Humanising Language Teaching
Year 5; Issue 3; May 03

A Small Rant -
On being a foreign teacher in China

Daniela Cammack, China

OK, so picture the scene. It's breaktime, halfway through a 2-hour optional after-school lesson, maybe 30 students, miserable rainy day, we've all done hours of school all day already. My 'assistant' comes up – my boss really: a bright, smart, middle-aged, vivacious senior teacher, who like all my other 'assistants' hardly ever comes to the classes and when she does come just sits at the back, smiling or looking mildly uptight, and I'm too embarrassed now after half a term to keep going over and asking if maybe she could help me monitor some groups...

I smile and say hey, hi, and something like What a shame it's raining, I'd been hoping we could do the class outside today. Ah yes, she says, make it more vivid. I don't know quite what she means by this but I've gathered by now that vivid is what my lessons are supposed to be. Then she sticks the knife in. Where are all the other students? she says. This is very bad! There were many more before – we can say, eighty! (This isn't true – once there were 65, but that was a freak day – but whatever.) She continues. Perhaps the students don't like the work, she says gesturing at the board. Then, confidingly – In fact these sentences are very boring!

My hackles rise. Well, it should be more fun after break, I say. I thought the students needed some work on this language… (we'd been doing question tags, all intonation and short forms and blimey, they hadn't heard of 'actually' before, and I'd got them used to using 'no' for agreement, hurrah!) I mean, these sentences aren't supposed to be for discussion… I'm teaching some grammar first, and then… She's smiling, interrupting excitedly – Yes, just like a grammar lesson! Really very boring! Ha ha ha!

No, it's not LIKE a grammar lesson, you daft creature, it IS a grammar lesson! Because frankly their grammar is appalling – yes, I know this is down on the timetable as an Oral Workshop, but c'mon there's only a problem here because you all seem to think that grammar's some kind of optional add-on on top of skills instead of through and through saturating the language – so loads of my poor lovely students seem to think oral English does actually just mean chucking bizarre bits of vocab out of their mouths – so yes, I do WANT to teach the odd language point and THEN practice using those bits of language in topics and themes and games that connect up…And oh God, WHY am I having to justify myself to you at bloody BREAKTIME? I'm tired, I'm trying to concentrate on my lesson and my students, you haven't come to any of these classes for the last four weeks – yeah, I know you've got meetings – but now how am I going to turn in a good focused bouncy hour with you sitting smiling at the back totally trashing my confidence? And yeah I know you seem to think that just cause I'm a native speaker I could wander into a classroom and magically chat with everyone in English all afternoon and that's why you're paying me a small fortune but just how COULD it be possible to make 30 people talk for 2 hours just like that, surely you realize they need warming-up and preparation time and guided stuff and oh yeah lots of thinking beforehand, which is what I try to DO, AND I'm only not very experienced AND I try very hard, AND I've got zero textbooks or materials or photocopiers half the time, AND I do 20 hours a week AND only oral which is hard work and you only teach about 6 hours with a bloody tape, pressing and stopping, or else just dictate business letters!

Oh how could anyone think I could possibly have a 2 hour conversation class with all these people? It makes me feel dizzy just thinking about it.