Teaching ESL in China - Advice from the "Handsomest Teacher in Dongwai" - Official.

Teaching ESL in China. Lesson 2. Thankful for Thanksgiving No. 2. The competition. (Is the real title of this blog)

Todays Blog is coming to you from 'The most handsome teacher in Dongwai' and one of the most popular teachers in Nanjing.  In my defence, this is because I was part of an online poll of teachers carried out by a newspaper in Nanjing and I eventually came in at joint seventh (see pic above) in a poll of 16 other teachers and that I became the 'most handsome teacher in Dongwai' (the short name of my school BTW) is simply because there were no other contestants - so I am 'handsome' by default.

Lighting Incense in Thanks at the local Buddhist Temple

Nevertheless this has been told to me number of times by staff and students around the school and they seem inordinately proud of my success. One of the many reasons to be cheerful in China. Little things matter.

This week has been Thanksgiving Week and although not being an American I still have a role in educating my students about the ways of the West as some of them will be enjoying good old American hospitality in the near future.   So this week my Grade 10 students have been immersing themselves, as much as they possibly can in the 3 x 45 minute lessons I have with them, in what the message of Thanksgiving is.

So I talked to them a bit about the general idea of Thanksgiving and showed them this little cartoon which sort of skims the surface of the genesis of the holiday.

We had a listening gap fill exercise which re-enforced vocabulary

Then generate vocabulary around the dinner and the holiday and talk about giving thanks for things.

Then I made them read a poem aloud about giving thanks.

Thanks for the fire,

That keeps me warm.

Thanks for my family,

Keep them from harm.

Thanks for the corn,

Cobs stacked in a heap,

Thanks for the squash,

And the crops that we reap.

Thanks for the grains,

They’ll feed us till spring.

Thanks for the cows,

And the milk that they bring.

Thanks for the stars,

And the sun and the moon.

Thanks for the snow,

That’s coming here soon.

Thanks for the rivers,

The lakes and the seas.

Thanks for the mountains.

Covered in trees.

Thanks for all life.

And last, but not least,

Thanks for the turkey

We’ll have at our feast.

Homework was - Write  200 words about what you are thankful for in your life.

During the second lesson they get to read what they have written. I choose them as I have mentioned by a random number generator. 

It is interesting to note the differences between these Chinese teens and kids back home. These Chinese kids write from the heart with no sense of embarrassment and shame. They write heartfelt thanks to their parents for their life, for the love they receive and for the ongoing support by their mother and fathers who they recognise work hard to get them into this expensive school. I am not so sure Western Kids would so openly write about their emotions and feelings and then read them out aloud to the whole class. I would be interested to hear what a western teacher says about this. 

So thats the second class seen too.

For the third class I wanted a bit of a sense of occasion so I found an online Thanksgiving crossword and created a Thanksgiving word search using some of the crossword answers to give them a hand because we hadn't covered all the vocabulary.  

Now Chinese students love competition and so its always great to tap into that competitive spirit and offer some prizes for the best work. And boy don't they go for it. 

My prize was a box of Dove chocolate for 1st prize (chosen so if it gets shared around the class by the winner everyone should get a piece) and two smaller tubes of M&M's for second and third prize. 

In Grade 10 class A I had one girl finish before the 45 minutes were up with a 100% score (23 crossword clues and 23 word search words to find) and in the summing up another girl handed in a 100% paper and the boy at 3rd scored 80%.  Not one of my Grade 10 Class A finished the quiz in the 45 minutes and the best score was 80%.

I also ran this competition with my two Grade 12 classes as we had done thanksgiving in the past years - with less success - no one finished the paper in 45 minutes and the winners scored around 80% (Smaller class - fewer chocolates)

But if you want to keep your students busy, keep them engaged, and have some fun and a quiet class any sort of competition in the classroom gets these kids going. 

A snapshot of teaching ESL English in a Chinese High School

A different view of the school - the boys dormitories - hanging washing. 

This semester sees my third year at this school. On the whole its okay - that's why I stay here.  The school is in Jiangning which is an 'outskirt' of Nanjing - but it won't be for long because these super Chinese cities are expanding as quickly as the Chinese economy is. Even in my short two years and counting the neighbourhood has changed with large office buildings and accommodation blocks rising into the skies.

The new buildings lit up opposite my apartment

But at the moment it's quiet, the air is cleaner than downtown. My apartment is nice and the campus is safe so Snook Doggy Dog can have it all to herself.

