Fuddland

The trials, tribulations and triumphs of teaching English in China.

This category is a subcategory of China.

This category also has the following subcategories [number of entries in brackets]:

• My first Suzhou school [8]
• My second Suzhou school [8]
• My third Suzhou school [0]

Another short-term job I took on was at an IELTS summer school. For those that don’t know, IELTS is a internationally-recognised standard English level certification that many institutes require as part of their entry criteria. The exams focus on one-on-one interviews with native English-speaking examiners, testing vocabulary, grammar, and the ability to express one’s opinions. Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Chinese students take these exams every year with dreams of studying abroad.

Through a fellow teacher, I was put in touch with the local office of a company by the name of Běijīng IELTS, run by a nice enough chap calling himself Adam. After meeting with him for less than ten minutes we had agreed on me teaching four two-and-a-half-hour classes at a higher-than-average hourly rate, without him once asking me if I knew anything about the IELTS programme requirements. It was enough that I am a native English speaker. He lent me a textbook on which to base my lessons, but couldn’t tell me anything about what the students had covered to date. This was the first indication [of many] that the “school” is little more than a money-making scheme that provides little benefit to the earnest students looking for an intensive few weeks of English skill-honing.

Classes of more than twenty students were packed into the twelve or so classrooms on the fifth and sixth floors of the building — a building which housed two other English training centres, directly across the road from where I had been working full-time for the last year and a half. The textbook I was given to use proclaimed to be an official IELTS publication, but flipping through the pages revealed it to be a knock-off copy — as in: someone had taken the original and typed it all out again, except his/her typing skills left a lot to be desired, with plenty of typos to confuse the students.

On two occasions the students hadn’t even brought their copies of these copies. When I located Adam or one of the numerous administration staff members, they told me that “the last teacher didn’t use the textbook.” Well tough, my lesson plan hinges on having these mistake-ridden textbooks to hand. I laughed in Adam’s face when he suggested I come up with a new plan after the class had already started. [I’ve had this experience before, when “managers” seem to be under the impression that teachers can pull two-hour lesson plans out of their bottoms at the drop of a hat.] Faced with this refusal to change my plan, he magically found spare copies of the textbook for each and every student.

After these mishaps were ironed out, the classes themselves generally went quite well, but the sheer number of students coupled with the lack of organisation meant that the school could never tell me if the class I was having was one I had taught before or not. It wasn’t clear if students were consistently kept in the same groups all the time, or moved from class to class depending on their own schedules. This made it frustratingly impossible to build on previous lessons, so each class had to be a self-contained session.

I organised a lot of role-play speaking activities, making sure each and every student was given the opportunity [read: forced] to come up to the front of the class and give a short talk or simulate a section of the IELTS exam, but hardly anyone seemed to be taking notes of my suggestions for what the correct way to say things is, or what sounds better, so I don’t know how much they actually went away with after the classes.

The only bad class I had was one with a group of younger [mid-teen] students who were clearly at the rebelling-against-all-this-studying period of life. [This was, to be honest, something of a relief to see, after teaching so many studying machines who never seemed to tire of hitting the books, but it didn’t make my job any easier.] I did manage to get some of them interested in the activities, and those that wanted to mess around I guilted into shutting up by asking who was paying for these classes, them or their parents. At one point one of them thought he was being very surrepticious when taking a photo of me on his mobile, so I just strolled up to him and took my own picture.

Adam asked me to teach more classes during August, but I had had enough of the distinct feeling that this centre was interested in nothing more than making a swift yuan off the back of parents desperate to give their children a chance to study abroad, and told him I was too busy. Not that it’ll make any difference, I’m sure there were plenty of other foreign teachers on his virtual Rolodex, and the money will keep rolling in. I have since gone back and forth in my mind as to whether this was the best course of action — the other path being to keep teaching there for the rest of the summer and do my best to help the students with passing these exams — but in the end, given that there was no way for me to build on previous work we’d done, I couldn’t see the students missing out on very much.

