Job Discussion Forums

[SongGirl]

Hi guys,

does anyone of you know where I can find this:

Perceptions of the Place of Expatriate English Language Teachers in China
by Ming-Sheng Li

Supposedly a dissertation piece but I have no idea when or where it was written. I just stumbled over the title on the internet but it is only mentioned with a website source that seems to be outdated (http://my.glasscity.net/~xiong/tic/li.html). Just thought it would be neat (and helpful) to read through.

[sperling]

[lost&confused]

If all else fails, email me and I can send you a copy.

Michael

[MW]

The conclusions contained therein are discredited in subsequent works.
Write to [email protected] and ask for nIU qIANG collection for more authoritative works on the same subject.

[Stephen]

PERSONALLY, I FOUND READING MING-SHENG'S DISSERTATION A COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME.

This seems a typical Chinese face saving work. So Ming-Sheng found that some Chinese students felt that their foreign teachers material was too simple, that foreign teachers underassessed their level, and that their needs were not being meet. WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THE VIEWS OF THESE STUDENTS? What analysis of the student's actual English level compared with their perceptions of their level was conducted?? None.

What conclusions can be drawn? To me it is simple, this is saving face from a Chinese perspective and a failure to admit that the Chinese approach to EFL is inherently flawed.

To quote the article (the letter number combinations represent students who answered a questionnaire on their opinions.)

"Most Chinese students interviewed agreed that the presence of expatriate teachers could provide them with opportunities to hear authentic English. By listening to native speakers, they believed they could improve their listening abilities. They complained, however, that they could not learn much from expatriate teachers who were perceived to have low expectations of the students, whose teaching was thought to be rigid, incoherent and unsystematic, unbelievably simple and irrelevant to the needs to the students, and whose attitudes towards teaching and students were seen as irresponsible"

This is seems to me the most probable explaination. Students over-estimated their own English level, teachers didn't. The students' culture and perceptions of what constitutes language learning preclude them admiting or possibly understanding that their English is not as good as they claim. Therefore, the students complain since their teacher makes them work on such things as writing sentences which include basic things like subjects and verbs, or writing such things as compound and complex sentences until they cannot do it correctly. Students think they can do it as they "learned" it at school. Students never had to actually use the language at school. At school students just memorised the rule (and possibly a couple of model answers.) The way I see it, it is far more likely that the teachers' assessment of the students' needs and requirements were accurate than the students'. Furthermore, there is no evidence presented to the contrary.

This dissertation is a disgrace, I would advise anyone thinking of reading this to not waste their time. It is an insult to the word research to call this dissertation such. Any analysis of the performance and value of native speaking teachers and Western methodology in a Chinese classroom would require an adequate assessment and comparison of progression rates of students of qualified native speakers against progression rates of students taught by Chinese teachers according to traditional Chinese methodology. Such assessment would need to be standardized and would need to be an international non-chinese developed standard, ie. one that stresses communication and usage of skills. It would also assess student progression not the final level of students, for obvious methodological reasons.

Regards
Stephen

[Ferne]

Stephen...this is SongGirl. I read the "dissertation" a while ago and feel the same way. It doesn't seem much of a dissertation anyway, and the author definitely didn't put much research (or consideration for an objective approach) into it. Too many missing thoughts and open questions. I think it would be interesting to pursue the idea though, and maybe further the research! A good topic for a real dissertation about "intercultural competence".

[MW]

Not all Chinese are interested in face saving. Dr. Niu Qiang, Associate Professor of Linguistics at Tong ji University in Shanghai has a much more honest approach if anyone is interested, I will share it with you.

[MW]

Want some really truthful reading?

Try the following:

Educational Disengagement, Undermining Academic Quality At A Chinese University (Shenzhen university) www.Michael Agelasto.com

An Investigation of College English Teaching in Four Universities in China. Hai Du. International Education Journal Vol 3 No. 2 2002 (Use Google to locate)

China and Chinese or Chingland and Chinglish, Qiang/Wolff, April 2003 English Today

Are We Ready For An Early Start in Foreign Language Learning?, Dong Yan-ping, 1-2003 Modern Foreign Language Quarterly

China ESL: An Industry Run Amuck? Qiang/Wolff 4-2003. (Use Google to locate)


This is not sugar coated or whitewash stuff! Not typical Chinese apologetics either!

[Mike Cozad]

Did we read the same "dissertation" (or however others might name it)? I've found some very useful comments/perceptions here that will lead to my taking a revised view of my teaching effectiveness. The paper does a good job of pointing out disparities in teachers' and students' expectations. There is no need for "proof" here because these are opinions. If we are to move forward and succeed as professionals in the classroom, we might want to "listen" to what our clients/customers/students have to say.

[pratyeka]

The correct link is http://www.agelastos.com/disengagement/.

[Stephen]

Mike

Did we read the same dissertation?

I quote Ming-Sheng's implication and conclusion section
"The data reported here suggest a mismatch between the expatriate teachers' pedagogical agenda (Nunan, 1995, p.135) and that of the students. The mismatch gives rise to disparities between what is taught and what is learned. Chinese students perceived the expatriate teachers' selection of inappropriate teaching methods as a lack of teaching competence and sense of responsibility. Chinese students perceived expatriate teachers' teaching styles as rigid, dogmatic, unsystematic, purposeless and irresponsible. The students felt they could not learn much from expatriate teachers whose teaching aimed at low-level teaching targets. This suggests that expatriate teachers fail to tailor their teaching to the needs of the Chinese students."

