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Teach English in Huaxi Zhen - Weinan Shi

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Most African parents are firm believers of the 'spare the rod and spoil the child' notion and this also includes most young and new parents in Africa, one finds that a child is usually corrected using corporal punishment. They emphasize on the community values and principles but once they travel to the first world regions, the disciplinary form and child learning process views become different even for them too. I remember reading on Twitter once about a young Nigerian girl of sixteen who was staying in the UK with her family, her mother reprimanded her for her dressing and as a response, she slapped her. In turn her mother sent her back to Nigeria where she can be 'properly disciplined'. In most Zimbabwean government schools, you find that teachers are stringent on their regular day class students and lenient on the night students. I remember when l was doing my grade 5 level and misspelt the word 'illustrated' by omitting the second 'l' letter and l got a beating of my life from my class teacher and to this day, l remember both the word and the beating but most importantly how to correctly spell the word 'i-l-l-u-s-t-r-a-t-e-d' and its meaning. Night schoolers doing the same level as me were given homework to use the same word in five sentences to show its meaning. It was literally beaten into my classmates and l but drilled into night schoolers just to obtain the same end results. In 2005, myself and five other students accompanied by a teacher, visited Sweden on a school exchange program. Their whole teaching approach was to make us, the school children, excited about school and make learning an enjoyable exercise. The modern teaching methods helped with establishing learning disabilities in some of my schoolmates and designed special teaching methods for the slow learners. I noticed with great amusement that special class students there do not feel sidelined nor feel like rejects. Meanwhile, in Zimbabwe some schools do not even have special classes nor trained teachers to cater for these students, instead, they make the students keep repeating the same level over and over again until they pass or they take them back to the lower levels much to their disgrace and hence most of them turn into bullies just to be acknowledged and recognised as they feel defeated academically. To add on to the education system's mishaps, most teachers in the African region have a different and supremacist attitude. I remember vividly one of my high school teacher's telling my class that she does not care whether we pass or fail because she would still get her salary at the end of the month and this was after she found us making noise during study period. Now, l understand this was a form of reverse psychology and it would yield results to the audience with the right level of understanding but we see how in American movies such as Night School of 2018 when students are found on the wrong side and they are told to re-evaluate their priorities with much care and maturity. The end result of a focused class may be the same but the motivation behind the effort plays an important role on the students' state of mind. According to Jo Budden's article on Correction Techniques of 2011, teachers need to know when and how they should correct their students, that is, they need to make informed decisions about what, when and how to correct in order to help learners improve without damaging their confidence. This is seen as most schools in most regions have 'the cool but not so academically gifted' gang. The psychology behind being that everyone wants to be correct and right and be acknowledged so as to overshadow their weaknesses. When teachers record marks in class asking students to shout out loud their marks eventually those who always get low marks grow a thick skin and become immune to the ridicule. When teachers respond with a plain, 'you are wrong' to a student it affects their self esteem and confidence. Such approaches from teachers without consideration of the environment and student's character and ability, give birth to indiscipline or shy-away and 'invisible' students. Finally, one can conclude and say people in general, do not like being corrected because they feel like you are making them inferior hence correction techniques being a vital topic to dwell on. As students, pupils are faced with the fear of taking risks and when they have the courage to do so and get crashed by either the system or the teacher or fellow classmates, one of two things happen. They either grow a thick skin and and become reluctant to try again or they fight harder to prove that they too can do it and it ceases to be a learning process but a motion to prove people wrong. Therefore, teacher's have to master correction techniques and adapt them to their students' character, culture and ability.


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