This is a collection of emails exchanged between a Chinese teacher of ESL and several foreign teachers who were teaching in China in Fall, 1999. The topic was inspired by a dissertation on foreign teachers of English in China written by an experienced Chinese teacher. It's about how foreign teachers often think they're doing a good job, but their students are actually very dissatisfied.

Download the dissertation (zipped MSWord files) from the This is China web page. YOU MUST READ THIS if you are serious about teaching in China! The email thread below was inspired by this dissertation. I don't have the entire thread, but if you read through what's here, I think you can get some insights about possible misperceptions and problems with teaching in China.

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He Fusheng

I find it hard to believe that Chinese students would be more critical of Chinese teachers. Many of my students complain about the Chinese teacher's classes being boring, but they don't bother to complain because they know nothing would be done- a case of "mei banfa". Most of my students would not dare to criticize a Chinese teacher. The undergraduates are young for their age and far away from their families, so they find their teachers and the university intimidating. My second year students still "qili" when I start class, and if I arrive earlier for class, students who arrive after me still ask for permission to enter the classroom. Chinese teachers still treat the undergraduates like children; so I don't feel this creates a healthy environment for constructive criticism of Chinese teachers. But scrutiny of foreign teachers is higher and students are given opportunities to vent their spleens. The students are aware that their Chinese teachers are more concerned about organizing their graduate study in the States or asking the Australian teacher (me) about immigrating to Australia.

I can't accept the way you dismiss the institutional problem of class size. I find it hard to believe that as teacher at Qinghua, you don't see 45-50 students in a spoken English class as slightly excessive. You said you teach advanced spoken English at Qinghua, which means to me that you teach English majors at an excellent University. Many of your students would already have an excellent command of English. I, like many foreign teachers, labor in not so prestige universities across China, and I have classes of 45-47 first and second year non-majors. I find it hard to input anything to my students because they don't understand me. Lets be clear that we are only talking about SPOKEN ENGLISH classes. I know classes sizes are large in China, but it is not too great problem when you teach History or Tourism. I would suggest that you could input more spoken English in class of fifteen. As a Chinese teacher, you have the benefit of teaching in Chinese and your students being comfortable with your presence in the classroom; I find it difficult to teach in Chinese, and I'm the first laowai many of my students have met. Smaller class sizes would ease some of the tensions created by "cultural difference", especially for new teachers, fresh off the boat, and young students confronted by their first real "laowai".

I don't believe departments would find it too difficult to organize smaller class sizes for spoken English. My university seems able to organize for my first years to jog every morning, and have their jogging cards stamped.

Cutting through your jargon about "input" and "output", I believe you are still talking about good, old "chalk and talk". One of the biggest problems of teaching SPOKEN ENGLISH is China is the teacher-centred approach of Chinese education. I believe it is impossible to teach spoken English to students who won't open their mouths. Chinese students still believe that they can passively sit in class and I can "input" spoken English into their heads. I believe the roles should be reversed: the students should speak and my role is to correct faulty grammar and polish expression. Many of my students learn hundreds of new words and expressions a week in their reading classes. Should I teach my students more new words and expressions when they still mistake he and she? I find my students can't express simple ideas about everyday things and the most common phrase in my class is "zenma shuo". I feel that I'm teaching my students something when I try to correct the thicket of English problems created by middle school teachers of English: I think a "xiao xueshang" is a primary school student and not as my students say "a pupil". Or when I try to explain that English speakers don't talk about their parent's occupations as "worker" but factory worker, electrician, carpenter and plumber. I feel that Chinese teachers place too much emphasis on progressing through a textbook and not enough on mastering language.

