Fuddland

My first couple of days at my new language school haven’t been too bad: just a couple of hours of preparatory work each day. My first teaching session is tonight, taking over a third of the way through a “Hotel English” course where, yes, we work through a textbook specially written for people who work in the hotel industry wanting to improve their English skills.

Later this week we begin a week-long intensive course for schoolchildren [poor little tykes, they’re only just on holiday leading up to Chinese New Year and their parents enroll them in extra English classes], which sees me teaching not only general English but also science- and geography-based classes. I’m quite looking forward to this as it’ll make a change from the usual, quite bland [in the eyes of both teacher and student] English textbooks to be teaching various real-world factoids [I do love a good factoid].

[Meta-factoid of the day: factoid should really be used to describe a statement that seems plausible and has been repeated and believed so often as to be assumed to be true, rather than my usage here, which was intended to mean a little fact; perhaps factette is a better word for this latter meaning. Although isn’t that a female fact (cf. Smurfette)?]

Anyway. Whilst I’ve found the new employers to be a little more receptive to my input and a lot more easy-going in general, there is a certain trait which appears to be common to all the Chinese language school managers that I’ve dealt with, or heard about: the, “Hey, could you waste your time doing something that’s clearly not necessary?” request, as exemplified by the conversation I had this morning, which went something like this:

Manager

Okay, so, David, can you prepare a syllabus for the whole week with what you are going to teach, so we can photocopy the pages from the textbook to make into a booklet to show to the parents?

David

Well, we don’t know the abilities of any of the students yet, and won’t know what speed we’re going to be able to move at, until the first one or two lessons — and each subject only has between three and eight classes over the seven days anyway — so I think it would be a waste of time, not to mention paper and money, to prepare a whole booklet in advance. How about I make a plan for just the first class of each subject and then each day we will be able to add more material, so by the end they have a booklet of the material we have actually covered?

Manager

Okay. But we should have something to show the parents, so can you prepare the material in advance for the whole week?

David

Er, as I say, there’s really no point in doing that. The syllabus will definitely change as soon as we start teaching. We could show the parents the original textbooks on the first day and explain that we will be choosing material from them based on their child’s needs and abilities as the week progresses.

Manager

Okay. Can you prepare a rough plan of what we will do during the week?

David

Yes I can, but it is likely to be a randomly-chosen subset of the contents page of the book with a disclaimer on it saying that the plan will change according to the students’ abilities.

Manager

Yes, that will be okay, the parents will understand.

David

But won’t they understand if you just show them the textbook and explain how we will choose what pages to do?

Apparently not. This happened so many times at my last job too: the parents/clients always want to see a syllabus, even if it’s hastily typed-up with no real substance to it, and even if they are also told that it will change as soon as the course starts. [No-one ever complained that we weren’t following the syllabus to the letter.] I don’t understand what’s wrong with saying, “Look, we’re going to be using this textbook — see, it has lots of nice pictures and plenty of things to do, and a nice shiny CD to listen to — but we won’t have time for everything so I’m going to choose what pages we’ll do as we go along, depending on what speed we can go at, what your strengths and weaknesses are, and what you find interesting. ‘Kay?”

Sometimes I’m tempted to put in bogus activities simply to see whether anyone reads the syllabuses in any detail:

Lesson One: the art of networking at conferences.
Lesson Two: making telephone calls — taking and leaving messages.
Lesson Three: procuring the expertise of a balloon fetishist.
Lesson Four: how to converse in a lift made of jelly.
Lesson Five: taking part in conference calls.
Lesson Six: dining in Western restaurants.

#1

Thanatos | 2007 / 02 / 07 – 20:39

Be the yin to their yang, mate, lest the harmony of your own personal cosmos be terminally unbalanced…

You know what I mean. Don’t you?

#2

David | 2007 / 02 / 07 – 21:51

Re #1: I believe I do. This damned predisposition I have to get the entire world to do things the way I think is best has caused me a lot of problems, recently and in the past. Slowly but surely, I’m yinning more and more yangs; it just takes a bit of work. And possibly more lithium.

#3

Thanatos | 2007 / 02 / 09 – 09:02

“…I’m yinning more and more yangs…”. Genius.

Keep this up and we’ll be able to write a book together one day…

#4

maisy | 2007 / 02 / 10 – 02:12

You always want things to go your way, don’t you ;)

#5

felicity | 2007 / 02 / 11 – 18:29

this reads like a full ‘head meets wall - repeat ten times’ moment!
loved your syllabus, can i sit in on lessons three and four please?

#6

Val | 2007 / 02 / 15 – 08:39

Mighty Yin way - Lessons 3 + 4 aural (cans a must) whilst following written 1,2,5,6 for parents on lithium. All children outside running around and stuff.

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