Job Discussion Forums

[lfclouds]

I have observed that many of the people who post here are often more than dissatisfied with their Chinese counterparts abilities to even speak let alone teach English.

I happen to teach at a school where most of my native colleagues are not only great teachers but genuinely care about the students also.

Is this really so rare in China or do we only hear the bad reports on this forum?

This is in no way an attack on negitave attitudies that members here may or may not have........I have only been in China for a few months and I just want to know if it really is the minority of Chinese teachers who are doing all they can.

Anyone?

[fat_chris]

Chinese teachers god or bad?

Well, I wouldn't say they're bad, bless 'em, but they're certainly not god either. I thought that was designated for Mao in a land of no religion.

[Wolf]

At my school there are about 40 teachers and a dozen support staff in the Foreign langauges department, inluding 4 foreign experts (right now only 3, we are to get a new teacher soon.)

Some of the Chinese teachers speak English very well. And my students at least rave about how good their classes are. Other teachers never talk to me, and don't seem to pay attention at meetings during the English parts. These tend to be the older teachers. I have had no hints as to thier effectiveness as a teacher. The only thing I know is that most of the teachers "sometimes" teach the class in English. For the good ones it ranges from "usually" to "almost always."

Our Japanese teacher writes more proficiently that I can, but doesn't speak as well (by just a bit), for what it's worth.

If one includes the entire nation, Chinese teachers of English must range from world class to abysmal. Like any other group of people.

[osmanhoca]

Depends on how you qualify teachers. In terms of writing and reading, Chinese teachers are relatively better than Native Speakers. They prepare the students for examinations that the Chinese students need for their college entrances, etc. Interms of examination preparations, Chinese teachers are better. They are familiar with the questions, with the system. However, in terms of speaking and listening , most Chinese teachers are not competent.This is not unexpected in a country like China. Both political closeness and linguistic challenges result in Chinese English teachers not be very competent in Speaking and Listening. Well, mostly speaking indeed. They are quite good in listening. The ones I know at least.

Comparing the teachers depends on the expected outcomes, too. Also, what makes a tecaher qualified is not the country of origin, but your passion and interest in students. My BEST TEACHER QUALIFICATIONS do not depend on the country of origin or the country of teaching but willingness to give what you have in a caring and of course planned way.

To sum up; It depends...

Thanks

[MyTurnNow]

Like Eric Clapton, they are not God. But they are good.

I've worked with one or two horrific slugs and a few that were so-so...in all these cases the problem was a lack of motivation. I mean, hey, we're paying them 15-20 kuai an hour; what the hell do these people want?

The vast majority of Chinese teachers I've worked with have ranked among the finest teachers I've ever seen. Excellent in both educational method and classroom management. I'd put many of the Chinese teachers I've observed well ahead of many of the foreign teachers I've observed.

MT

[Michael T. Richter]

In my experience there is a tendency (not rule, but tendency) for younger teachers to have better knowledge of and skills in English than older ones. (With my last hellhole of a place of employment the tendency actually strongly approached a rule.) Further, I've also found that it is the younger teachers (who have little to no face in the organisation anyway) who will approach native speakers to ask for assistance and instruction far more often than the more experienced teachers (who would lose face in such circumstances).

To be fair to all concerned, the older teachers are in a bind. They're the product of a sub-generation that had craptacular English instruction. (I had one of them describe with pride how her class had a (!) tape recorder.) Chinese culture being what it is, they can't admit that their English sucks, and they can't allow themselves to be shown up by their students or the younger teachers.

The newer teachers had merely bad English instruction.

[Roger]

The Chinese teachers are a product of a parochial and backward education system that rewards neither excellence nor interest but mock obedience and mediocracy.
Some of the observations made by others have me puzzling: Older teachers worse than younger ones? How come?
Those who graduated before the tumultuous period from 1966 through '76 definitely have greater teaching competence and linguistic skills than most born later. My guess: they were better motivated, and did not get English instruction in the current new-fangled fashion. To corroborate my claim I suggest you talk with people who studied Russian (the nation's no. 1 foreign tongue until the end of the 1970's)!
The younger generations are all taught in a style that combines retro Confucian technique3s (memorisation, rote-learning, spoon-feeding factoids instead of training them to think and communicate), and so-called "communicative" methods from the West which tend to be unworkable in Chinese class contexts because Chinese fail to develop an individual sense of responsability and ambition to achieve something on their own. Passivity.
Also, Chinese teachers do not view teaching as a career opportunity - unlike folks in some Western countries. Some do, admittedly, but most graduates at normal schools/colleges/universities hope to become self-employed or be recruited away from their place of study to a business.
Thus, they care not one iota about the quality of teaching and their own English.