So what about the teaching. Maybe you are starting to think about coming to China, have an adventure and come English teaching. Why not - do it, is what I say, what can you lose?

 Top pic - some of my senior students - my third year of teaching them and below two Junior students who I have know for the same time but only taught them during my first year - but we still like each other!!

I have written elsewhere about what you need to come to China to teach but I'll briefly re-itterate it here. A degree is needed. Any degree it doesn't matter really. A TEFL course of at least 120 hours. Groupon do one for £49 - click here is also required. Or a CELTA if you want a better job and more money. And most bona fide places want two years teaching experience - but you can write your CV to match that if you have been involved in any form of training, teaching or whatever. My advice is don't come for a teaching job if they will not provide you with a Z visa - those jobs are illegal. Do not come for a teaching job, at their request on a tourist visa on the promise that they will convert it later - they will  not and you will be illegal.  Also I have heard on the expat grapevine that the Chinese government is now requiring foreigners coming here for teaching jobs to provide 'proper' criminal record checks - to weed out sex offenders and paedophiles wanting access to school kids. When I came my 'background check' was basically me writing and signing a letter stating I wasn't a criminal. (I'm not by the way).

Mid semester exams

Teaching in China.

So I'm halfway through my first semester of my third year with the school I am at right now. I currently teach 4 classes. This is made up of Grade 10 Senior A & B. These are the newbies. They only entered the school this semester.  I also teach Grade 12 Senior A & B. They were new students to the school when I first started teaching them in 2012 and I have taught them each year since that first semester.

This year I am teaching 'Oral English'.

Grade 10.
This is more difficult than it sounds.  In Grade 10 I have 61 students split between A & B (30 + 31).  I only see these classes for 3 x 45 minute classes a week. So you can imagine how difficult it is to get around every student to get them to speak, let alone teach content which will impact upon their ability to speak.

In  terms of classroom teaching aids I have a book. World Link - Developing English Fluency. You can see more about the books on the website here. But my main problem is lack of time given the number of students in each class.

Other problems stem from both the book and the classroom set up. The book comes with a CD for the listening and other stuff I haven't even had time to look at or use. Problem 1. Is that the computer in the classroom does not have a CD/DVD slot.  I tried to download the CD to my computer (Apple Macbook) so I could put it on a USB stick - but despite the instructions on the CD telling me this was possible I couldn't do it - and Im no slouch with computers.  So the solution was to buy my own portable CD/DVD drive/player. Often to no avail because just today - after writing this I went into my classroom to teach and the computer wasn't working - so all my lesson planning was down the drain and I had to teach 'on the fly' - again.

Problem 2 is if I use the book - how can I teach Oral English? As the book is meant to support the full range of English learning. And how to do it in such a short time? My solution is to work with the book on the first lesson, simply to raise a topic and to generate new vocabulary.  At the end of that lesson the students get homework - basically something which relates to the work and new vocabulary - they have to write a 250/300 'essay'.  On the second class - they have to speak what they have written ( It will have been handed in and marked by me by the time of the second class). But how to get 30 students to speak in 45 minutes.  Well, its simple you can't.  So I use a random number generator and pick the kids to speak that way. Classroom discipline has to be strong because a lot of the kids think if they are not speaking then its ok for them to stop listening, chat with neighbours, sleep and so on. I want my students to listen to and respect their schoolmate who is maybe struggling to speak - maybe they can learn something this way.

Problem 3. Is the school expects me to 'test' each class once a week. So I have three lessons, one of which has to be a test! Its frustrating because I am not sure that things get any better.  However, I do have some good speakers in my class and some bad ones I admit.  But having a test lesson each week is defeating the object - so this often slips - like today - where I will develop new vocabulary on the topic we started last week - get them to write about it next week - do the speaking and this time (Thursday) next week do the test.

 The reality of the mid-semester exams

Grade 12.

Grade 12 (A&B) is my biggest worry. This is their final year and they all expect to enter foreign universities. In their first year with me, with the confidence of youth, they all told me they wanted to go to (or their parents wanted them to go to) Harvard, Yale, Oxford or Cambridge. The sky was the limit for these pampered kids from rich backgrounds.  Now barely 20 odd weeks from leaving school I think some of these ambitions have been reined back. I'm not sure if some of them will even pass their IELTS or TOEFL English tests at the right levels to be accepted into higher education - let alone the Ivy League universities.