After having a pretty light schedule for the last six months or so, it’s been a fairly busy month or two as I picked up several part-time teaching gigs, mostly at summer schools for kids and teens. With the more strictly-enforced visa restrictions causing problems for a vast swathe of the foreigners who have been, up to now, able to enjoy relative freedom in where they worked, those of us who were lucky enough to have the right kind of visa are much in demand, and it has really been a case of me deciding how busy I wanted to be.

One summer school is just four boys between the ages of 8 and 11, three afternoons a week, which is easy and fun: a bit of reading, a bit of practising-short-talks-to-impress-grandparents, and a good smattering of games.

My approach is to try and make these things as laid-back as possible, to give the kids a chance to enjoy their summer holidays despite being forced to attend classes by their evil parents. My crowning achievement [teaching-wise] is to get them to look up unfamiliar words in the dictionary. At the beginning of the course these kids would read aloud until they got to a new word and just stop dead, look up at me and expect me to provide them with the pronunciation and meaning. I was happy to do this for a while, but eventually they needed to realise that Teacher David isn’t always going to be around and it’s useful to be able to check definitions and pronunciations themselves. [Since they learn English as a foreign language at school, they’re all entirely familiar with the phonetic alphabet (unlike me).] It took me three lessons to get them all to remember to bring dictionaries, but now they look words up without prompting. This might not sound like much but it’s a skill that bewilderingly lacks in most students I come across, adults as well as children.

One of their favourite games is one in which I write new words up on the board, and call out the definitions of them. The students line up two at a time at the other end of the classroom and have to race to the board and be the first to touch the word that matches the definition. Being boys, they tear down the room at worrying rates, each trying to trip or otherwise impede the other before crashing into the wall, often randomly hitting the board until they land on the right word. It’s hugely entertaining for me as well as them. I think I might try it with an adult class next time things are getting a bit boring.

Every week I get treated to the wonder that is my kindergarten kids doing their morning dancercises. The music ranges from Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star to a children’s version of We Will Rock You [“You’ve got mud on your face, big disgrace…”]. And the dancing … oh the dancing. Cutest thing I’ve ever seen. Keep your eye on the boy in the second row closest to camera.

One of my summer school students shows off his chimpanzee-in-a-car drawing for the camera.

One of my colleagues cheered me up no end today — not that I was particularly grumpy, aside from the usual headache the kids at the summer school give me, but he gave me an extra boost in his attempt to make a phone call.

He sat down at his desk, picked up the phone and dialled a number. Just as he finished dialling, one of the other phones in the office started to ring. We were the only two in there, and since I’m not paid to answer the phones [and, moreover, my Chinese isn’t really up to dealing with course enquiries], he put down his phone, dashed over to the other one and answered it. But he was too late: the person had hung up.

So back he went and resumed his call. Except the same thing happened: just as he finished dialling, the other phone rang. So, as before, he stopped what he was doing and went to answer the incoming call.

I’m sure you’ve all guessed what was going on, but apparently he hadn’t, so as he scooted on over to the other phone again I felt I had to ask him, nice and innocently if, by any chance, it was he who was calling that other phone. I wish I’d let him do it a few more times without saying anything, just to see how many it took for him to cotton on.

One of my more enjoyable teaching duties is the weekly “English Corner”: a two-hour session open to the public, in which anyone wishing to practise speaking English can come along and talk with other like-minded people and three or four native English speakers. It’s my duty to select the general topic of conversation each week, which we are supposed to discuss in small groups whilst supping tea, but in practice the topic gets forgotten about in the first few minutes and most of the evening’s conversations begin with, “So, in your country…?” I like chatting with the regulars, finding out as much about Chinese life as they do about my culture.

The people who come along are all very nice; some are a little too keen to talk and don’t give others a chance to speak, and some just want to listen until they feel confident enough to contribute. But recently I’ve been suffering a certain level of chagrin due to having developed a few “fans” amongst the attendees, who go out of their way to sit as close to me as possible and direct all their comments at me, instead of talking with the rest of the group. There are a few women who delight in telling me several times a week what a handsome man I am. [My outward, bashful, modest acceptance of their compliment disguises my internal monologue, which is along the lines of, “Run away! Run away! They want a husband!”] And anytime I say something vaguely intelligent — or whenever I demonstrate that I know a little Mandarin — there’s a general buzz of, “So smart, so smart. Doctor is doctor.” This latter statement is a literal translation of a Chinese saying whose meaning seems to be, “People with PhDs are clever.” Profound.

