Teach English in Yuehe Zhen - Shangluo Shi

As I prepare to return to China for my second ESL journey, I find myself reflecting on some of the problems that I noted which Chinese ESL learners experienced. Below is a description of several of the challenges encountered at an English training centre. Chinese scholars are drilled at school in grammar and vocabulary. Many students had large vocabularies, and some adult learners had developed their grammar knowledge. However, their listening, pronunciation and talking skills lagged far behind. Many students did not have a native English speaker in the classroom, and instead, English was taught exclusively by a Chinese citizen who had studied English as a second language. Some of these teachers had never spoken with a native English speaker in person. The teacher, consequently, developed the ability to teach formulaic information but had underdeveloped pronunciation and speaking abilities. These shortcoming transferred from the teacher to their pupils. In class, the students were not instructed to engage in dialogue nor was English conversation facilitated. Instead, scholars were told to “repeat after me”, and in the process, they learn to mimic the mispronounced words spoken by the Chinese teacher. Also, there are too many scholars in a classroom for the teacher to listen to each scholar. As scholars rarely had a chance for their individual voices to be heard, they did not have the correct pronunciation nor developed the listing abilities or feel comfortable speaking. Even those students who did great on written English examinations might find it difficult to hear what I said in the classroom. Many students were comfortable spending hours learning more vocabulary and grammar rules but found it daunting speaking English. For these reasons, our primary focus at the English training centre was neither grammar nor vocabulary. Instead, we focussed on engaging learners in conversation. Another challenge that Chinese ESL scholars faced was the significant amount of idiomatic language in English. The word, “faced,” is one such example. Another is “have a seat.” There are many idioms, expressions and phrases in English that native speakers take for granted as sensible speech. It was challenging at times for ESL scholars to make heads or tails of them because there were no rules to understanding them. Instead, idioms needed to be encountered and decoded in order to be comprehended. A problem that children faced is that teenagers were often overworked. And when not overworked, they might play computer games until 2 am the morning before an ESL class. A result was that students might fall asleep or have difficulty concentrating during ESL class even when in a class composes of a small group. Many Chinese scholars are particularly avoidant of mistake making and so did not speak during ESL class out of fear of making an error. This problem was more ingrained in adults than in children who were often more open to being silly and playful. One student told me of an eraser shaming occasion that occurred at the end of the school term. It began when the teacher asked to see all the scholars’ erasers. The scholar who used their eraser the most during that term was systematically shamed for their use of an eraser (the usage indicated the number of errors that the scholar corrected). The teacher told all of the other pupils to point at and make fun of the scholar who has used their eraser the most. One of my methods to build comfort in making mistakes among the students was to pretend that a student who had spoken correctly had actually made a mistake and that I was utterly confused about what they had meant. For example, a beginner student might say “dog” to which I looked confused and responded, “Huh, what is a dog?” The student might bark, use a word association or draw a dog; to which I may shake my head and reply, “No, that’s a cat.” Then, after them insisting they were right or perhaps coming to believe they were wrong, I might press my palm to my forehead and say, “Whoops. Sometimes I forget what things are called.” A problem I faced is my height. At 6,4ft or 1.94m, I’m taller than the average Chinese person. I was often given a class of new intakes into the training centre which was a class comprised of four year old ‘students.’ Frequently a student or two would cry when first meeting me. In part, the reaction was due to it being the first time that they had engaged with a white person and the person was perhaps the tallest person they had ever seen! A greater contributor to their fear though was that most of the scholars had never interacted with another child before. Until then they had spent most of their time mostly at home and with family. The first time that many of them engaged with other children was in my classroom. So, the four year olds were not only learning English, but also learning social skills and, for some, were away from their family for the first time in their lives. My response to this context was to create a lot of structure which became familiar to the children, and the predictability of the classroom experience caused the children to feel safe. Each class began and ended with a song, for example. It was important not to pressure a child into a language game that s/he doesn’t want to play and to provide a lot of positive reinforcement. As the children’s speaking abilities were low, a lot of rapport was built through physical contact such high fives.