Post by burlives on Dec 21, 2004 20:45:58 GMT 7
It started as it did yesterday with four periods in the morning of second-year college students and how they don't know it's time to top themselves.
It's the end of semester so they come in groups of eight or nine for one period each and we round off everything that has gone before with a few sessions of 45 minutes natural language discussion. I initiate talk of the semester's work. I tell them "many students" have been puzzled by the materials and the methods. They tell me that I could have given them something interesting and some information about foreign cultures would have been useful in later life. I had a brainwave, and I told them about it: "give us something interesting" means "make us interested in something." I asked them directly what they thought they needed now from an English class to get them ready for what they would do in the future. But all of this was a pretext.
In principle these last classes are for debriefing. But it becomes a discussion of the idea that the utility of a second language is not only in the business opportunities it brings but in the new shape it gives your mind.
So they told me about their days. It is shocking to hear them knowingly describing the vacuuity with which they handle things. They know that sleeping as a hobby is empty and "play" is killing time. They have worked out that something is wrong because "on the weekends we don't even have breakfast or lunch, we just stay in the bed or play computer games." But finally for me the real disappointment was that they seemed utterly to lack understanding of what they have achieved. They just don't get that they themselves are interesting.
I told them that my purpose had always been to force them to speak as westerners do -- joining together to share information and solve problems, as opposed to sitting quietly while the leader speaks. I told them that I never answered their questions because if I did, they would give up thinking, and if I didn't, there was a chance they would continue thinking. I told them that I was teaching ways of finding answers for yourself.
I don't think they cannot do it. I do think they may even have an idea of what I mean. I also think it may have limited place in an ESL classroom. But I do think that a year or two teaching some program like this would produce results.
Then I spent the afternoon with airline websites and with an FAO rapidly tiring of me.
And then I went to the Christmas supper with the vice president. It was very civil -- no baijiu blasting. I watched the foreign teachers and the Foreign Affairs staff and the dean and the vp. They were very comfortable and they have lots of work to do. In my current self-imposed outsider position it was easy to think they were living on the backs of those kids.
It's the end of semester so they come in groups of eight or nine for one period each and we round off everything that has gone before with a few sessions of 45 minutes natural language discussion. I initiate talk of the semester's work. I tell them "many students" have been puzzled by the materials and the methods. They tell me that I could have given them something interesting and some information about foreign cultures would have been useful in later life. I had a brainwave, and I told them about it: "give us something interesting" means "make us interested in something." I asked them directly what they thought they needed now from an English class to get them ready for what they would do in the future. But all of this was a pretext.
In principle these last classes are for debriefing. But it becomes a discussion of the idea that the utility of a second language is not only in the business opportunities it brings but in the new shape it gives your mind.
So they told me about their days. It is shocking to hear them knowingly describing the vacuuity with which they handle things. They know that sleeping as a hobby is empty and "play" is killing time. They have worked out that something is wrong because "on the weekends we don't even have breakfast or lunch, we just stay in the bed or play computer games." But finally for me the real disappointment was that they seemed utterly to lack understanding of what they have achieved. They just don't get that they themselves are interesting.
I told them that my purpose had always been to force them to speak as westerners do -- joining together to share information and solve problems, as opposed to sitting quietly while the leader speaks. I told them that I never answered their questions because if I did, they would give up thinking, and if I didn't, there was a chance they would continue thinking. I told them that I was teaching ways of finding answers for yourself.
I don't think they cannot do it. I do think they may even have an idea of what I mean. I also think it may have limited place in an ESL classroom. But I do think that a year or two teaching some program like this would produce results.
Then I spent the afternoon with airline websites and with an FAO rapidly tiring of me.
And then I went to the Christmas supper with the vice president. It was very civil -- no baijiu blasting. I watched the foreign teachers and the Foreign Affairs staff and the dean and the vp. They were very comfortable and they have lots of work to do. In my current self-imposed outsider position it was easy to think they were living on the backs of those kids.
