Are You Going to Teach English?
Long sigh… yes. But it’s not what you think. I swore I would never teach English in China again, and, as far as the traditional classroom setting goes, I’m sticking to it. As a favor to a friend who helped me get a hotel room, however, I am giving him English lessons every day. Even one-on-one sessions can be aggravating, but thanks to the power of Blurt Out, a book that continues to prove useful after five years, I’ll make it through the next two weeks.
One thing I found interesting as I cracked open this magical book again was the second phrase it covers: Are you going to… It suddenly struck me as amusing how “Are you going to…” is a much longer, more tiring version of “Will you…” yet it’s the more common way of asking what someone’s up to (i.e. “Are you going to watch a movie?” vs. “Will you watch a movie?”). “Will you…” seems more fit for making requests, like, “Will you clean up this dog barf?” I guess you could make requests the other way, too. “Are you going to clean up this dog barf?” though that has a more negative ring to it.
Imagine trying to explain all this to someone whose English is… pretty meh. Oh, how the subtle differences between English phrases make teaching such a burdensome joy. I’m ecstatic to be doing this again.
Five Problems for Chinese English Speakers
Almost everything about English is difficult, and a list of five common problems could consist of nothing but grammar rules. I’ll forgo the really technical stuff, though, and focus mainly on the things that stand out to me the most (and, consequently, bug me the most as an EFL teacher fighting a losing battle).
1. The “th” sound
There aren’t any sounds in Chinese that require the speaker to stick their tongue out, so this completely goes over my students’ heads. Even when I exaggeratedly demonstrate to stick your tongue out while pronouncing words like teeth or thirty or think, they just won’t do it. Maybe it’s too much of a social faux pas.
2. The “arrr” sound
The stereotype that Chinese people pronounce Rs as Ls is horribly misinformed. This is not true. What is a problem, however, is when the R sound is in the middle of a word, such as in dark, shark, or Clark (hey, that’s my name). I know they can pronounce R correctly, but it almost always comes out as “ah” (i.e. dock, shock).
3. Plurals
It seems like a simple rule to add an S on the end when there’s more than one of something, but we have a lot of words (like clothes and mouse) that this doesn’t apply to. Chinese is much simpler, because the word stays the same, only the quantifier changes. Often, my students will just tack on an extra S for everything (i.e. clotheses).
4. He/she
Some of my friends, whose English is ridden with slang and other fluent nuances, still struggle with he/she. They’ll accidentally refer to a boy as a she or a girl as a he. That’s what happens when boys and girls look too much alike! In reality, though, spoken Chinese only has one word for both (ta), so it really is confusing.
5. Verb tenses
They say Chinese is difficult, but how can it be difficult when the language doesn’t have tenses? Words don’t change, unlike English, where we add -ed or -ing on the end depending on when something happened, not to mention all the irregular verbs out there. Students, then, play it safe by sticking to -ing (i.e. I like to swimming).
You Will Learn Something Today
The Grade 4 lesson books are already jumping into some pretty heavy English, and I’m left wondering how I can possibly get these kids to understand past, present, and future tenses when we only meet once a week. Past tenses are particularly confusing for them, even without all the irregular verbs. Then the book keeps adding “didn’t” in there, which throws them off even more. Alas, the best most of the students can do is, “I didn’t reading a book,” when they’re really trying to say, “I read a book.”
I decided to give past tense a break (or rather, I gave it a break; clever, huh) in order to focus on “What will you do?” and “What are you doing?” One of the ways we practiced this was to have a student stand at the front of the room. I would ask the other students, “What will she do?” and they would reply, “She will dance! She will sing! She will play guitar!” And she has to do it. Because I’m the teacher! Bwahahahaha!
Hey, I dance plenty of times in front of my classes. I think it’s only fair for the students to do the same.
Another activity that gets some giggles out of them is passing around two pictures of phones. The students pretend like they are calling their friend and asking, “What are you doing?” When I hand the phones to a boy and a girl, though, the entire class whistles, “Ooooooooh!” I’ll finally take the last call but hold the phone upside down and repeatedly say, “Hello? Are you there? Hello?” The student who’s trying to ask me the question gets increasingly flustered, while the rest of the class screams at me to turn the phone around.
