Buckland Weekly #30 - Differences in Chinese and Western Techniques Part 3

Quite some time ago I started a series of articles about various topics that had come up in conversation with a Chinese colleague – all linked by the fact that his opinions and mine on effective teaching techniques were frequently vastly at odds. He’s a good friend and a good teacher and he was only repeating what most teachers here do and believe but the essence of it all was totally different to the way we see language teaching in the west.

Other things interrupted me and I never completed the series so I’ll do so now. 

First let me list the things I intended to discuss in the articles.

Learning long word lists is an effective strategy for vocabulary acquisition.

Reading a dictionary is an effective strategy for vocabulary acquisition.

Reading aloud is a useful tool in learning a language.

Rote memorisation of text passages is a useful tool in language learning

Students who do not wish to learn should be ignored as long as they are not disruptive.

Punishment is an effective way to correct mistakes.

Solitary learning is preferable to group activity.

Some students cannot or will not learn.

Passing an Exam means your English is good.

If your English is good you will pass your exam.

In a fast paced lesson students will be forced to learn.

I had covered the first four so now let’s take a look at the next one

Students who do not wish to learn should be ignored as long as they are not disruptive.

This was possibly the one where we had the most fundamental disagreement. My friend has a fondness for idioms and he said “let sleeping students lie”. I’ve heard the same idea from both Chinese and foreign teachers expressed either in those words or others. The principle is that you should teach the ones who show an interest in learning and as for the others – as long as they cause no trouble in class – let them be. I couldn’t disagree more. I have two problems with it – an ideological one and a practical one. Ideologically it goes against everything I believe. I am in the classroom to try to teach everybody. Writing a student off without trying feels lazy, disrespectful and wrong. I can’t bring myself to do it. Off course I know that I won’t always be successful. There will sometimes be students that I can’t reach no matter how I try. The difference is that I don’t believe that it gives me a license not to try. Also, I have had many occasions where a student that other teachers consider difficult has started out with a bad attitude in my class but finished up by joining in and progressing. I’m not pretending this is always true. I have a student this year who has spent ninety per cent of every lesson asleep. When I wake him, he scowls at me and immediately puts his head down again. The other teachers tell me he is like this in every lesson and that they confidently expect him to fail everything. He won’t, they tell me, be bothered. He is in school because he has to be and will, as soon as he can, leave to go work on his family farm. He doesn’t think he needs to learn anything so no one has been able to motivate him to try.

Of course there is also the practical problem. As oral English teachers much of the work we do is in pairs or groups. A non-participating student doesn’t just affect himself he spoils the task for his whole group. If you are a keen and eager student and you are partnered in a speaking task with a student who won’t even wake up then you aren’t able to learn either. You know when you have such a student because when you include him or her in a group the others always complain. There is not much you can do. Limitations on time and the logistics of the classroom layout make it hard or even impossible to just move people about so you just have to try on a week by week basis to organize the groups in such a way that everyone who wants to at least gets a chance to work with different people.

So what’s the answer? Well I once observed a teacher who took the wrong answer to an extreme. In the lesson I watched he interacted with no more than half a dozen students from a class of about seventy. When I asked him about it he said that he was only going to teach the ones who wanted to learn – and by that he meant the few who volunteered answers to his questions. That wasn’t just ignoring the ones who didn’t want to work but also the majority of those who did but who couldn’t – for whatever reason – offer an answer. In my lessons I always make an effort to include everyone. I wake up the sleepers and ask them questions. People gazing out of the window can also be sure they will draw my attention and get asked. In groups I will either try to make the reluctant students lead the group or, if their English isn’t strong enough for that, tell the group leader that they can help them in Chinese if they have to. Students who seem to just be struggling get easier questions and more time so that they can build their confidence until they join in more freely.

The bottom line is that “let sleeping students lie” may be a common philosophy here but that doesn’t make it a good one. You should try to reach everyone – accept that maybe you will be unsuccessful but you have to try.

Buckland Weekly #29: The Last Minute

Christmas is coming.

And like every year it will be here on the 25^th December. A much harder question is when will you finish your teaching? This is one of the tricky things when teaching – or for that matter living – here in China. You will rarely be given much, if any, notice of when things will happen. I’ll give you a couple of examples – one from school life and one from my social life. The school one first. At the end of the first semester of my third year teaching in Baiyin I was informed of the date of my last lesson two days AFTER it had actually taken place. It came about because on my schedule for that semester I had no lessons on Wednesdays. On the Thursday morning I was just about to leave my apartment to go to school when my phone rang. It wasn’t my administrator and it wasn’t the head – or anyone else – in my department. It was a friend from another department who was ringing to ask if anyone had told me that lessons had actually finished on Wednesday and I was now officially on vacation. I checked with my administrator who after a moment of considering said she would check with the school. A few minutes later she rang me back to tell me that this was true but the Chinese teachers had only been informed yesterday when I wasn’t there.

That’s an extreme case but even now, as I type this on the 4^th December, I have been told that my junior classes will probably finish on the 14^th but no one in the school, so they say, knows when the senior classes will finish. It could be anywhere between 16^th December and 6^th January. Literally no one has been able to find out for me. I wanted to go visit my friends in Baiyin for Christmas but until I know for sure when the term ends I can’t book a flight or a hotel. I might not be able to go at all.