[MyTurnNow]

[Sun Yuan]

Roger, you mean all Western teachers are motivated by the ideal to be excellent teachers? All Chinese teachers are bad because of their educational system?
Roger, those types of blanket statements, coming from you, are noting but poppycock.
You think the West has the best educational system. You think Harvard is the best school because that is where all the elites go or Oxford. Is the Socratic method the best method?
Try not to infuse your Western cultural biases into a negative view of your own subjective opinions on the Chinese educational system.
Roger, not everything in the West is great especially the educational system.
Sun Yuan

[MyTurnNow]

The west certainly has problems, education system included. But you don't have to be a Harvard graduate to see that the system in China sucks major portions of ass, even compared to the flawed Western system.

I'm an instructor at a middlin'-decent Chinese university (and I don't teach English; I'm in a core-major field) and most days I don't know why. I usually walk away in the afternoon feeling like I've spent most of my day trying to put lace on a bowling ball- it don't belong there and it ain't gonna stick. The institutionalized cheating, the force-feeding approach to learning, the lack of creativity or critical reasoning or independent thinking abilities, the devotion to memorizing facts without even the merest concept of learning, the monkeys-in-a-barrel behavior patterns, the "A degree is something we simply buy, like a pound of rice" attitudes, the abandonment of standards and performance in favor of profit by administrators, etc. etc. etc. that I see on a daily basis are beyond disgusting. A few people do seem to come out of this with something worthwhile, somehow, such as the excellent Chinese teachers whose work I shall continue to defend. But please don't try to defend this system to us...we all already know it entirely too well. The results of it are in our faces daily.

Japan has world-class schools. So does Hong Kong. So does India. I'm sure other Asian countries do too. So, also, don't try and divert this into an East-vs-West issue that isn't really here. The simple fact is that the vast majority of students we see here wouldn't last 2 weeks in schools in any of those countries, any more than they would in schools of the West.

MT

[Sun Yuan]

The students in the west cheat constantly. Ever hear of the internet? It is great for cheating.
One just buys a western degree too only now they are more expensive. didn't you buy yours?
But crassness aside.
the Chinese system is just as bad as the Western. You just see it through your own lense. You cannot shake off your western attitudes. You are biased and always will be. It is a fact. Good students rise to the top in the west just as in China. Sure its backwards. Hell, they got over a billion people, or didn't you notice. that would put a financial strain on any country, look at India.
Sun Yuan

[MyTurnNow]

Sure, they cheat in the West too....but not like this. Not even close.

For what it's worth, I most assuredly did NOT buy my degrees. I worked my ass off for all of them. I had tough professors who demanded respect and performance from us. I behaved myself in the classroom (well, usually, anyway) and didn't get a damned thing I didn't earn.

But I wrote all this before I realized you were Elsie/Cobra/Cynthia/etc. ....so never mind.

MT

[fat_chris]

Sun Yuan,

[Sun Yuan]

Fat_Chris you hairy bear. What is it you do not understand darling. Can I help you with the

[Egas]

I agree that, generally speaking, the Chinese education sytem sucks big time - I won't repeat the points that MTN summarised well. However there are exceptions. I'm teaching at a great high school here in Leshan (near Chengdu) now. Overall I'm really impressed with what I'm seeing here. The campus and facilities are first rate, even by Western standards. I can't comment too much about the Chinese teachers and their methods at present, as I am yet to enter one of their classes. (But my class seems pretty responsive). Also the administrators here seem to be working really hard, which is totally the reverse of what I've seen in other Chinese educational institutions - where the higher you go the less you do and the slacker you become. The students had their sports carnival today - all 3000 students crammed around the running track. Quite a bit of the announcing was done in perfectly good English by the students. I was amazed, to say the least. I'm starting to think that maybe China will rise to its potential in the near future after all. (if this school's attitudes can be emulated elsewhere.)