I normally don’t care for the activities suggested by the teacher’s manual, but this last one ended up being rather entertaining… when the kids understood what was going on. Most of the time, they didn’t. The point, though, is to keep proposing new things to do, because something is keeping you from doing the last one. Some of the classes really nailed the concept:
Let’s play football.
But it’s raining. Let’s watch TV.
But there’s no TV. Let’s go to sleep.
But it’s morning! Let’s make a cake.
But I don’t like cake. Let’s play basketball.
But I am very tired…
I was pretty excited that they were “getting it,” and I started clapping and saying, “Yes! Right! Exactly! Good job!” The students were a little surprised by this enthusiasm. They looked at each other and shrugged, as if to say, “What’s his problem?” My problem… is that we’re actually learning something.
Can’t Can Chang Chan
There are some things (we could call them problems, even) about your native language you don’t really think about until you start teaching it to other people. Then there are some things (still problems) about your native language you think about all the time, regardless of where you are. And it seems like the barely noticeable difference between the words “can” and “can’t” has always proved troublesome. I find myself constantly asking people to clarify, “You mean you can or you can’t?” And they irritably reply, “I can’T!”
It almost makes more sense to simply say, “I am not able to…” from now on, but that’s a difficult habit to start and would probably turn off a lot of people, anyway. What’s wrong with you? Why do you talk like that? You think you’re better than me?! Or you could just pronounce “can’t” the British way, as is popular among Chinese English students. I already gave them “chips” over “French fries,” though. They don’t get my “can’t,” also!
The reason I bring this up is because the same kind of subtle ending exists for Chinese words. After working with my Chinese tutor for five months now, you’d think I would be familiar with her pronunciation and be able to differentiate between certain sounds. Well, okay, you probably wouldn’t think that. The point is, the two of us always struggle with the G sound when it comes at the end of a word, like “cheng” or “feng” or “jing.” Whenever I don’t write a G, my tutor tells me there is one, and whenever I do write a G, my tutor tells me there isn’t one.
Gah! Languages can be frustrating, English or Chinese. And I said “can” that time, not “can’t.”
British English is Taking Over China
Strawberry. If I follow that with the word “pancakes,” my mouth starts watering, but I don’t want to talk about strawberry pancakes today. Just strawberries. You see, Grade 3 has had the hardest time remembering this word, and yet it’s an important one to know should they ever want to venture away from the chocolate-flavored ice cream at McDonald’s.
For the first few weeks back from my winter holiday, I’ve been reviewing with the kids everything we learned last semester. I’m glad to report that most of them have finally gotten the strawberry. However, this review has brought up a new problem: French fries. We’ve drilled “fries” as long as we’ve drilled “strawberry.” Now that I’m back, I’ve found everyone is calling them “chips.” You turn your back for one second (or one month), and British English comes charging in!
Most of the English books I see are based on British English, which means my friends have been taught to use words like “mum” and “trousers” and spell color with a U. I don’t have a problem with this so much as I find it interesting how everyone’s fascination with English stems from doing business with the US, yet all of their materials are prepping them for a trip to England. Then these schools keep hiring American teachers, and we have to explain to our students over and over that, no, we are not from England, no, we don’t eat biscuits every day, and, uh… what the hell is a lorry?
All right, get ready for another “when I was…” moment. Ready? When I was a teacher in Wuwei, my students kept bringing up cultural information about America that was just… wrong. In fact, the things they were saying were more about England than the US. After I finally pointed out they had the two countries mixed up, they seemed really disappointed and lost all interest in talking about American culture. Maybe I should just agree with my students that I’m an Englishman so we can all live in a happy fairytale!
Warning: Strong Language
It’s interesting how some words became swears while others, which we use just as often, for the same reasons, and which sound awfully similar to their vulgar counterparts, are, in most company, perfectly acceptable. I say most, because there are people who have scribbled the likes of “heck” and “dang it” into their book of no-nos. We have our cultural swears that are, seemingly, defined by what gets censored on TV, but then there are all the other words that would get our mouth soaped by our parents. Growing up, I couldn’t even say “fart, butt, or shut up.”
