Happy New Year, Now Here’s a Test

Jan 022013
 

It’s the first day of school for 2013, and guess what my students get to do? Take a test! Yay! Actually, we already had midterms the week before. The school wanted me to just hand them a written test that they would administer for me, but because pronunciation is an important part of their grade, I opted to do it myself in my classes this week. Sarah and I still tried to help out during midterms, though, by proctoring some of the Thai exams. Sadly, I don’t think the school appreciated our efforts. While the Thai teachers just sat in the hallway and let the students get away with cheating, we took it seriously and monitored the hell out of those kids. We were dismissed after the third test and told to go home.

Well, if the Thai teachers are okay with sweeping that under the rug, then at least I could treat my own test like it mattered. I’m having a hard time being strict about this, though. I keep telling the students, “This is a test! No talking! No looking! No cheating!” But they ignore me and share answers, anyway. Of course, they’re sharing the wrong answers, so I guess it doesn’t even matter. Here’s a hint: don’t cheat off the dumb kid! I knew their English was bad, but seeing their answers on this test gives me little hope. For example, here’s one of the easier questions:

How are you?
I’m fine __________.

I explain to them that I’m just looking for something other than “I’m fine,” and yet I’m getting answers that range from “yes” to “boy” to “lefxt.” It’s been a little disheartening to grade the tests in between classes and see mostly 10s and 12s out of 40. What’s particularly frustrating is that all of these questions came from the worksheets we did together in our normal classes. Some of the students will realize this and pull out the worksheets, hoping to cheat off them, only to realize they didn’t do the worksheets when they were supposed to! Maybe my next lesson should be on how to cheat correctly…

Time to Learn Thai to Teach English

Nov 142012
 

Sometimes, a student will offer to carry my books from one classroom to another, and they’ll take their shoes off before entering the teachers’ offices. I told you they were polite. But their English really, really sucks. My first lesson, which was nothing more than a review of body parts and a rousing game of Erase Face, was intended to assess their skill level. I thought I had gotten the right impression from it, so I prepared another simple lesson this week about “I like…” and “I don’t like…” It’s much worse than I thought, though. Most classes can’t even fill out the worksheet I made, or they do fill it out, but their answers don’t make sense. I like to cat? I don’t think so…

When I was teaching in China, people would always ask me, “How do you teach English if you don’t speak Chinese?” Ha! You don’t. Well, the whole point is to conduct class in English and let the kids naturally pick up on what’s going on. Of course, this is made easier when Chinese schools take English seriously, so the kids already have a passable foundation before they meet their first foreign teacher. I don’t know what these Thai teachers have been teaching the students, but it isn’t English, that’s for sure. Any English they do know seems to have been memorized without being told what it means. They start and end every class with a mundane “good morning/goodbye” chant that’s often not even used appropriately.

At least they know (and delight in using) the word “buffalo,” among a few other odds and ends. They have zero Chinese skills for my wife to build off of. At first, we thought this would be a great opportunity to mold them into obedient, little Chinese speakers. But even the concept of “My name is…” (or “Wo jiao…” in Chinese) just isn’t sinking in with a lot of the classes. You can only shake your hands in so many ways to get the point across. Exasperated, Sarah finally resorted to learning the phrases in Thai so she can verify with the students that they understand. Considering their English is almost as bad, it looks like I’ll have to do the same.

I’m not discouraged, though. On the contrary, I think this is a great (and sneaky) way for us to learn Thai. I started using the Thai phrase “phom chob” to emphasize what “I like” means. The students instantly know what the lesson is about and are tickled pink that I can speak a little Thai. So I’m thinking that I’ll just write down the Thai words for everything in my lesson, and by the end of the week, I should have them all memorized. Granted, I still think it’s better for them to learn English if I only speak English with them, but when the odds are stacked against you, you might as well embrace it.

Oh, To Be a Teacher Again…

Nov 092012
 

Picture of a school in Thailand

The only thing that keeps reminding me I’m teaching at a school in Thailand and not in China is that the students will press their hands together and bow as I walk past. Of course, some students do it mockingly, but I’ll take what I can get. A bow’s a bow! There are a lot of similarities between this school and Chinese schools, including unclear roles for the foreign teachers, hastily made and inconvenient schedules (for the foreign teachers), last minute cancellations, and classrooms that are ridiculously hot. Oh, God, why is it so hot?!

The school actually has three foreign language programs: English, Chinese (my wife’s classes), and Vietnamese. The Vietnamese teacher has been here for a while, though, and speaks nearly fluent Thai. The students, on the other hand… Well, for high schoolers who have supposedly been learning English since Grade 1, their level is surprisingly bad. It’s worse than any school I taught at in China. Trying to decipher a Thai student’s pronunciation is like trying to make lemonade when life hands you a water buffalo.

I envy Sarah in this regard. The students don’t know any Chinese. This is their first time, so she gets to start with a clean slate and can teach them whatever she wants. My challenge (which I’ve always faced as an EFL teacher) is not only figuring out what the students already know but correcting the mistakes they’ve already memorized. The good news is that the majority of my classes are polite and well-behaved, and the atmosphere of the school is pretty laid-back overall. I mean, when teachers and students can be late to class without consequence, it stands to reason that you can unclench your butt cheeks.

Why Chinese People Have English Names

Jul 242011
 

A friend brought up an interesting point regarding my last post. Why do I keep calling this Chinese woman (who I happen to now be married to) by the English name, Sarah? The name “Sarah” has no legality. It’s more like a nickname. She still has to write her Chinese name on any forms or applications. It’s pretty common, though, for younger Chinese people to have an English name. Sometimes, it’s a translation of what their Chinese name means. Sometimes, it’s phonetically similar (like Li Li becoming Lily). But most of the time, they just pick a name they like and go with it.