"Expatriate teachers fail to tailor their teaching to the needs of the Chinese students." How can you possibly decide that this is the case when no lesson was observed and assessed by qualified observers. No assessment of students' level took place, nor was progress in English proficiency monitored in anyway, nor is there anywhere in the report any valid performance assessment (by which I mean one upon which such a conclusion could be based) to support this claim.

The views of students while interesting and informative simply are not the basis for such conclusions. A useful approach to that subject would have dealt with the points raised in this and my previous posting. It is not just a matter of what the students think, but whether they are right or not. For example, with no suitable indepedent assessment of the students level we are forced to draw the conclusion that the teacher must have been correct in their assessment as they were (presumably) better qualified to make said assessment. There are many more examples of such problems with the research methodology of this paper.

Knowing what students think is useful, but if they are wrong then you should correct them (eg. they think that translation equates to reading). This research does not tackle the validity of the students view points on academic matters, but merely takes them as correct because they were given. This leads me to conclude based on my experience working in a Chinese country that the most probable explaination is that students have unrealistic expectations, make unrealistic assessments of their levels, and do not understand what is required to learn English as a language as opposed to a subject. They are probably locked into the Chinese High School memorise the answer approach. I was taught that you give students what they need not just pander to what they want. Perhaps, our viewpoints differ here.

I should also like to point out explicitly that if the validity of the students' criticisms are not assessed, then we do not know whether the problem is with the methodology or is a need to make the students better understand the methodology and the requirements of language learning. How then do you propose to act upon such information?

Regards
Stephen

[chinasyndrome]

[quote="Stephen"]

[MW]

How about this quote from "Can You Get A First Class Education From A 3rd Tier College In China?", Qiang/Wolff, 2003 (in peer review)

The issue is compounded by the problem of a very traditional teaching methodology, which has been superseded in other countries by more faciliatory methodologies. The current methodology employed is reliant on �talk and chalk�, i.e. the teacher stands at the front of the class copying sections from the text onto the board, while the students passively sit absorbing the teacher�s �words of wisdom.� Some students will raise their hand and stand to answer questions, but beyond this, students do not actively participate in the lesson. Students are not responsible for their own learning. The teacher tells them exactly what they should know. Students are only responsible for completing exercises and re-writing words and phrases outside class so that they can pass the next exam. Little emphasis is placed on teaching students how to critically appraise information and situations or to think creatively (outside the box).

This is the very differentiation between western educational philosophy and eastern educational philosophy alluded to by Ming-sheng Li. (Ming-sheng Li (1999). We suggest that rather than being a cultural difference as Ming-shen Li suggests, it is in reality a difference between the modern progressive trend in higher education in the west versus the time honored traditional educational model of the east. Under China�s �modernization� through three represents , it is time to speak out in favor of modernizing China�s educational philosophy.

In the existing traditional teaching methodology, the teacher is primarily concerned with the performance of the top students answering the questions. Most students are left behind, (but will nonetheless graduate) so they either skip class, entertain themselves in class or simply sleep until the end of the lesson. We are left with the distinct impression that many teachers feel they are not sufficiently well compensated to attempt to engage with these students.

[Roger]

I have read the abstract of Ming Sheng's so-called 'dissertation', and while I feel Stephen's opinion on it is a little harsh I totally agree with his questioning whether student anywhere in the world, and those in China in particular, can be depended on to make a valid input to such questions!
I think we Westerners tend to be overly-PC, trying to accommodate whims in the guise of local culture, and are all too ready to sacrifice our goals and standards for the perceived interest of our students!

We don't need to blame Chinese students for their inability to cope with our teaching style, but we don't need to blame ourselves for teaching differently! In fact, this is a Chinese problem - age-old parochial and backward methodology. C'est le ton qui fait la musique, and if you have been to Chinese schools for one year as a student you are already inured to its intrinsic methods and are hard up adapting to a different style.

Some of the differences in the teaching style are:
- Teacher-led communitarian effort: Chorusing, chorusing, chorusing,
mindlessly, often with some students furtively glancing at an open
page in one of their comic-strip magazines;
- there is an incestuous relationship between Chinese teachers and
their students, which takes care of an abnormally-high pass-rate
in any exam;
- there is no curriculum or syllabus. Teachers often decide ad hoc what
they are doing , sometimes skipping several chapters in their
NEW CONCEPT ENGLISH;
- students don't do homework individually; most do it merely because
they are in boarding-schools and have to report to their classroom
after supper and are under supervision. Besides, their teachers
write their assignments on the blackboard;
- the 'communitarian' approach also is fully at play when students
"help" each other during exams. They are so used to being citizens
in a make-believe world that they can't distinguish between fake and
genuine themselves - the grossest mistakes their neighbours make
are good enough for them to copy down to punctuation marks!
- The Ch\inese don't really understand what the learning of a second
tongue is all about; to them, it is acquiring mere knowledge, facts,
bits of information that they can retrieve from their memory; thus
the memorising and the illusion that understanding English means
knowing how to translate every English vocable into a Chinese
equivalent! Clearly herein lies the greatest challenge to accept -
making Chinese truly bilingual would mean to put an end to the
age-old practice of learning every word by rote and relying on
bilingual textbooks up to university level!

That the findings of Ming Sheng must have been somewhat skewed becomes clear if you remember that you canNOT expect a young Chinese person to make an educated choice. Typically, a Chinese person might be in three minds about where to go for dinner unless you somehow force him or her to remove all but one choice. How then can they decide whether an expat teacher is doing the right thing for them? All they are able to express is their personal like or dislike; surely most of them would not like attending school in a strictly Western, competitive and ethically-pure environment!