And now I pretty much have no limits.
Okay, so it’s not that bad, but I’ll admit that the majority of our swear words don’t bother me anymore. You wouldn’t know this by talking to me, though; I am very conscientious of what comes out of my mouth (and ears and nose). But swearing, as I see it, is inevitable. When you smack your thumb with a hammer or forget to back up your hard drive before reformatting it, sometimes the only consolation available is to reach for the strongest words possible. Or maybe it’s just not as funny to call someone a “penny pincher” as it is to call them a “stingy bastard.” The point is, as you grow up, you learn when it’s appropriate to say, “Shit!” when it’s appropriate to say, “Crap!” and when the only appropriate thing to do is bite your tongue and twist your stomach into a knot.
The reason I bring this up is because it seems like the swear words are an ESL or EFL student’s favorite vocabulary. And this can really throw you off when you hear a sweet, innocent Chinese girl who hardly has the countenance to talk dirty suddenly blurt out, “Oh, shit!” over something silly like a broken pencil tip. That really only deserves a “damn it” at best and a disgruntled sigh at worst. Yet she only says this, because she got the impression from American movies that “shit” is what we all say when something goes wrong.
English teachers have to be careful how they talk, or else their kids students will quickly pick up on all the naughty words that slip out. Of course, you can always follow these accidents with, “You shouldn’t say that,” but that’s about as effective as telling a child not to put tin foil in the microwave. Even then, I think some teachers pride themselves in teaching their students how to swear.
Yes, I know, becoming fluent in a language unfortunately involves recognizing all the bad things you can say, but native speakers know what situations and what company warrant using one word over another. Most EFL students haven’t acquired that level of discernment yet. They just know that certain words get a reaction out of foreigners. There is a breed of teenage Chinese boys who enjoy wandering the streets and randomly shouting, “F—!” instead of the usual, “Hello!” when they see a white person. Real classy…
I’m reminded of the Chinese class I took in college where cussing (in Chinese) would occasionally come up. One guy said, “It doesn’t bother me to swear in Chinese, because it doesn’t mean anything to me.” But then the teacher’s assistant from China would enter the room, and she’d get red in the face upon hearing everyone practicing how to say “shit” over and over in her native language. Boy, those are the kind of impressions you want to send people back home with.
Please Send me a Copy
The way to speak polite, formally-saturated English is to keep throwing in more words until you start sounding like the subservient town fool pleading for a second chance:
Send me a copy.
Please send me a copy.
Would you please send me a copy?
Would it be possible to send me a copy?
Would you be so kind as to send me a copy?
Could you be so kind as to possibly send me a copy?
Could you please be so kind as to possibly send me…
Okay, now you’re just being annoying.
EFL Students are Smarter than the Teacher
I’ve been trying to play a lot of games for my free talks just so I don’t have to spend as much time preparing for them. So I do things like Taboo or Scattegories or Boggle. The problem with games like Scattegories and Boggle, though, is that you get people who come up with ridiculous words and who stop at nothing to justify them.
Granted, this is EFL, so you would think it wouldn’t be such a problem. However, the students have this habit of relying on their translators for everything, a device that often goes over the head of common sense. I stress that it’s against the rules to use translators, because I’m not testing how well they can look up fancy words, I’m testing how well they can think in English. So I tell them, “If it’s a word I’ve never heard before, I’m going to assume you’re using a translator, and it doesn’t count.” One of the advanced students didn’t like this. She huffed, “What makes you the dictionary? Just because you don’t know a word! That’s not fair!” Well, these are my principles. If you don’t like them… I have others!
I find it funny when the students contest the laws of English with me. Sure, I’m no English scholar (only a runner-up), but there is a huge difference between what the students read in their books (which is sometimes wrong, anyway) and how people actually talk. And that’s where I come in! For instance, I had one student who refused to accept that a beard is countable, because “the book said.” She had to consult three different foreigners before coming around to the idea that you don’t have beard, you have a beard.
I’ll give them some credit, because they really dive into the rules of English. Native speakers don’t think too much about all 15 different tenses, which are nice to know but hardly necessary. We just talk. Once you’ve gotten to that point, the next step is learning when to shut up!
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