When I first started teaching, I was a little naive about how this name-picking worked. I thought students took it seriously, revered their English names, and kept them for the rest of their lives. All of my ILP students were assigned an English name, after all. Of course, a lot of ILP teachers didn’t give this much thought and simply named students after boyfriends or celebrities. Some poor kid was given the name Gordon, because a girl wanted to name him after a Mormon president. And I thought, “Man, what an unfortunate teenager.”

Years later, I found out just how disposable these names were. Older students changed their English names all the time, bouncing between crazy vocabulary words and pop singer monikers until they found something that fit. Famous artists like Jay Chou and Jolin Tsai meant lots of kids wanted to be called Jay and Jolin. Others picked less favorable names like Ice Lemon, Banana, Crystal Bear, and Car. Then when they realized these weren’t that great, they quickly changed to something else.

But having an English name—however silly—really helps in communicating with foreigners, because we’re terrible about pronouncing or remembering Chinese names. Even Chinese friends will call each other by their English names, since it is easier than having to say their full Chinese names. Out of respect, you are supposed to address someone by their full name (or their family name + their title), so a more casual English name is a popular alternative.

A Quick Guide to Teaching English in China

Apr 132011
 

As many of you know, I am writing a book detailing the time I spent living and teaching in China. I’ve been pretty mum about it since the last sample chapter I posted, so here’s an update. The final draft is done. I’ve gotten some great feedback from people, cleaned up the tone of the book, cut out a lot of repetitive dialogue, tightened up the graphics on Level 3, and am finally ready to start the long, arduous process of looking for an agent.

The last time I tried looking for an agent, I wound up with nothing and resorted to publishing that book on Amazon in the Kindle section. I’ve put so much effort into this China book, though (and I know it’s a damn good book), that I won’t be content with a simple e-publication. I’m aware the publishing process isn’t filled with instant gratification; it could be a while before Yes China gets a cover. That’s why, in the meantime, I’ve decided to start yet another project.

Enter A Quick Guide to Teaching English in China. This is a small, 6,500 word “handbook” combining everything I’ve learned from teaching in China. I don’t see it as a conflict with Yes China, because it’s a short, straight to the point how-to guide. It’s meant for people who have already decided they want to teach in China but who don’t know what is expected of them or what they can expect from their new school. It’s also an e-book on Amazon, and it’s only $1.

Chinese Souvenirs: Bottle Opener

Feb 092011
 

Picture of a Chinese Bottle Opener

Of all the things I brought back from China, this gets more use than any of them. Sure, it’s just a bottle opener, but it looks like a Beijing opera mask! It’s red on one side and green on the other. How cool is that?

The bottle opener was a gift. When I first arrived in Changzhou in 2008 (wow, it’s been two and a half years… I should write about that… but that takes too much effort), I worked at a training school that was just celebrating its one-year anniversary. They made a big spectacle out of it, threw a party at a local hotel, made their foreign teachers perform something, and handed out lots of prizes. I received two items. The first was a toothpick holder that I quickly pawned off on someone else. The other item was the bottle opener.

The following year (that’s 2009 if you weren’t paying attention), I once again found myself working at the same training school when their next anniversary party rolled around. It wasn’t nearly as big of a deal as the one before, though. We gathered at a restaurant, ate a cheap buffet, and went home with no gifts, no cheesy toothpick holders… and no Beijing opera bottle openers.

Getting Time Off in China

Jan 022011
 

Because Christmas fell on a Saturday this year… I mean last year… I was only given one day off of work from my job in the US. This was a bit disappointing, since I had been in school so long and was quite used to getting almost a full month to do nothing. When I was teaching in China, though, I also only got one day off, and that was because I was a foreigner. The Chinese teachers didn’t get Christmas day off. In fact, for the first school I taught at, I ended up working Christmas, anyway, in order to get some end-of-semester testing done.

Of course, I made up for this by getting a month off for Chinese New Year, including extra time that all foreign teachers get (the school doesn’t want/need us around while they do final exams). Again, though, the Chinese teachers don’t get quite as much time off. But even for them and other Chinese workers, there are quite a few holidays in China. There’s Chinese New Year, May Day, and National Day, to name a few, and they’re all longer than Thanksgiving.

At first, it seems kind of unfair. I looked at my company’s holiday calendar for 2011, and it was disappointingly shy of days off. The caveat with holidays in China, though, is that you usually have to make up time to get it off. National Day may be a week-long holiday, but I had to work the Saturday and Sunday before the vacation. So even though I got to relax for an entire seven days, I was technically only being relieved of three days of teaching. I could see the benefit of doing it this way, but I still found it exhausting to work seven days straight. I’m not sure which way I’d rather have it…

Getting Fired by a Training School

Nov 262010
 

English training schools in China aren’t known for having the best work environment. Most of my friends who work (or worked) at a training school hate (or hated) it. So it’s more likely that a foreign teacher would quit than they would get fired. The school can’t afford to fire them, anyway, even if it does treat them like crap. It needs their presence to convince potential students it has a lot of foreign teachers.

Normal Chinese employees, on the other hand, are completely expendable. In the few months that I worked at the training school in Changzhou, I saw a lot of Chinese employees get fired. It was a little infuriating how the school handled these situations, because, if there was an employee it wanted to get rid of, the school would blackmail them into quitting. The school didn’t want to pay compensation to anyone who got fired.

It basically came down to, “If you don’t quit on your own, then we won’t say good things about you to your next employer.” With jobs as hard as they are to come by in China, how could they argue with that? The worst thing I heard, though, was when the school wanted a pregnant employee to quit, then come back after she gave birth, so it wouldn’t have to pay for maternity leave. It’s surprising these places could get away with treating their employees like this.

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