unclemartin

Uncle Martin's Comment:- I stumbled upon this article just now and it reflects my own temperament on the psychology or mental state of the students who forked out a lot of money to learn oral English in Guilin.    Read the words I highlighted in red please. I remember during my first time  to teach in Omeida, I tried my best  to please all my students like if I could only walk in a clothe line without support like a magician to entertain and at the same time teach English then I would have done that. In my IBC class we have a game it goes like this, “I did my best but my best isn’t good  enough,” the next student  would answer, “that’s alright!!” Being a teacher in a competitive school like Omeida is tough because of the kind of students that we have. Students from different backgrounds, different culture and different educational level. Not to mention different level of ignorance, stupidity, pride, rudeness and insensitiveness. Teaching is not as easy as it seems, when students cannot understand they would take it against the teacher, the school system, their classmates but NEVER themselves as the source of the problem. They think that they have paid the school, therefore the teachers should be responsible to teach them English in a short span of time. They would argue, “Customers are god.” This is obnoxious, I often teach my business class never to use this phrase instead they should say, “Customers are always right.” It is widely acceptable. But customers should be reasonable with their complaints. We cannot please everybody. I have been teaching for a long time and in my own experience, I make sure that majority of my students will at least be satisfied. Usually those who complain in my class are the students who are behind in understanding but cannot accept their weaknesses and some have psychological problems. Going back to hypocrisy, when I was new here, I spent a great deal with students with a good intention to build relationship with them. I realized in two months time, the students talk about their teachers’ weaknesses but not much on their strengths. I could hear only complaints at that time from everywhere and people just don’t know how to appreciate. It weakens my heart and my morale in teaching and the faith in education. I came to conclude that they talk behind the foreign teachers’ back; therefore they also do the same to me. I got tired and distance myself slowly from my students because I got so paranoid. I wonder how people could be so mean. I have been so withdrawn from my students the next time I came to Omeida and never spent time with them because I didn’t like to get paranoid again. I only hang out sometimes for a short time, and often I didn’t accept phone calls which is fine with me because I was finishing some books to read at that time and also Chinese lessons. I have met students like Angelina and Ocean that I usually hanged out with. Then I thought of why I shouldn’t hang out with students again. When these two students left I also changed my interaction to students like the way I used to. I started hanging out with them and even giving them English corners outside for free while relaxing and enjoying time together. I really enjoy this activity. I am very open to my students if they would ask me something I give them straight answers based on what I know and I don’t know on any topics that would affect their learning, lives or career. Last night, I was shocked a bit on how students actually talk about their teacher’s back and how such a line could spread around like a fart that contaminate the pure air. Now it makes me think, should I bother or not? My hang out buddy teacher Eva says, “The more you know; the more you see through.” It is not just fair sometimes. Let us be fair. Students should realize that they are already in a different culture while in Omeida, the structure of learning is more westernized compared with what they have used to. They have more freedom to be who they are here. One of that is Freedom of Expression. That is to express your opinions, ideas or insights in English. The students are taking it too far; they take that power to complain instead of improving their English level. A student commented, “That a teacher doesn’t know how to teach.” despite the qualifications of that teacher. But she never sees her weakness in studying. English is the same around the world. The grammar principle is the same, the accepted standard pronunciations like IPA or KK symbols are the same. The teachers in Omeida are all professionals, every student can learn from a teacher beyond English. You might be paying the highest English Training school in China but if you will not help yourself then, what a waste of money. English certificates are useless if you didn’t improve. If a student has the good learning attitude then there’s no excuse that she/he will not improve. If you want to be successful in learning English better shut up and do your part. Use your resources like your environment, teachers or classmates. Or if you think you are better than your teachers better go home and teach yourself and see who the loser is. I have seen and witnessed students who were successful after Omeida, some of them are now studying abroad, some have better careers and some started their own businesses. They have one thing in common that is their ability to focus on their learning objectives and their clear goals after Omeida. Who cares if you are not making progress in studying? it seems no one cares but if you actually use the resources around you a lot of people will come to your rescue until you accomplished your target. hmmnn that's too much!!! be a winner. (As is often the case,  some students wouldn't like to reflect their own learning attitudes in oral English. Instead, they only see the weakness of their teachers, complaining too much. Nobody can benefit from complaints! If you learn to see more about others' advantages, you will learn more from others. As a result, you will get on well with your teachers and in return,more progres will be made!)

[ 本帖最后由 unclemartin 于 2010-2-11 13:36 编辑 ]

xln1120

The highlighted sentence means the students' mass quality must be improved first. Am I right about it?

unclemartin

引用:

原帖由 xln1120 于 2010-2-11 13:40 发表
The highlighted sentence means the students' mass quality must be improved first. Am I right about it?

Not to mention different level of ignorance, stupidity, pride, rudeness and insensitiveness.

I will draw a lot of fire if I am the one who wrote this sentence.  As this sentence aptly reflects my own temperament as well having had done the same thing more than 6 years now in China, I am glad someone has made this remark.  I cannot agree with this foreign teacher more.

The fact that China is such a big country with varied speed of development and an imbalanced distribution of wealth and social benefits, this is more obvious.  I am sure you will not say such things if you are teaching kids who grow up in Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen with local or educated parents.


[ 本帖最后由 unclemartin 于 2010-2-12 07:51 编辑 ]

unclemartin

My sister-in-law is in her final year in senior middle school.  I used this article to train her to read native speaker written articles.  I am sure she will never have an opportunity to read and understand an article like this back in school.

It is eye-opening for her.  I made her read out the article sentence by sentence and tell me what she understands.  Since we can only do this remotely via Skype or QQ, it is an effective way for her to get some training from me over the Chinese New Year long school holiday.

Let me remind you that reading articles like this one is very helpful as you will not find such articles in textbooks.  It is a really fed up teacher telling us his feelings towards those who think of achieving fluency in spoken English instantly after handing over a rather fat training fee to special oral English schools in Yangshuo, Guilin, Guangxi.

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