Job Discussion Forums

No Moss · Joined: 15 Apr 2003 Posts: 1995 Location: Thailand

Hmm, you know, I never had any luck teaching classes of 50 students. I'm always impressed by the heroism of people that do that. I don't like the public school setting, where there are peer relationships that offer that offer a block of resistance to learning anything, much less English from a lao wai.

There is a lot of resistance to changing the Asian style of learning (it's pretty much the same in China, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Thailand--the countries I have taught in). As long as there are fifty students in a class, and as long as passing the dreaded entrance exams is the only measure of success, it's unlikely to change. The formula, for those who don't know it, is this. Teacher writes stuff on the board during class. The students write the board stuff in their notebooks, take it home and memorize it. The process we associate with education is, well, missing in action.

Like doctors who rely chiefly on the body's ability to heal itself for their success, teachers rely mainly on the ingenuity and hardiness of their students for their success. People learn and grow in the most unlikely and discouraging of environments.

Case in point: you can learn something by listening to Malsol. Despite his rather abrasive style, I like his "learn to teach up and down", and I particularly appreciate the insight that "Chinese is a high context language". I don't know enough Chinese to know if the latter is true, but it sounds right in the context of what I do know about the language, and I'll remember it as a way of thinking about the Chinese, both the language and the people.

One of the hardest things I had to learn about teaching English was to slow down, and to teach down when necessary. You can save students from a lifetime of mistakes by learning the common grammatical errors of Chinese, and then choosing the moment that they learn that particular bit of grammar to give them extensive practice, until it is mastered and "burned in".

vikdk · Joined: 25 Jun 2003 Posts: 1676

Hendahu · Joined: 27 Apr 2006 Posts: 69

Malsol...I am paid to improve their English and I actually do that. There is real progress with most of my students after the end of a semester. I see hear it in their language and see it in their confidence with language. Of course I wish they could learn more, but 16 hours a week with 4 different classes allows just so much. But my students do learn and they do improve.

prune · Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 16 Location: Seoul

[quote="Malsol"]

kev7161 · Joined: 06 Feb 2004 Posts: 5880 Location: Suzhou, China

furiousmilksheikali · Posted: Sat Nov 25, 2006 5:34 pm Post subject:

This may be a complete sidetrack, but I thought it was interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEkOEyi1Y7I&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-yd2CmfoY4&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9d77qudwyVg&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywoqff2I-UI&mode=related&search=

Malsol · Joined: 06 Mar 2006 Posts: 1976 Location: Lanzhou

Malsol · Joined: 06 Mar 2006 Posts: 1976 Location: Lanzhou

prune · Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 16 Location: Seoul

[quote="Malsol"]

Malsol · Joined: 06 Mar 2006 Posts: 1976 Location: Lanzhou

Malsol · Joined: 06 Mar 2006 Posts: 1976 Location: Lanzhou

Steppenwolf · Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 1769

[quote="kev7161)

However, when I'm not around, they have a Chinese teacher who teaches them Chinese and (mostly - 90% or more) speaks to them in Chinese. They have a Chinese Math teacher (in addition to my 5 math lessons) that comes in 2X a week to teach them more math - - mostly in Chinese. They have a PE teacher twice a week who knows NO English and a piano teacher 4X a week who also knows NO English. They go home to Chinese-speaking families, most who know little to no English and you have to know that they don't just sit around having casual conversations in English. They play with each other, eat lunch together, share dorm rooms together - - chattering away in Chinese and I have to remind them several times during my lessons to use English and stay away from Chinese. So, it's like we go forward two steps and back one. It's somewhat exhausting explaining the same English concepts time and again because they can't retain it because they don't use the dang language consistently (my current battle: using the word "to": "I like TO play outside"; not "I like play outside" and modifiers; a, an, some, the)!![/quote]

Well, is that a problem? I don't think so! The CHinese behave in the exact same way anyone learning a foreign tongue is behaving outside the classroom; the only difference between Chinese and others is that even their TEACHERS SPEAK CHINESE ONLY, interspersed with a few English vocables or phrases. But students themselves in any other country speak their mother tongue among themselves too - and yet they are more likely to master foreign languages than Chinese are, witness Indians or Africans or Filippinos.