I feel it may be time for University to stop treating students like children and start treating them like "fee paying educational consumers". I'm embarrassed to ask my students to pay for their own handouts, especially when they have paid a "study material fee". My Department said they had no money for overhead projectors and handouts; but they did find the money to buy a new sofa and lounge chairs for the foreign teachers' office. (the three foreign teachers had asked for overhead projectors, but the sofa is sweet)

On another issue. Many teachers working in China don't qualify for "foreign expert" benefits like the free airline. My Australian colleague has worked in China for five years and he has never got a free airline ticket and he has had salaries of about 1500-200 yuan a month. He paid for his own flights back to Australia. I feel we should remind our Chinese employers that we are not here for the money. We are here because we want to see the Middle Kingdom, love China, want to learn Chinese or it is a cool place to have a working holiday. Let's face it, while the Chinese University's insist on employing anyone with a degree and paying them low salaries then the problems with continue. They could employ ESL professionals, pay them big buckets and work them like dogs.

Brendon
Tianjin

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Hi, Brendon,
Thank you for your reply. I am sorry to say you only have a superficial understanding about college English teaching in China. If you stay here longer and communicate more with Chinese students and colleagues, or meet more from English teachers from other instituations, I'm sre you will change some of your present believes.

1. My experience tells me that the negative comments from the students on their native English teachers and Chinese teachers are not the same. They are critical of the foreign teachers because they often feel that foreign teachers in a spoken class just come to class with some recent news or hot topics and ask the students to say something about them. In this case, poor students find it difficult to say anything without the necessary guidence from the teachers. And good students say what they know. As a result, students end up thinking they haven't learned anything from this class. They also have the impression that foreign teachers don't seem to prepare their lessons beforehand and are not taking the class serious (maybe they are more used to the Chiese way of teaching).

2. I have been teaching English to learners at different levels for 18 years so far. I also had my postgraduate studies in Britain, getting what you might call professional training from professional EFL experts. Chinese teachers' English classes are in fact not the same as what you make out: teacher-centered, and so on.

3. Some foreign teachers as well as Chinese teachers give very successful spoken classes with very good effects. I don't know if you are willing enough to observe and comment on what they are doing before you have a chance to get to know what they classes are really like.

4. College English teaching in China is not a profitable career for people to make money. But usually foreign teachers get more salary than the local teachers. What I think is more important for the foreign teachers might be the experience.

With regards
Fusheng
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Janet, have you read Rob Nolasco's book on teaching large classes? I've only ever glanced at it but it should have some ideas. Teaching secondary classes of over 40 in Hong Kong, I found group oral work the only solution but it is hard work. The task must last long enough for you to run round the groups and the group members have to be helped to have the self discipline to monitor each other. It also helps if the oral task produces some sort of result, maybe a decision, conclusion or ranking so that students feel that groups may have to report back and so have the feeling they have done something. They should also be told what they are learning or practicing. I found that most of my local colleagues preferred choral drilling. I don't know if this is still the case out I had to disagree and go my own way. It led to a more anarchic and, on the surface, disordered classroom but also to greater communication and to more realistic practice.

I agree with He Fusheng that teaching oral English in isolation is not very productive. If you can integrate it not only with listening but also with reading and writing it is even better.

Chinese students weekness, as they feel themselves, lies in their listening, speaking and writing skills. In college English, a listening and speaking course is usually offered and works quite well. Ideally, the four language skills should be integrated from the very beginning, as you say.

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I had the experience of using Task Listening for a listening class. I found that Chinese students are extrememly puzzled by the tasks of how to rent a car at a car rental station or fill in a check in a bank.

Great Ideas is a good book but some of the speaking tasks are concerned with some so called international personalities who Chinese students are not familiar with and therefore have nothing to say in these tasks.

However, most of the listening materials and tasks can be employed in the Chinese situation, I agree with this.

We know that talking about the immediate environmet is easier and effective and put what you learn in actual practice is more beneficial. By this, I mean it might be better to use a textbook for Chinese students which relats to the Chinese situation. Do you agree with me there? In my experience, transfer exercise is very import but easily neglected by users of foreign textbooks.