I technically have around 24 students in each class.  But since at least the spring/summer semester many of them have been missing from the classroom. When I ask why I'm told they are out with tutors - this is because they are and have been sitting the Cambridge A Level exams. Indeed one of the tutors used to be the Physics teacher here, but no he's set himself up as a tutor and making big money over 500,000 rmb (£50,000 approx) last semester I've been told.  So this last semester and a half I have been seeing between 6 and 12 students from Class A and around a more regular 12 students from Class B.

The changing numbers also brings with it its own challenges. Its difficult to teach classes with items that I want to run over a number of classes because I never know who is going to turn up or be missing. If I organise groups or pairs to prepare work - then the next class half the group or one of the pair is missing or students turn up unprepared for what I want to do it just causes chaos.  If I plough ahead, the students with nothing to do will chat, or sleep or disrupt the class. Note once again these students are expecting to go to a foreign university at the end of this year and still they fail to pay attention.

Todays update, I had a class at 13:30 - first class of the afternoon. I turn up - there are 5 students - three of whom have barely been in my class these last two semesters - the rest were in an A level exam - I wasn't told of course.  I had planned the 'weekly' test as I haven't done a test with this group for a while.  Then 2 of the 5 decided they needed to be elsewhere leaving three.  So I stood around like a lemon for 45 minutes - attempting to get them to converse with me. All of the final three are expecting to go to an American university at the moment their TOEFL level is around the 80/84 mark - which is pretty good as the overall TOEFL average for entering a US university is around 80 but the prestigious Universities like Yale want 100 plus and they specify scores for reading, writing and speaking and so on.

My empty classroom

I am using Book 3 of  World Link - Developing English Fluency and to be brutally honest it is useless for these students. Despite being university candidates and being at the school - a "Foreign Language School" for over nearly three years their English is abysmal. I've given up blaming myself because I know they have paid little attention to their lessons either in school or outside of the school - where, in my opinion,  they should be using and learning their English as much as possible. Even some of the  basic words, concepts and ideas are beyond them in these books.  I have tried to give them the benefit of my 20 years experience teaching and working in excellent universities in the UK (Exeter and Plymouth) but it seems to no avail.

This might seem strange as I have indicated above that these self same students are achieving TOEFL and IELTS scores which would see them gain entry to Universities worldwide. But does this mean they are good at English? Well the answer to that question, in my opinion has to be a resounding no.

They achieve these IELTS and TOEFL scores through the use of well worn tricks of the trade that are passed on through the years. The learning is all done through repetition, memory and rote learning. There is no real attempt by these students to try to speak like a native speaker which the IELTS test is premised upon. The learn to speak to pass the test at the required level, notably a 6 or a 6.5.  That the UK and other universities have cottoned onto this is no surprise. Even when I was working at Exeter Chinese students would turn up with their IELTS certificates and be barely literate in English. That over 8000 students were sent home from the US last year for plagiarism and not being up to scratch is no surprise - I wonder what the worldwide number would be?

Also this will turn into a nice little earner for the Universities who are now providing English Language Schools - at a price for their international students who turn up not being able to cut the mustard. For example a 13 week course at a London University costs around £4.500 whereas a 42 week course at a university in the South West of England costs about £9000. All extra money that these students hard pressed parents will have to find on top of International Fees and living costs.

Some idea of the cost of extra English lessons in England

Friday was parents day - gridlock prevailed outside - double parking is de-rigeur 

And for those parents or students that get out of hand, the school guards have the right equiptment 

Confused, bemused, mistaken, shaken but not stirred - the first week of the Chinese High School Semester

Like many other TEFL/ESL teachers across the world thats the first week of teaching done (although some of my colleagues here in Nanjing started at the beginning of August so don't assume you will have the summer off if you are coming to China, check your contract carefully).

The first week of teaching here in my school is often very confusing, although for those of us who have been here for a few years we all have become a bit desensitised to the chaotic and abstract nature of teaching in China.  What I mean is we actually started work on the 1st of September, a Tuesday.  We also worked Wednesday, but then we had a Chinese public holiday to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of WW2. So Thursday, Friday and Saturday were designated as holidays (despite the fact that Saturday is a day off anyway) but as with most Chinese holidays we had to work Sunday to pay one of the days off back. Sunday is then designated as a Friday, but we were not told that until about 9pm Saturday night - keeping up?