One chap in particular makes me incredibly self-conscious, not only because he’s verges on the sycophantic with his praises of my intellect, teaching ability and general outlook on life, but also because, whenever we’re speaking, not only does he have a habit of repeating the last few words of my sentences — this is fair enough, helping him improve his English — but he also mimics whatever hand gestures I’m using at the time, gesture-for-gesture. I’ve never been so aware of how often I use my hands when making a point or explaining something, and I’m torn between sitting on my hands, and making outrageously flamboyant gestures just to see if he adopts them.

In general, the teaching materials I’ve been provided with have been of a high standard; easy to teach from and well thought-out, but there’s one exception: I teach the employees of a five-star hotel twice a week, and the main textbook consists of long, very boring articles about various aspects of the hotel business, together with comprehension questions and discussion topics. The whole thing is way, way too advanced for the students, using complex words and phrasings to get across what are usually quite simple ideas.

But the worst thing is, sometimes the English is just plain wrong. It looks like the book was written by a Chinese person [or persons] whose English is obviously of an extremely high standard, but it does occasionally fall foul of the dictionary trap, in which they’ve looked up a Chinese phrase in a dictionary and simply copied the translation — anyone who has used an online translator knows how unreliable this approach is. When the results aren’t simply nonsense, the words are not ones that would generally be chosen by a native speaker. Here are a few examples taken from the chapter I taught last night, on the subject of handling complaints.

If the travel agent contacts his clients with a questionnaire about such evaluation items as “Did you enjoy your holiday? Have you any complaints?”, he will not only get valuable feedback from clients but also create a prosperous corporate image.

A questionnaire about evaluation items? No. And when was the last time you used the word prosperous, apart from when wishing someone a happy New Year?

Complaints may occur in various situations, but many are indispensably connected with the work and attitudes of the employees of the industry.

At a stretch, they might mean invariably, not indispensably. But then there’s the related discussion question, which contains the common Chinese misuse of should, “What should indispensably lead to guests’ complaints?”

Tourists expect a variety of information from travel directions to explaining unfamiliar items on menus, where and what to see and do at destination, as well as knowledge about the history and tradition of the places they are visiting. Tourists tend to regard all these as the source of answers to their questions. Therefore it should be emphasized on training staff on offering information as clearly and as accurately as possible.

Tend to regard all what? Information on what to see and do is the source of answers to their question about what to see and do? You don’t say.

Before you do anything, you need to listen and make sure you understand what is being said. This avoids misunderstanding and show your heartfelt care and willing to help.

I think I’d get a little uncomfortable if hotel staff told me they had heartfelt caring for my complaint.

To agree with the complainer is another good way of calming him down, usually because he expects you may rush to the defense of whoever is in the wrong. Never lose your temper on all occasions. Just have him out of his system might be the only solution.

Okay, what? “Usually because he expects you may…”? “Never … on all occasions.”? “Just have him out of his system…”? It was by this stage in the text I was ready to suggest using the book to make papier mache models of each other for the remainder of the class time.

Worse still, the accompanying audio CD sounds like the articles are being read aloud, word-for-word, by whatever native English speaker happened to be passing at the time. There’s background noise, stumbling over words, and a general lack of clarity from the speaker. And it’s hard to hear someone say something like, “Just have him out of his system might be the only solution”, without wasting the rest of the class explaining exactly what he meant to say. I know the students aren’t going to be fluent by the end of the course, but usually they expect I may teach them heartfeltedly.

The rumours were true! After a last-ditch two-pronged-pincer-movement strike, I finally have my year-long Chinese work visa. The last few days of warfare went like this.