In my opinion it is because of a culturally-reinforced mindset: Chinese do not form the habit of reading and thinking independently; they do not foster a worship of the book and literature (though that used to be done in the past, and it is done in some Hong Kong schools). Chinese are hardly encouraged to develop special interests apart from what their parents identify as educationally necessary, and their parents have a fairly uniform outlook on this too.
You can sense the disconnect between the Chinese mindset and our ideal when you are dealing with students whose parents get involved in their kids' study. Parents voice their opinions in no uncertain terms, especially if they feel you are departing from traditional grounds. IT's also the parents that steal their kids' spare time by signing them up for extra classes. It's the Chinese mind that absolutely QUANTIFIES education to the detriment of quality. More is seen as automatically better. That is even the belief of most westernised Chinese from Hong Kong or Macau. No amount of exposure to western ideals can wash that off. Maybe it's their peasant logic: since COnfucius' time only the elite few were in jobs that paid handsomely because jobholders had a recognised degree from the imperial college; the vast rest could only rub shoulders with fellow peasants while a few could engage in the profane (and ill-reputed) commerce. Wealth was a dream never to become reality for most, but these days, education promises a better life for anyone who endeavours to obtain those certs that prove you have "higher education".

vikdk · Joined: 25 Jun 2003 Posts: 1676

Malsol · Joined: 06 Mar 2006 Posts: 1976 Location: Lanzhou

Steppenwolf · Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 1769

[quote="vikdk"]
For people to learn an L2 they must have a reason to go through this process- a motivation behind the hard work it takes to obtain a level of fluency. Take the so-called "Africans" Steppenwolf writes about - ...
(witness how few african's from ex-french colonies speak English) - a

Steppenwolf if you really want to use cultural factors when arguing why Chinese students don't want to learn an L2 - then compare them with British or French students � a group of students who in the main seem quite content to rest on the cultural mattress' of their own single official native languages
� then you must be proposing that China also officially adopts English into its own cultural set-up quote]

I think the whole forum community knows your mantra by now, Resident Wisecracker Vik! It's just your reasoning that has yet to be vindicated, and that's going to be a tough.

You claim your students don't have a reason to study English - it is you (and those that teach English) that are responsible for motivating students to study and acquire it.
I really question this belief of yours!
The parents of those kids are the motivating force behind their children's efforts! The kids merely obey their stupid parents who in turn only obey their own country's ideological myths. In China, learning English is a patriotic duty and nothing else; very seldom is it more than that. No one would study English if it weren't a compulsory subject. It occupies the same rank as Political Studies, which primary school kids up to college students have to take. Have you ever discussed with your learners whether they LOVE this Political Study subject???

I know what you are going to say next: "...but we have the power to actually make the learning process an interesting one which the learners will want to take part in..."
Granted - we can do that to some extent. We may (and I for one do) succeed to a certain degree. Sometimes. Not always.

But I will also say this: precisely because the students perceive studying English as just another academic treadmill exercise they can't even grasp how important it really can become in their own lives, and that's why their own efforts are lacklustre most of the time. Giving them an element of entertainment during English class doesn't take the bite out of the intellectual effort they have to make; it only soothes their minds although that has very little impact on the quality of their acquired English.

Even you as Dottore Professionale di Motivazione can't change that! Your students won't go out of their inured ways; they won't start reading the news or a good work of fiction in English. They won't even try to learn from their own mistakes; once learnt already tired of reviewing, they will not study the implications it has if they mispronounce a word so that it sounds as a different one: "You will be buried from final examinations" makes total sense to anyone who has never learnt to differentiate between "to bar", "to bear" and "to bury". They also won't care whether they use grammatically suitable forms. Never. If someone with 12 years of formal English study to their belt still confuses the male and female genders they will never question others' poor grasp of it either.

Faced with these problems, one can only wonder why kindergarten professionals believe they must teach their Chinese clients to start using the bad old bilingual approach at an even earlier age.

For the record, I repeat my own experience with a 13-year old boy: his English is just wonderful, about 500% more useful than the English of postgraduate students I have. And what is the difference between the two sides?
The postgraduates have zero interest in English but a culturally-induced, misdirected interest in yet another degree. The 13-year old boy, on the other hand, has special interests in biology and other fields (music, sports), and he spends his few remaining waking hours that he doesn't have to waste in class, on pursuing his hobbies: he can describe to you in precise language the differences between a mantis, a spider or a co.ckroach, using terminology that even native speakers are not always familiar with, and his grammar is near-flawless too! I didn't have to teach him words such as mandibles or thorax - he taught himself!

Where do his interests (that is, his motivation) come from? That's the question! But I doubt we can interest every single member of a 50-strong class in the same way my student is motivated! It's hard work to even motivate half of a class. And if things have to be entertaining to such an extent, how can we motivate them to actually study in order to IMPROVE and PERFECT their English rather than just to use it orally?

You are right to some extent - an intellectually unstimulated people such as the masses of Chinese can only be forced to study a subject; they cannot be motivated. The few that really are "motivated" are so for promises of pure material gain; that's not an ideal motivation.

Yet your idea that English would ever become an official tongue in China is laughable.
It would help, though, if Chinese people from all walks of life were interested enough in socialising with non-Chinese speakers and willing to discuss topics their foreign opposite numbers would love to discuss. Can you find any ten Chinese that listen you out and try to answer your questions even if they are not really familiar with the topic or interested in it?