Grandma protecting xi jinxing from the sun whilst on parade.

We were actually given our teaching schedules a week or two ago but in the meantime things have changed so I'm now on version three. Its remained stable over the last week so Im sort of confident that its now fixed, but Im not holding my breath. (update- in the last two days two of my classes have been rescheduled because of the 'public classes' - see below) I have 14 classes over the week, my old Grade 12 Senior 3 who I have taught for the last two years and the new Grade 10 Senior 1.

We have been moved into new offices and classrooms so we have had to put up with the moving of all out stuff and sharing the room with new Chinese teacher colleagues. One never knows, in these cases, who is the stool pigeon. Who is reporting back to the admin staff if we are not at our desks for the regulation 2 hours a day office hours. Everyone is very sweet and friendly, don't get me wrong, but this is a society based upon the old communist ways where denouncing enemies of the revolution was commonplace, so its not too great a step to denouncing the lowaei (foreigner) for not being at the desk for the regulation number of hours. (Check your contract for your office hours - maybe Im a bit too paranoid!)

So not only do we have new office arraignments we have the new classrooms to get used to. In my old classroom the teacher had a big metal desk into which the computer was bolted with the screen easily visible through a glass window in the top of the desk. In the new class rooms we have a lectern and the computer is bolted into the wall and is locked behind metal doors.

Can you see whats missing? During my first year of teaching here I was teaching using the the Cambridge iGCSE at the back of the book they have a CD containing all the listening exercises and so on. Of course none of the computers had a cd/dvd slot. So I wrote a letter saying that and asking for CD/DVD slots in the computers. We got them for the start of the next years teaching. 

So now we have new computers - with no CD/DVD slots and new work books, different course with CD's/DVD's to complement the course. Of course I cannot open them on my Macbook to put the mp3's onto a usb stick, despite the readme file telling me I can.  I've had to buy an external CD/DVD drive. The keyboard and mouse are wifi and we see the desktop via the projector on the white screen.

Also, there is no separate screen that only the teacher can see as before, which meant for certain things you could arrange whats on the screen before the class got to see it. So maybe on a PPT you want to start a slideshow, without the class seeing whats coming up. So now I have to stand the class up, turn them around, sort the screen out then get them to sit down again.  Stupid waste of time. 

This is further compounded by the fact that the computer can be locked away. Only the lead Chinese teachers have the key. Or a student is delegated to have the key and the fob which unlocks the computer. This means if the computer is not on when I get in class I have to waste 5 minutes getting the thing going that is if the student who has the key actually does have the key and, crucially, is in the classroom. Otherwise we then have to hunt down the lead teacher who has the key and fob. 

Then there is the issue of lesson plans.  Although I have been given a teachers workbook for my course which says in BIG letters Lesson Plans, the school wants me to do, not one but three iterations of lesson plans. The first is the semester plan, where I have to outline what I will be doing each week. Then there is the weekly lesson plan where I have to outline what I will be doing in each lesson during each particular week. Then there is the actual daily lesson plan for each lesson. So basically I am writing the same thing 3 times. Luckily they do not insist on a daily lesson plan in the same detail as a typical ESl or CELTA lesson plan otherwise we would be spending our 2 office hours a day just writing lesson plans.

Further meaningless bureaucracy turned up at the end of the week when some bright spark decided that each teacher should observe other teachers in the classroom at least twice a week( this is now 5 times a month). This comes along with the form stating who will be observing who and when, to be filled in asap. Plus an observation feedback form where they expect us to dob in each other re the quality of our teaching.

I quote:

1. 课程内容：讲授的主要内容、授课形式等情况

(course content: the main points,teaching form, etc. )

2. 

课堂评价：课堂气氛、师生互动、教学特点/方法/效果等情况

(lecture assessment: classroom atmosphere, interaction, teaching features/methods/effectiveness ) 

3. 发现问题：发现的教学问题、管理问题等

(problems: teaching, managing and etc.)

4.  其他：其他值得注意的情况

(any other problems or issues)   

This might have been the straw that broke the camels back because even the Chinese teachers are joining our little chorus of dissent.  Obviously we are going to refuse to this. It doesn't make sense for us all to be observing each other and reporting back. That's just a recipe for bad feeling between colleagues. 