Firstly, I called in reinforcements I had been reluctant to fall back on up to now, in the form of an acquaintance I made last year. He’s an Irishman, the boss of a clothing company based here in Sūzhōu (苏州), with several key strengths:

• He’s a very nice man and offered to help me out when I talked to him ages ago about possible visa problems should I resign from my [now former] employer.

• He knows my ex-manager personally, and is as much a fan of her as I am.

• But he also knows, and is on very good terms with, her brother-in-law — a very handy mediation route here.

• By lovely coincidence, he is also good friends with the Irish owner of my ex-company — in other words, he’s pals with my ex-boss’s boss.

All of which add up to some substantial guānxi (关系), the deadliest weapon in modern China’s business world. So he set about talking to the brother-in-law, to find out of there was some kind of give-and-take that would get me the letter of release I so desperately needed to secure my work visa.

He called back later to see what I thought of a peace offering: in return for a letter of release, I would agree to not harm the reputation of the company by going on the record [that is, contacting newspapers etc.] about their recent treatment of me [and other employees in the past]. I agreed in principle to this idea, and the brother-in-law was given the go-ahead to approach my ex-manager.

The very day I set these events in motion, a new hope appeared on the horizon. My new employer told me — and I was highly dubious given the lack of success of their efforts to date — that all I needed to provide the authorities with was a photocopy of my original letter of release — that is, the one I got when I left Běnxī. As highly-organised-person would have it, I did indeed keep a photocopy of that letter before handing it over to the police when I first arrived in Sūzhōu.

It turned out that the photocopy was enough, and it was this that got me my visa. Which is just as well, as the go-between route went rather quiet at my end after the initial contact was made. I’m not sure what transpired between my ex-manager and the brother-in-law, but what I do know is, soon after she was contacted, my ex-manager arranged to have a meeting with my new manager.

She tried to insist that I also attend this meeting — a request that my new manager refused, much to my relief. At the meeting, she demanded that my new manager fire me. She told him I had a habit of breaking contracts early. Unfortunately for her I’d already been open with my new manager about my reasons for leaving Běnxī and her comany, and he sympathised with both situations. It also kind of blunts her point when you know that she asked me, on my last day and in two subsequent email messages, to stay on with her company.

Nevertheless, she clearly didn’t want me working for anyone else, and even went so far as to offer to transfer one of her current teachers to replace me. This says a lot about how much she values the services of her teachers, if she’s willing to send one over to a new employer simply to get back at someone who dared to resign from her company.

But it appears to be all over: I have my visa, and that’s all I really care about. I think a celebratory drink might be in order.

There’s a rumour going round that my visa application has finally gone through, and that my passport now contains a valid working visa for the full year.

I’m going to remain healthily dubious until I’ve seen it with my own eyes, later this afternoon. Fingers crossed…

In an un-deliberate scheme to mar my St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, I was asked to swap my usual Sunday off work for another day and give a short, early morning demo class to twenty primary school students; the first half was to be a general warm-up, the second based on a science textbook. This was all fine with me — I knew I could keep things relatively simple, play a few word games, and it’d be over pretty quickly.

What they failed to tell me — in what is fairly-typical Chinese boss style — was that the demo class wasn’t just for the twenty students. Thus I found myself, not in a classroom, but in the school hall, on stage, microphone in hand, performing The David Show for around a hundred parents and children. The twenty eleven- or twelve-year-olds specially selected to be my demo students were, thankfully, already of a good standard of English, but none had brought along paper or pens, so there was a frantic few minutes while — at my insistence — enough writing tools were located to enable them to do some of the work I’d planned for the “class”.

I decided to pretend the audience wasn’t there at all and treat things as a normal lesson — bar having to run over to each student when they stood up to answer a question so they could speak into the microphone — and it all went very smoothly. I must have done something right because, during the scheduled five-minute break between halves, my boss told me I didn’t need to bother carrying on with the second half. He pointed to the back of the hall and I saw most of the parents were already signing-up their children to be taught by our training centre. So I just sat on the edge of the stage and chatted with whichever little ‘un came up to me [usually at their mother’s urging, although I did teach a few of them last month; these kids were very happy to see me again and I was treated to plenty of hugs and stroking of my hair].

