizing" effects sometime in the late seventies. |
Nonsense.
| Quote: |
| It was deemed to have "traumatizing and stigmatizing" effects sometime in the late seventies. |
This is being debated in Australia at the moment, with sensible people rolling their eyes.
Lets give everyone a gold star and pass them, wouldn't want to traumatize the little tykes by telling them they're wrong. |
Let me correct myself: the red pencil was pretty much banished from AMERICAN schools in the 1970's. I overreached by speaking for all western systems. Mea culpa.
Unfortunately, supposedly sensible people in American education DIDN'T roll their eyes at the idiotic results produced by studies conducted by esteemed researchers in the field of education (e.g., Andrea Lunsford).
I updated my teaching credentials a few years ago and was torn apart by an ideologue who cited a study that my use of a green pen was demeaning because green is associated with putrefaction.
Then there were disagreements over the use of black ink NOT because the students couldn't distinguish their mistakes from the teachers' corrections but because the color black should was often associated with the negative ; the African-American students have been stigmatized by the general association of black with negativity. (Forget the fact that "being in the black" is a good thing).
Puce?
-- Sounds like 'puke'
Orange?
--- It could offend Irish Catholic Americans. (The WORD orange is associated with Irish Protestantism).
Blue?
--- Studies have shown that the color is depressing.
PINK!
--- heterosexual male students might feel threatened; gay students will feel mocked; female students may be afforded a psychological advantage.
BROWN! No. I withdraw that one.
Now, I use a good old graphite pencil. Let 'em change their grades to make mommy and daddy proud of their ability to perpetrate fraud. It'll prepare them for a future in banking and finance.
Go ahead, LHansen. Use your red pen. I was kidding.
Last edited by Ms Bean on Thu Jan 01, 2009 1:03 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Hansen
Joined: 13 Oct 2008
Posts: 737
Location: central China
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 10:51 pm Post subject: |
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Katja, I mark on a curve, a seriously skewed curve. I average the top scores and use the result for the high mark. Super high scores are sometimes not included in the average. I then fudge, cook, manipulate and goof around with the remaining score until only ~ 2 students fail. One thing I do not do is allow students to retake the exam. If the school makes an issue of it, I'll simply raise the score of the students who want to resit the exam.
Aside from those teachers who are teaching English majors in a uni, the rest of these classes are a joke. Oral English is a non issue. The students know that; consequently, many don't care. English is simply a craze in China, like Mao suits. It certainly can have an impact on finding a job; however, as I understand it, it has no impact on the students academic future. |
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Ms Bean
Joined: 11 Oct 2008
Posts: 110
Location: Wilmington
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| Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 1:05 am Post subject: |
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| Hansen wrote: |
Katja, I mark on a curve, a seriously skewed curve. I average the top scores and use the result for the high mark. Super high scores are sometimes not included in the average. I then fudge, cook, manipulate and goof around with the remaining score until only ~ 2 students fail. One thing I do not do is allow students to retake the exam. If the school makes an issue of it, I'll simply raise the score of the students who want to resit the exam.
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Thank you for telling me that. I thought that I was the only one! |
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eddy-cool
Joined: 06 Jul 2008
Posts: 1008
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| Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 2:18 am Post subject: |
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| Katja84 wrote: |
In the UK, attendance at lectures is very often not obligatory (while attendance at seminars are, but often not monitored). If some students learn better in their own time through their own strategies, I'm not sure I would immediately penalize them if they preferred to study on their own rather than come to class. I certainly wouldn't if they missed only a couple of classes. But then again it depends on university rules I guess.
.) |
.[/quote]
I have never been told by any Chinese teacher or principal that their students were good and reliable as self-learners. Nor has anyone ever instructed me in China to follow western practice. Western students study differently, full stop.
'Lecture-type' classes are seldom held by FTs; most of us are engaged in a practical role intended to offer practice to students. I am not sure Chinese students actually form the habit of taking notes.
If you examine Chinese study culture a tad more closely it will come to your attention that monitoring of students is a top priority; what the students are doing or not doing matters alone, not HOW they are studying. You can sarcastically put it this way: The aim of educators here is to kill their students' time, to control it thoroguhly. That is why students are under strict order to do warming-up exercises before they go to class, and do 'self-study' after class, usually until 9 or 10 p.m.