In principle I have no problem with people sitting in my lessons and observing, thats just good practice. What I don't expect is for teachers with less experience than me or without the proper training to write reports about my standard of teaching, classroom atmosphere and so on. If that is to happen then I expect to be observed by a trained, experience teacher and I will have discussed the situation prior to the event and will have some ideas of the guidelines they are looking for.  So unless this happens the above ain't gonna happen in my classroom.

On top of this on Friday I was told that sometime in the future all the teachers will be coming to one of my lessons to observe it was to be a 'public' lesson. I was asked then and there to pick a class to which they could attend. My response was, as always, teachers are always welcome in my class, so its the teachers who should pick the class they want to attend because I don't know what the other teachers schedules are, so as a group its easier for them to pick. This seemed like a new and revolutionary idea to the guy who was doing the asking/telling. 

Then today (Monday), just before lunch I was told that my 14:35 class was cancelled because of the 'public' lesson and that my class was moved to the 15:35 slot. I hasten to add the 'public' lesson is not mine so maybe my deflection tactics worked - we will see. Don't hold your breath. Things change rapidly in China one cannot be inflexible in a Chinese school. 

Live update: Tuesday. I reluctantly went to the Chinese teachers public lesson. There were 29 students plus 10, yes 10 people observing, all with little note books jotting stuff down - this included admin staff who have no teacher training at all. That 70% of the English lesson was taught in Chinese so I didn't understand much is by the by (and of course if anyone ever asked my opinion I would question why in an 'English Department' of a Foreign Language School are English lessons taught in  Chinese?  How the hell can these students switch their brains into English mode if they always have the comfort of listening to the teacher and responding in Chinese?)

We had made it clear that we were unhappy with this situation so we have had a brief meeting with the Chinese admin and talked to them about proper professional development and our disquiet about having to write reports to be handed into the bosses and indeed having reports written on us. As a compromise we are designing a pro-forma to be used in our classes with a bunch of tick boxes, further we will also try to make sure only western teachers observe the other western teachers. 

So maybe crisis averted. But as one of my Chinese colleagues stated its really all about the bosses making sure the teachers have more than enough to do during their 10 hour days in the office. They forget we are on different contracts. 

Of course new students always bring new challenges. For many students in Grade 10, my Year 1 seniors I might be the first foreign teacher they have had. So obviously they think that whats commonplace in a Chinese classroom is de rigeur for my classroom.  Don't be mislead by British TV programmes that talk about the discipline of the Chinese classroom.  I watched 'Are our Kids tough enough for Chinese School' on the BBC recently and I have to say I am stricter in my Chinese classroom than these Chinese teachers were in the British classroom.

Its a school rule that mobile phones are not allowed on campus let alone in class, but some students do have devices such as iPads/tablets which they use as translators/dictionaries. Most of the kids though do have electronic translators (but be careful these still can have games on them). But mainly its getting the students to understand that if I'm talking they are not talking. No sleeping - Chinese students do seem to like to have pillows or cushions in class which they sit there cuddling and often dozing off (mainly the boys, I might add). In my class they are banned, in fact I want them banned across the department. Because how can I police this when the Chinese teachers don't bother?  Last week I stopped one student from using one of those comfy neck cushions we might use on an airplane. The next day he had a bed pillow!

We are not so cruel here.

Grade 12 are paying attention now in the classroom, mainly because they all had their A level results and surprise surprise none of them will be going to Oxford, Cambridge, Yale or Harvard as they have been bragging about for the past two years. In fact most of them wouldn't get an offer from the poorest college/university based on their results which were mainly D's E's and ungraded. To be fair a few did get A's for maths but for those subjects that need a better standard of English, the sciences, economics and so on they were just not up to it (a handful have scraped B's and C's).

They now have just 40 weeks before they will leave this school.  So they have to sit the A levels again, and pass IELTS or TOEFL at the required levels and for some this will be a mountain to climb. And I have to be their good sherpa leading them onwards and upwards. I hope I can make a difference. 

15 Days in China before I go home.

At this time of year the EFL/ESL teacher’s thoughts turn to home.  Some of us, particularly those of us that work in universities and colleges are on their last week of teaching.  They have the long two months of summer to look forward to.  Others, like myself, working in High Schools still have a few weeks left. My semester ends officially on the 10^th July. Initially I was told the 6^th July but, as always, things change. You have to be adaptable to live in China.  My plane ticket is actually booked for the 9th; I cleared this with my school admin as the last weeks are usually taken up with exams, marking exams and general shilly shallying about.  Also its important to negotiate a bit of wriggle room when booking your tickets home so you can bag the best prices from the airlines.

