Letters from China: "Kind and bovine"
Darnell Gundy-Reed February 21, 2005
It is so very quiet on campus these days. The usually crowded classrooms and corridors are all empty. The campus stores sport bare shelves. The ping pong tables wait for another season of intense play. It is Spring Festival - the beginning of the Chinese New Year (February 9) and a time, ritualistically and traditionally, for the Chinese to honor their ancestors.
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Almost all of the students have gone to their homes to celebrate the season with family and friends. My colleagues are scattered all over - the United States, Taiwan, Beijing - gone on what WE would call "Winter" vacation. Soon, I will be gone too, traveling with other foreign teachers to Shanghai, Thailand and Cambodia, leaving this hushed atmosphere anxiously waiting to be inhabited again.
At the end of February, I will begin my second semester, or term, teaching English to 160 university sophomores. If you were to meet my students, you wouldn't be able to help falling in love with each and every one of them. They are so open, trusting, nervous, and scared. They work so hard to better themselves every single day. They are striving to do more, be more than they are now, to have a better life, to be more successful than their parents before them.
The road ahead for them still looms long and hard. There will be some 3.38 million university graduates in 2005 and so far, only 73% of students graduating in 2004 have found employment (China Ministry of Labor and Social Security). The government here understands the importance of foreign language development not only for employment opportunities for graduates, but also as part of its long range plan to compete aggressively in the global economy. Government agencies are working hard to implement needed changes to develop foreign relationships as well as workers' skills to meet the challenges ahead. They know that one avenue to do that is through their educational system.
The traditional learning method is to learn by rote -memorization - and for the past seven years, they have been learning English from Chinese teachers in this way. Most students prefer yes/no questions or fill in the blank statements to expending any personal effort. The academic system in the past has reinforced this learning method - 90% teacher, 10% student - a system having less and less relevance in today's world. Helping students develop critical thinking skills is vitally important and a skill I am working hard to instill in them.
Most aspects of a student's life are strictly regimented. For instance, they are awakened at 6:30 a.m. to blaring music (sometimes in English) and the obligatory Chinese National Anthem in which they receive their morning announcements. They are expected to dress, have breakfast at the canteen and be seated in their classroom by 8 a.m. The 11:30-2:00 time slot is for lunch, study and napping (or "having a rest") which a great number of them do. Again, the music blaring from 5:30 to 6:00 is the call to dinner. At any given time, we know where are students will be.
For New Year's Eve, a colleague, Bill, and I held an American New Year's Eve party with food, dancing, and merrymaking. While I learned two new Chinese dance steps, two hours of listening and dancing to the same two songs was more than any one person should have to bear. Many students spend not only this requisite amount of time in classes, but will also spend many evening hours in their classroom studying. Not many students have ever had the opportunity to actually speak English with someone whose native language IS English. The dictionary (especially the electronic dictionary) has become their Bible, in which students learn the form but not the context of English usage. This has given us very interesting conversations with and papers from our students. For instance, one exam paper stated that the teacher (my roommate, Helen) was "very kind and bovine." I choose to believe that the student sees her teacher as calm and complacent.
It is an interesting side note here, that I see a student's life with a jaundiced eye, and American perspective, one unused to regimentation. Chinese students here view their dictionaries as necessities not additions and the regularity of their lives as an understandable and accepted norm.
Before I came to China, I was under the illusion that learning the language would be a "piece of cake." Ha! (Although some of my colleagues, especially the younger ones, do very well at language learning), I like to think I am curious, adventurous, more adaptable than the average person (or else why would I be here). However, my brain still has difficulty wrapping itself around the language (or maybe it is just my tongue that has the problem!). Knowing the difficulty I have with the language helps me to better understand the difficulties my students have learning English. I hope it makes me a more understanding and patient (I'm not exactly known for my patience so I have to really work hard on this one), as well as an interested and interesting teacher.
Which brings us back to the subject of teachers. Why are we teaching English here in China in the first place? Some of us are here to be part of the fastest developing country in the world and to be instrumental in some of these changes. Some because we have "been there, done that" and it's time to seek a new life path. Some of us want to use our skills, experience and knowledge to help others who might benefit from what we have to share. Some of us just want to meet new people, try something new, go someplace different.
What excited me in the first place about coming here is that I thought China would be like no other place in the world, a place to meet new people, for me to have a positive effect on students' lives, and to seek out something new and exciting - a new life path for me. And I have "been there and done that." My students share their lives, their homes, their relationships, their hopes and dreams, and their trials and tribulations as well as their special country and their unique perspective on the world. I find fulfillment of my hopes and my dreams in my students and, in turn, they continually remind me in so many ways that China IS like no other place in the world. I am glad to be here. Maybe I'll stay for a while.
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