As I left the school I noticed a rather disturbing statue outside the main hall, which seemed to be a depiction of a rare sex education class: “That’s right, these are called ‘breasts’.”

For the first few weeks after I arrived in China, whenever I overheard a couple of elderly gents chatting in Chinese on a park bench, I found myself assuming that they were exchanging pearls of wisdom garnered from their experiences…

Read the rest of “Atrophy”…

The saga of my visa and my previous company continues. To recap: to secure a full working visa related to my new job, I need a letter from my previous employer stating that I have left the company. That’s all…

Read the rest of “Empty threats”…

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…

Read the rest of “Days One and Two: so far so the same as ever”…

If you’re currently in China, follow this easy sixteen-step guide to renewing a work visa. Secure a job; this could either be a renewal of your current contract or, as in my case, a new job. This latter situation is…

Read the rest of “How to renew your visa”…

Let me outta here! Sorry about that, just had to yell to some extent. I’m over it now. I’d like to go to Chengdu. I’ve heard and read that it’s lovely, and I’ve been planning a two-week holiday there ever…

Read the rest of “Chengdon’t”…

Having received my last full-time pay-cheque from my former company, the full cost of leaving their employment early has been revealed: equivalent to two months’ worth of rent, plus a passed-on fee for terminating the contract with the internet service…

Read the rest of “The price of teaching”…

In class this evening — teaching five Korean teenagers who all appear to be big fans of Premier League football — the topic was “unlucky people”, and I asked the class for examples of people they know of who had been unlucky. This, verbatim,…

Read the rest of “Tough Gigg”…

Meanwhile, I’m earning some pocket money by still working at the company I earlier officially stopped working for on December 9th — as I’ve explained, during the notice period we reached a mutual agreement that I would finish off the courses that…

Read the rest of “Wayning”…

I’ve been put in touch with a sort-of-recruitment agent to help me find a new teaching position, and after a couple of preliminary discussions it suddenly occurred to me that I should tell her where I’ve been working, so she…

Read the rest of “Hindsight is a wonderful thing”…

The next chapter in the saga of my employment in China. Having handed in my notice, I began trying to plan my next few months, specifically with regard to location, accommodation, vocation and communication. Communication Finally getting fed up with…

Read the rest of “Inform-ation”…

I handed in my notice at work yesterday, which went down like a lead balloon filled with a gas that has the exact opposite properties of helium. [Perhaps it is magnetised and strongly drawn to the Earth’s core? Hmm, can…

Read the rest of “Noticed”…

I’ve had a lot of positive feedback regarding my teaching lately; some courses have ended and questionnaires are given out in the last lessons to assess the performance of the teacher and the general service provided by my company. I’ve…

Read the rest of “Bonafeud”…

On Monday morning my roommate and colleague for the last two months hung up his sunhat and headed home to Ireland, after a full year with my current employer and over thirty years of teaching abroad — not just in China,…

Read the rest of “And then [briefly] there was one”…

Almost six months in, the last couple of weeks have been the lowest point of my time out here so far, in terms of homesickness. Whether I became ill because I was feeling down, or I started feeling down [in…

Read the rest of “The six-month dip”…

Another first this week: my first being ill enough to visit a doctor. Actually, I wasn’t that poorly — just a standard case of manflu — but upon turning up to work looking suitably pathetic [headache, body-ache, fatigue, distinct “please cancel my classes” look…

Read the rest of “Chinese medicine”…

One of the benefits of teaching the younger classes is that I can play lame April Fools jokes on them and they actually fall for them. Okay, so I just walked into each of my morning lessons and proceeded to…

Read the rest of “April Foolishness”…

A very surreal teaching experience today: my students were reading aloud from a short play in the set text I have to teach them. The scene was: an English lesson, in which one of the students was Japanese, with phonetically-written…

Read the rest of “Meta-teaching”…

There is one particular student I teach, a young girl by the [chosen, English] name of Mary, whose voice is, for some reason, especially grating. There is something about the pitch, or the volume, or the pace at which she…

Read the rest of “Kids can be cruel [#1]”…