So now it’s 15 days before I go home and gaol fever is starting to set in.  I booked my ticket months ago and as I said the dates were negotiated with my school admin.  This is tricky in itself because you will find that even the school admin will not know for definite when the school semester will end. It seems to be a movable feast.  According to my admin it’s the local education department that sets the dates of the semesters and the holidays and nothing is ever set in stone. That’s why you have to be adaptable.

One would think, logically, that as these things happen every year then dates would be fixed, or at least planned for. But no, this is China, every thing is flexible, everything is moveable and subject to change.  It is sometimes infuriatingly frustrating.

Take the beginning of the next academic year.  Most years the new semester starts on September 1^st.  This year however on the 3^rd and 4^th of September there is a special public holiday in China to commemorate the 2WW.  I have heard, from other teachers, that in their schools the start date has been set back to the 7^th. Of course they haven’t heard this officially, they have heard it from their students.

I asked my admin what was happening in my school and she said she would have to ask. Around a week later, when I asked again, I was told that the start of semester was the 1^st September. But I am not holding my breath. It is just as likely that someone somewhere will decide that we start on the 7^th. Or have a day off but then work on the Sunday – that’s how holidays work in China by the way, you have a day off, but then work the Sunday to make it up again.

Nevertheless, before we worry too much about that situation we have the run up to the break to manage and we need to think about what we will be doing during the two months or six weeks we have off.

For myself, the next few weeks will be teaching as usual. But as any teacher knows during the run up to the holidays, the natives get restless.  It’s been a hard year for my seniors.  Remember they are in class from 7am in the morning until 9pm at night.  Plus most of them have spent the last few weeks doing the Cambridge AS and A level exams so they are pretty exhausted.

My senior class - about 15 students  short

Of course they also have the end of term exams to look forward too and many of them are not even in class as they are now swotting for American college/university entry exams or the IELTS/TOEFL language exams.  This is a bit of a nightmare for the conscientious teacher because if you are working to a lesson plan that lasts for a couple of lessons you are constantly being disrupted are the numbers in the class change on a daily basis. So some students are turning up in the middle of a programme of teaching and not knowing what the hell is going on or students are missing from the pairs or groups you set up.

But of course, we teachers are human too, so we are feeling the pull of the holidays. They are just around the corner so plans are being made and rumours of cheap flights abound. Most of us have, as part of our contracts, payments to cover our flights to home and back. For most of us this is not a fortune and in many cases barely covers the cost of the airfare and the incidentals such as train or coach tickets to and from airports.  So finding the best price for the tickets home, or to your final destination is important.

Many of the gap year graduate teachers might not even get home this vacation. The lure of exotic destinations just on our doorstep is too enticing. So trips to Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam are popular destinations as are the highlands of Thailand. Why long haul home when you have deserted beaches and cheap beer on offer just a couple of hours away?

Like myself, most of the older teachers that I know, will be going home to visit with families and friends.  But it’s a double-edged sword. For those teachers on the lower incomes, the 6000 – 7000rmb per month teachers, going home for any period of time is expensive.  We might have our airfares paid, but it’s the day-to-day expense of living in the West that becomes the topic of conversation once we are back.

‘Can you believe how much it costs just to…’?

a.     get the bus into town

b.     eat out

c.      buy a pint

d.     stay in a hotel

All things that are reasonably cheap in China and are a shock to the system and the wallet once we get home.  So for some colleagues to head out for countries where the cost of living is cheap and the living is easy makes good financial sense.

Of course some colleagues and friends will be leaving for pastures new come the end of term. Some might not have their contracts renewed, like the guy who can’t be arsed to wear a shirt to class and thinks shorts and flip flops are reasonable attire for a teacher in a High School.  And what the Aussie who was teaching his High School students English four letter words was thinking F*&! knows.  Of course he is no longer required at that school. But within a week or so he has secured a new teaching position, no problem, and teaching kindergarten of all things.  That he has to leave his pregnant Chinese girlfriend, soon to become wife, hundreds of miles away with her family seems to be bye the bye.

Other friends are seeking new working opportunities across the world and its sad to see them go. I feel like I am losing very good friends. Friends with whom I have shared the highs and the lows of living in China and in one case we have both shared actual blood, sweat and tears.  I hope we meet again to share a whisky or two.