Cheers
Fusheng

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It's true that textbooks tend to be aimed at large international markets, rather than at one nationality but Chinese students are not as unique as all that. A number of their pronunciation problems are shared by other south east Asian students and in any case if one wanted a textbook that was aimed purely and specifically at Chinese it would have to reflect the fact that Chinese speakers of different dialects often have different problems. I think Tsinghua takes students from all over China and although they may speak Putonghua, their pronunciation problems when learning English may not be exactly identical. I feel that it may be best to treat learners of English as citizens of the world with individual learning problems and styles and not to group them too solidly in monolithic blocks. Yes, cultural differences and L1 interference can affect teaching and learning but having taught Chinese students in both monolingual and mixed nationality classes I feel it is unwise to isolate Chinese as a special case. I find that, without ignoring their Chineseness, I can teach them using much the same techniques that I have used with Peruvians, Libyans, Namibians and Greeks or students from any of the other cultural groups I have taught.

Dick Tibbetts
Macau
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Personally, I tend to believe that Chinese English Learners would be better off if the necessary investment were made to train an adequate number of Chinese English teachers in English conversation skills, especially at the primary level. When I came here last February (from the U.S.) I was astonished that my students could have studied Chinese for seven or more years, and not even be able to hold simple conversations in English.

I think a greater investment in English learning at the primary level, especially English conversation, would pay huge dividends in the long run. I don't believe that learning from an English teacher with a native English accent provides substantially more benefit than learning from an English teacher with a Chinese accent, but I do believe that it is important to learn from somebody who can speak English fairly easily, and without too many grammar mistakes.

Like Brendon, I teach in a smaller city, at a less prestigious institution. My students are diligent and motivated, but the majority of them were never taught how to speak and understand spoken English, and in many cases, I am the first person they have ever spoken English with.

Like Brendon, my Oral English classes are too large to adequately teach spoken English (36 - 50 students). All of my students also attend separate English listening classes, Intensive English classes, and other English classes, so I don't think that there is much additional benefit for them to sit and listen to me talk or teach them new vocabulary words. What they need is practice speaking and engaging in conversations. And that is exceptionally difficult to manage in large, overcrowded classes. Like Brendon's students, most of my students still have trouble with basic grammar (past tense verbs and he/she pronouns, etc.) and despite having large reading vocabularies, most of them have serious trouble expressing even simple thoughts in English.

The problem is that they have little practice actually speaking English. And it's clear to me that speaking and understanding spoken English is a completely different skill than reading or writing English (or passing English language examinations). My students often want me to tell them some magical way for them to improve their spoken English, but the bottom line is that there's only one way -- they actually have to talk in English.

My number one goal for each class, therefore, is to try to encourage the students to spend as much of the class time talking and engaging in conversation as possible. To do this, I encourage group activities, and I have been very successful in getting my students to talk with each other in English during the class. However, the class time would be more productive if I were able to spend more time listening to and correcting each student in class, and in encouraging them to 'practice' with each other outside of class time.

As it is, I probably spend about half the class modeling language, introducing vocabulary, phrases, sample conversations, etc., and the other half of the class going from group to group, listening and correcting, and having individual conversations with students. It's definitely not an ideal situation, especially as the English ability of the different students varies so widely within each class. My main regret for these kids is that they didn't have the opportunity to learn to speak English at a much younger age, when it would have been much easier for them to pick the language up.

I definitely believe that we teachers would be very well served with a little more structure and support from the school's administration. Personally, I would be thrilled to be provided with a textbook or any other other language materials for my students. I have nothing in my classroom but a blackboard, chalk, eraser, and podium. The students have a chair and a desk each, in a room too small usually, to allow us to rearrange the furniture. Luckily, a kind friend sent me a bag of ESL materials, and I have been able to prepare weekly lesson plans from it. This semester, I decided to collect a 3 yuan material fee from each student, and I use this money to provide a one page handout each week for the class, using my own computer and printer, brought from the States. (I have the handout photocopied down the street)

Because I know that students often assign more value to new words and phrases learned than they do to less obvious improvement in fluency and listening ability, I make a point of introducing new vocabulary, phrases, idoms, and sample conversation each week, that they can use during the class activities. Often you have to balance your own goals with those of your students, I think.