I fully sympathise with students who hate this way of managing their young lives but then again I also hold that tertiary students are the nation's elite who owe their less lucky compatriots for being allowed to study and aim for better jobs.
I also hold that students have no reason and no right to deceive anyone about their participation in formal classroom instruction. Being absent from one lesson is tolerable but the student ought to make efforts to make sure he or she is not falling behind. Now do your students accept this? |
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arioch36
Joined: 21 Jan 2003
Posts: 3589
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| Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 5:48 am Post subject: |
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In most western colleges I know of, back 7 yrs ago, montioring attendance in class was being considered more and more important, and most proffs (classes of 40 or less) regurally took attendance (though not every class)The simple facts were; students not coming to class gave the prof the greatest number of headaches, and did the worst in the class.
I grade on the curve. I approach it a lot like Hansen, I think. Lots of fudging if I deem it for the better. Oral English would get curved down usually, and writing often curved up. I always tried to give at least two people a 90 or above (the school also seems to like that) even if they only got a "87" (class sizes about 35) A 55 with good attendance/homework would probably get a 60. I would decide what I thought the average should be ahead of time. I go for a "high" average of 78.
It honestly makes me a little nauseous when I see forejgn teachers have a class average of 90 or even better... all that says is that you are not challenging them at all, or your tests prove nothing. Have a good friend who is a teacher, this is a sore subject. She was telling me about a student that she thought maybe should be failed, who did nothing. Yes he got the lowest mark in the class ... a "78" (hope my friend doesn't read this. From the look on my face, she knew what i thought immediately
Hansen
| Quote: |
| Aside from those teachers who are teaching English majors in a uni, the rest of these classes are a joke. Oral English is a non issue. The students know that; consequently, many don't care |
Not my experience. My experience is that it depends on the Dep't. I taught lots of classes to Law major students in my school. Loved it. The dep't took it serious, and they were great students. Students I failed had to get a letter from the dep't and come back for a retest the next semester. One student had to retest twice.
I refused to teach for the "International School" Dep't after the first time I taught there I had the exact opposite result, no back from the Dep't, students came to class as they wished, and the dep't couldn't care less |
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Songbird
Joined: 09 Jan 2005
Posts: 630
Location: State of Chaos, Panic & Disorder...
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| Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 6:01 am Post subject: |
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| Katja84- yes, I taught all these things in class, we did a week on government, a week on popular literature etc etc. It was a simple case of them taking notes, listening carefully and asking questions. There were absolutely no trick questions whatsoever (I'm in the boondocks in southern China, these are 'less able' students- apparently!). |
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Lhenderson
Joined: 15 Dec 2008
Posts: 135
Location: Shanghai JuLu Road
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| Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 6:11 am Post subject: |
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Did anyone see me post?
I tried to give my own perzonal experience advice fer succe$$ in China. |
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Hansen
Joined: 13 Oct 2008
Posts: 737
Location: central China
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| Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 9:34 am Post subject: |
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Arioch,
National educational policies are not based on what the law department in your school does. Law students,in general, are good in English. Are you suggesting that oral English is a factor in their law exam to become a lawyer? I would guess that the department was just "jerking you around." There is lots of posing that goes on here but that's all that it is. I doubt that any university, in an area such as law, is going to give any real power to a laowai. I'm sure you want to believe that what you do matters. It probably doesn't.
I play taiji. That's what matters to me. I just finished a double handed wudang sword set that is a pure delight to perform. Exams? No sweat. Why should I care if the schools don't? I like the students. "Smile, be nice. You'll pass." Most do. I caught a student cheating on the final. When I marked her paper so I could identify it later, instead of tearing it up like I used to do, she made a remark which I understand to be an unflattering one. Chances are good that she will fail. Had she kept her mouth shut, she could have passed with a lower score.
I'm not really sure how things shake out on the university level. I taught for a year. The pay was poor. They boasted, "We are known for our low pay." "Fine, find another teacher or give me what I ask. Pay me per hour for correcting the exams or correct them yourself." They actually corrected the exams themselves.
On the high school level, entering university, oral English is meaningless. It has no bearing on university admission. Even at my current school, which is not sending students on to university, I give my own exams, prior to the real exams given by the school.
I just pray that the market will go back up so I can git on outta here. I really do. |
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