Some of the younger teachers, teachers who I might have stereotyped as ‘gap year graduates’ are returning home to continue their academic careers.  Some are entering MA programmes back home to become better teachers, and of course become better qualified in what, at home, will be a very competitive job market.  I think I have written elsewhere that teaching time in China on your CV/Resume doesn’t cut the mustard with most employers in the West so returning home to continue with their education might be the best choice. Of course they could have spent their time in China doing the various courses on offer here such as the CELTA and various MA courses taught in English.

Of course going home also offers us the chance to replenish and purchase those crucial things that we can’t seem to find in China.  I’ve already done some of my shopping on Amazon so things will be waiting for me when I get home. The 600gms plastic bucket of Marmite for instance, shaving oil and other goodies to bring back with me.  I might do some clothes shopping, especially shirts and a few tee shirts because as I have mentioned elsewhere its difficult to get the sizes here in China – a Chinese XL from a couple of shops (Uniqlo and H&M) just about fit me, if I watch my weight - an XL from a standard Chinese men’s shop is about a western M. I have not seen XXXL shirts, apart from some tee shirts.  (I have mentioned that you can get shirts made to measure here – but they are more formal type work shirts I want casual short sleeve shirts.

At the moment my agency, my actual employer has my passport. They have to renew our residency visas with the authorities so we can come back.  This has turned out to be a fraught experience for a colleague as her passport was stolen whilst it was in the charge of the office admin en-route to the police on the Metro.  Obviously this is one of our worst nightmares losing the passport. Thankfully my passport was in a different system and was not lost. But now my colleague, with only about two weeks before flying home, has to go through the rigmarole of filling in forms, travelling to Shanghai to visit the embassy and hoping the passport gets back before she has to fly home. Fingers crossed as the trip to Shanghai, scheduled for today, has already been put off until Friday as the police didn’t complete all the paperwork on time – This is China!

Getting one’s residency visa renewed also means a trip to the local travel medical centre for a medical check up.  This means getting there at around 8am and doing the rounds of the various doctors and tests. Ones blood, eyesight, chest x-ray, ECG, Ultrasound are checked and then various bits are prodded in different rooms until all the boxes have been ticked and signed.  This year I was given my report and it raised a few minor issues that I need to chat with my doctor about in the UK.

Of course one of my major problems is getting someone to look after Snooky whilst I’m gone. Some people ask me if I will take Snooky with me.  But at around £2000 per each leg of the trip that’s a non-starter.  I’ve looked into the local dog stay places but I have not been impressed as the dogs seem to be confined to cages all day and only given two walks a day. Fortunately a Chinese friend of mine has offered to take Snooky again as she looked after the dog whilst I was in the Philippines, Australia and NZ.  So I know Snooky will be looked after. Probably looked after too well as she was a little fat when I got back from my holidays.

So that’s pretty much it, everyone I know is counting down the days to their holidays and in fact some lucky b………s are travelling this week! You know who you are!  We teach for ten months of the year and to be honest for some of us the workload is not particularly onerous and China has lots of public holidays but I guess we are all looking forward to going home. We need to wash China out of our hair for a while, indulge in some of the food we have missed, meet up with family and friends and have some rest and relaxation.

That is not to say that we will wash China out of our hair completely we still come back, year after year – next year will be my forth year – to continue to teach English and be amazed by this crazy and wonderful country and its people.

Learning is not a spectator sport – someone please tell my students

Sometimes one just gets fed up at staring at the uncomprehending faces.  Fed up of waking students up during the class. Fed up of the incomprehensible and mangled attempts at speech. Fed up with the lack of comprehension when I explain to them in words of one syllable that it is unlikely that they will be attending Cambridge or Harvard, well, at least this year anyway.

I work in a top high school, in the foreign language department, in a big city in China.  I have been teaching the senior classes ESL for the past two years. All of these seniors have the expectation that they will be attending a good, if not superior, foreign university next year.  Let me put it a bit more succinctly, these seniors’ parents have the expectation that their child, their only child, will be attending a top ten foreign university next year.  Most of these children of rich parents do not really seem to know or understand why they are sitting in my ESL class. They seem to think that what they really should be doing is cramming for the IELTS or TOEFL exams they probably have in the next few weeks or months. What they shouldn’t be doing is wasting time with me, a native English speaker, who has actually spent 20 years teaching in a top ten university in the UK.