It's not productive to argue about whether foreign teachers are paid too much or not enough. The fact is that the demand for teachers is greater than the supply and until that situation changes, the government will not be able to demand only well trained ESL teachers.

However, I have to agree with Brendon that the pay is not adequate to induce me to come to China for the money. I quit a very good job, paying $60,000 per year back home, to come to teach here in China for $2,750 per year. Obviously, I came for other, personal reasons, and I'll have to go home in a year or so, to earn a real wage so that I can save for my retirement, pay for my daughter's education, etc. For what it's worth, my impression is that Chinese English teachers also feel that the pay is too low, and many of them are also looking for additional study opportunities or better paying jobs elsewhere.

This is a complex, difficult issue, and a very interesting one to discuss. I hope that we can continue the discussion dispassionately.

Yours,

Lisa and Lara McClure
lisa@tussah.com
http://www.tussah.com/diary/
http://www.onelist.com/subscribe.cgi/ChinaDiary

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He Fu sheng and Brendon - I believe that both of you have thought about this issue and have good points to express. I'm sure that there is no one answer and it appears to me that you both are reacting from a personal knowledge base and bias. From your presentations it would appear that even more research needs to be done than just Mr. Li's dissertation. (Sorry, but I haven't been able to open this paper from the various locations, but have read the comments from other listers)

There are many aspects of what each of you write that I can agree with, and from my own bias and experience I can add to this information some of my ideas.

When I first read He Lao Shi's comments in response to the first posting of Brandon, I liked the content and could understand the comments. This second response posting by He Lao Shi seems to extend into more of a defense of the original rather than presenting new information or elaborating with examples of rebutal.

Brandon does point out some aspects that I found also true from my three years in a different location than his. Many students who felt that they could speak to me without being compromised stated that the foreign teachers were evaluated by the monitor and others in the classes in a different manner than the Chinese teachers. The administration met regularly with students and the monitors to gather information and thus evaluations for the foreign teachers, but this regularity did not occur for Chinese teachers. The students also voiced complaints about the few Chinese teachers who were not good or made comments on those who were considered excellent. There was at least one instructor who apparently was nearing or beyond retirement age who supposedly only told old war stories and mumbled to such an extent that students couldn't understand his English or his Mandarin. There were the instructors who were supposedly excellent because their assignments were so difficult and standards of success so high. Yet the measure was from a Chinese cultural basis in that the standards required were that students needed to recite a passage from a text each week. The instructor would assign the next reading to be memorized for the following class and then recited in class. Those who had it memorized were marked highly.

Also these students indicated that there was no process for evaluation of those instructors who were bad. They did not speak out and were not critical as this is not the Chinese way for students.

At my university, none of the teachers taught more than 3 two hour classes per week(at least none that I knew were at the school). True, teachers did not receive high salaries, but did receive many benefits and with so much time off they found many lucrative outside jobs. This was not true at the middle schools and vocational schools, as teachers had longer hours and more responsibilities, but even in those situations after being a good teacher for several years, your teaching loads were drastically reduced. There were no teachers at my school who had four classes of composition and seven classes of spoken English as was my schedule. Yes, my salary was higher, but four classes of 30 students each week makes for many compositions and journals to read.

There is also a wide variety of competence in spoken English in the classes given to teachers, Chinese or English. The methods used and the receptiveness of the students is quite different as well. If you are a beginning student and used to most of the class being taught in Chinese with Chinese explanations, switching to all English with no support systems, puts all of the students in a state of emotional anxiety. In many of the classes taught by Chinese the students used choral speaking and pronunciation drills for many sessions of vocabulary development and pronunciation(an accepted pedagogical practice in Chinese teaching not just for language, but for many subjects). A native English teacher having had very different educational programs would never think of using these methods on a daily basis for teach ing at this level. It would appear that C