The other example was at this same time of year. In my first year here I had to work on our New Year’s Eve, 31^st December. I was living in a city with just two other foreign teachers and beyond a very vague arrangement that we might meet for a drink later I had no fixed plans for celebrating. Well at least up until three O’clock I had no fixed plans. Between three and six I received no fewer than five further invitations to do something. Teachers in my department had decide to take me to dinner and had booked a restaurant without checking with me first – just assuming that I was free. A friend from a school I had previously worked at invited me to KTV. One of the other foreign teachers was invited by her colleagues to a different KTV. My administrator called me up and invited me out to dinner and finally, as I was getting ready for the dinner with my colleagues (which I felt obliged to go to as they had already booked it) my next door neighbour’s ten year old son knocked on my door to ask if I wanted to eat with them.

This last minute attitude is just something you have to get used to. Chinese colleagues always express total astonishment when I tell them that in any western school the schedule for the whole year – start and end dates, exam dates, holidays and all – is known by the teachers from the start of the first term and that the office will almost certainly have at least an outline schedule for two or three years. Barring the occasional snow day closure we know exactly when we will or will not be there.

As for social events I have told many of my friends that if I plan a dinner party – whether at home or in a restaurant – I will start asking the people who are coming at least a few weeks early so that they can arrange their schedule accordingly. No one ever seems to believe me. No one ever seems to think it possible to arrange anything more than a day or so in advance

There is nothing that you can do about it except learn to adapt to it.

Anyway, whether you have your finish date or not let me wish you, 21 days early, a very happy Christmas in whichever part of China you find yourself. 

Buckland Weekly #28: The Act of Being Polite

All views expressed are the author's own etc.

It’s getting to the time of year when Buckland start recruiting for the February Orientation and so I intend to post a few articles about living and teaching in China here. You can find my previous articles by scrolling back and following the links.

So let’s talk about one of the differences between Chinese culture and western culture, British culture in particular – the whole business of “please”, “thank you”, “excuse me and so on and the related subject of rewarding someone for doing something good for you.

I remember when I first arrived in China and went to the city of Baiyin in the north. On my first few trips to the supermarket I noticed that the cashiers seemed highly amused whenever I was paying for my goods and I couldn’t work out what they thought was so funny. Eventually I asked a Chinese friend about it and we worked out that it was the ridiculous number of times an Englishman at a supermarket checkout says “thank you”. Saying “please” and “thank you” and all the other little politeness words is something we do all the time and it’s such an ingrained part of British culture that until someone points it out we don’t even notice that we are doing it. So at the checkout the exchange would go something like this.

Cashier scans an item. I say “thank you” and put it in my bag.

Cashier scans another item. I say “thank you” and put it in my bag.

Same happens with every item, no matter how many there are.

Cashier rings up the total and tells me how much. I say “thank you” and hand over the money.

Cashier hands me my change. I say “thank you”.

As I walk away I say “thank you”.

Once I realized I wasn’t surprised that people found it weird and amusing. I still catch myself doing it from time to time but I am slowly getting better.

It would be completely wrong to let this give you the idea that Chinese culture isn’t polite. It’s simply that the politeness takes other forms. When out for a meal if someone is pouring drinks they will almost never pour their own until all the others have been poured. Also at meals people will sometimes select food from the dishes and place it onto your plate for you. In large gatherings it’s extremely common for someone to stand up and individually toast every member of the group. When everyone decides to do this the toasting can last a very long time. If people are doing this you should do it to, watch they way they go about it and copy it.

Another illustration of how it can be difficult to thank and reward someone – even when they have done something really beyond what you might expect back home – is the story of my lost camera.,.

I was living in Baiyin and I had slipped on some ice and injured my leg so that I was in plaster from ankle to thigh. Nevertheless I had still been teaching, from a chair at the front of the class on one particular day had to go to a meeting at another location. I took a taxi there and back and on the return journey I heaved myself with difficulty out of the cab, paid the driver and, two seconds after he had driven off, realised that my camera, which had been in my pocket, had fallen out in the cab. I called my Chinese friends to help and we tried all sorts of ways to find it but I didn't know the cab company and in the end I gave up. Two weeks later I got a call from my school administrator. A passenger had found the camera and given it to the driver. The driver had looked through the pictures and realised it belonged to his only foreign passenger of the day. Among the other pictures was a picture of the school I taught at. His son went to a different school but had friends at my school so his son called one of his friends who was at my school but not in my class. The friend took the camera to his class teacher. The class teacher took it to the head of my department. The head of my department called my administrator and she called me and returned the camera.

I wanted to give the cab driver a reward but was told that this would be a serious loss of face for him as it would look as if I felt that he only did it because he expected a reward. He didn't expect to be rewarded for doing the right thing and would be offended if I offered one.

Nevertheless I wanted to something to show my appreciation so my administrator suggested that I could give some school books and supplies tor his son – not as a reward but as a gift from a friend. That’s what I did and so I had my camera back and had shown my appreciation indirectly and everyone was happy.

It is often these tiny cultural differences that we have trouble coming to grips with and if you are getting things wrong it’s extremely unlikely that anyone will point it out directly. After all that would be impolite.