This is highlighted by the fact that after at least a semester of me prepping my class with IELTS and TOEFL related study, although not in my remit.  Plus giving them all the insights from a book I have been writing with a Chinese colleague about the IELTS speaking test, one student, lets call him ‘Land’ because that’s what he calls himself, came to me and asked me for all the questions and answers I had been giving them over the past year. That this was two days before his IELTS test seemed to me a bit short-sighted.

I am an irrelevance to these rich kids.  These rich kids, who, for most of their pampered and spoilt lives, have been given everything they have ever wanted. Who, even at 16 and 17 years of age, are still fawned over by their doting parents – it’s galling that most of them have designer watches and clothes I couldn’t even think of affording. These rich Chinese kids who think daddy will be able to buy them into a university regardless of their ability and their lack of effort in the English classroom.

It really worries me, this lack of engagement with the English language, by these Chinese students.  I actually want these kids to go to university. I want them to succeed. That’s why I’m a teacher.  But in my classes there are students who can barely speak to me, even after two years of English tuition by foreign teachers.  Plus they have had two years of English classes given by the bilingual Chinese teachers and the fact that they are following the CIE iGCSE Science and Math’s subjects - in English.  God knows when they actually started learning English, because I don’t.

The problem, it seems to me, is the focus on the IELTS and TOEFL tests. Chinese students have tried and tested rituals, rotes and tricks for them to achieve the required scores on these tests. This approach really has nothing to do with learning English it’s simply to pass the test with the highest score possible. Indeed I have even colluded myself with Chinese students by publishing a book with a Chinese colleague that provides a method for the student to increase their IELTS score from the ubiquitous five to the much needed six or six point five and higher.

And yet they seem to think if they could just memorize all the words in the vocabulary books then all will be fine. That they attempt to do this during my ESL class whilst I am actually trying to teach them how to use words in the correct order seems cruelly ironic.  Even so, when I close their books for them and ask them to focus on the lessons I am giving them on collocation, or phrasal verbs, or even something simple like listening or writing they can barely finish the tasks that I set them.

In an attempt to shock them out of this torpor I presented them with some research which shows that the IELTS and TOEFL scores do not indicate how successful a student may be in a western university, indeed in many cases the research shows that Chinese students with a ‘respectable’ IELTS score of 6 or higher might still struggle when entering higher education in the West.

Indeed one report out of the US shows that 8000 Chinese students were sent home in 2013/14 from US universities and colleges for cheating and not making the grade. And yet, and yet, when I show my students these statistics there is barely a lifted eyebrow or a murmur of shock. I really think these students do not believe that this would, or could, relate to themselves in any way, shape or form, such is their confidence and their denial that they may not be making the grade.

That my school has a foreign language department where we teach English and yet we do not have any formal English examination on site must bear some of the blame for the situation.  The only English examination these students will take is either the IELTS or the TOEFL tests.  This to me is a ridiculous state of affairs. It means that we have no way of gauging the level of our students English, over and above any tests we the teachers set.  There is no way we can measure our students against any global standard such as the iGCSE.

Consequently the students have no motivation to pay any attention to my ESL classes at all.  They remain focused on the IELTS and TOEFL requirements and what I do in my classroom must seem to them just a minor detail, another forty five minutes where they can zone out and if they think they can get away with it have a snooze – they never get away with it in my class.  If I have to be 6000 miles away from my 16-year-old daughter in the UK then they had better, by golly, pay attention in my classroom.

I really do want my students to get to university. Last weekend in the high school right next to mine the Gau Kao university entrance examinations took place.  I really do think some of my students would have been better off to have sat that exam and to enter a Chinese university. But filial duty being what it is in China these kids will have to suffer their fate to the dying end. I do know some of my students really do not want to go abroad but they just cannot let their parents down.  To be brutally honest they will get their wish because their English is just not up to scratch and they make little or no efforts to change that situation in the classroom. So mummy and daddy will be faced with a fait accompli.

Will poor Cherry or Coby be blamed for their failure?  Personally, I think not, I think the odds are more likely to be stacked in favour of the English teachers at the school being the fall guys here and, as is often the case, contracts will not be renewed.  And yet, and yet, I still love working with these testing, exasperating, annoying, trying, at times demanding, maddening, but very often delightful, funny, charming, sweet, naive, innocent kids.

Cherry and Rita - two good students.