Erica's Chinese Experience

Teaching

I was a little worried about the whole idea of being a teacher in China, frankly. I mean, I was a substitute teacher for a few months beforehand after I graduated from BYU-I, but I didn’t actually have to create any lesson plans or anything. Before we left, I knew that we would be teaching college. I didn’t see how I could add anything to their education, because I knew that most of my students would have been taking English from a very early age. I also knew that they might have already had a foreign teacher, and I didn’t want to step on someone else’s lesson plans and be boring.

Helen, my co-teacher, and Coin, Jeff's co-teacher After arriving in Xiangtan, my fears weren’t put to rest, either. Helen, my co-teacher, handed me two different books that I was supposed to use for my classes. The freshmen had a really basic book. The sophomores’ was a little bit better, but it all seemed like pretty basic stuff. I was afraid that perhaps they wouldn’t be on a very high level and I would be spending most of my time just going over basics of grammar that I could only barely remember. Jeff’s book seemed a lot more advanced, though his students weren’t Business English majors like mine. We were given the difficult task of planning out the semester’s lessons before actually going to class with our students. I split mine up according to topics in the book.

We started teaching on a Monday after returning from a trip to Yangshuo, which you can read about on the link to the left. I was petrified. My first class started at eight in the morning, and I couldn’t sleep very well. My intestines weren’t all that happy either from a combination of stress and just getting used to eating Chinese food. Thank goodness for Imodium—I took some of that and then took a shower. I was too nervous to eat anything, so I simply left. I left a little early, because I was afraid I would forget where in the world it was I needed to go. Fortunately, most of my students came early as well—my very first class was my freshmen. They were a little nervous as well. Most of them hadn’t had a foreign teacher before. I can only imagine how hard it had to have been for them to follow me. Not only did I speak fast in the fact that I’m a native English speaker, but I was nervous on top of it. Still, class went well. I introduced myself and then had each of my students tell me their name and a little bit about themselves (they were so nervous!) during the first half of class. At Xiangtan University, each class is an hour and a half long—but after forty-five minutes, there’s a ten minute break. After the break, I answered questions they had about the United States. A lot of them were “Have you heard of Kobe Bryant?” and “Did you know that China hosted the Olympics?” Some were about our culture. They also wanted to know if I had a boyfriend, and how old I am. I told them those answers were secrets. Some of my students were almost my age.

My first class seemed to fly by. I had them look over the first chapter of their book as homework. My second class of the day wasn’t quite as easy. They were sophomores, and didn’t ask very many questions. Their class was a little shy at first, so I had them write about things they wanted to do in the future. I didn’t know how well they could speak or write, so I needed some sort of gauge to find out. I was very tired by the end of my first day. It’s amazing how being enthusiastic with a group of people will wear you out, isn’t it? My freshmen had thirty-eight students with a few extra that liked to come for fun. All of my sophomore classes (I had three) had forty. I wish I could tell you that I can remember all their names, but I’m terrible at that. My classes the next day went similarly.

A picture of my freshmen class Creating my first lesson plan was a little scary. I didn’t know what went into a lesson plan, and I didn’t know how well they would accept what I wanted them to do. As any of the students I’ve had know, I’m a bit of a pushover. I’m really nice in class (which is why students love it when I’m a sub) and I didn’t know what I’d do if my students refused to work. Thankfully, for the most part, they participated. I assigned them a lot of writing assignments the first two weeks so I could find things they needed to work on and go over them as a class. A big problem I noticed was pronouns, so we went over those a few times. I still heard my students use the wrong ones, though…I don’t know if anything I taught them actually stuck.

I think it was the second week I was teaching that I was observed by Helen. Fortunately, it was a lesson that I actually liked—we talked about English-speaking countries, and I tried to let them hear my lame attempts at other accents. Helen, for the most part, thought I did fairly well—though, I was in trouble for not having the students participate more. My first few weeks of teaching, I pretty much dominated the conversation, which was good to help them improve listening skills, but not their speaking skills. Afterward, I tried harder to let them have an opportunity to speak in English. By the end of the semester, I generally spent the first half lecturing and giving vocabulary words and the second half giving them exercises in which they needed to practice their English. Generally those were presentations to the class. Unfortunately, none of my students really saw the importance of working on the presentations in English. However, though they did break a rule and used Chinese in class, their presentations were always quite good.

At the Vocational-Technical Institute of Xiangtan University (where Jeff and I taught and lived), most classrooms only had chairs, desks, a podium, and a chalkboard. Jeff and I had brought a bunch of whiteboard markers for no reason. I’ve never been a fan of chalk. And I’m still not a fan. But it wasn’t too bad. I now have a greater appreciation for teachers who had nothing but a blackboard and several pieces of chalk to teach. Kids today have no idea how nice it is to be able to use computers in class or to watch something from a projector. Some of my students had to take computer classes—and since there weren’t any classrooms full of computers, they had to simply memorize what their teacher was telling them. That would be really hard to do. I don’t think I would’ve been able to pass my various computer classes without a computer to practice on. I can’t even describe what someone needs to do on a program unless I’ve got the same thing open in front of me.

I was a bit of a lazy teacher, I must admit. Some days I wouldn’t plan my lessons until 4:30 in the morning. It was easy to wake up that early in China because I taught in the morning and generally took a nap while Jeff was teaching. Plus everyone was online back home, so I had people to talk to. I used the Internet a lot to find ideas for my lessons, but I also threw in some of my own ideas. Some days I had them play games adapted from the games I played in my French classes in college. They really liked playing Simon Says after I covered body parts. I had them stick out their tongues, which was hilarious. It is considered rude in China to pick teeth or yawn in public without covering your mouth. They liked to play Simon Says because I gave candy to the winner, also. Most candy isn’t very sweet in China, but Jeff and I found some really good chocolate that wasn’t too expensive. I’ll talk more about shopping later, though.

The first week of October is a holiday because of the national holiday in China where everyone celebrates the government. Jeff and I wanted to go to Shanghai, but all the tickets were sold out because everyone was traveling. So, we ended up exploring Xiangtan instead on foot. Around Halloween, we arranged to go to Beijing for the weekend. Right before we left, I was able to show my students some American movies. I decided to show them two episodes of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” in honor of the holiday which we had discussed the previous class time. They thought both episodes were very scary—but didn’t want to stop watching them. I enjoyed watching “Hush” with them. I showed them that one to emphasize the importance of body language. It’s probably the scariest episode from all seven seasons of “Buffy.”

Most of my classes are a blur to me—I can’t really remember what it was we talked about. I know after I got back from Beijing, I had all three sophomore classes meet together in a large instruction room because I ended up missing their normally scheduled classes due to having to get a later train. That was very intimidating—fortunately, not all of 120 of my students actually showed up. I had a microphone and everything. We talked about humor, puns, and Spoonerisms in English. I nearly fell down several times. Monitors came in to take attendance. I was really glad when I was finished. Some of my sophomores after their final exam

The semester seemed to fly by. Before I knew it, it was the end. Though I wanted to grade my students based on class assignments at 50% and the two-part final exam for the rest, I had to grade them with their exam being worth 80% and attendance as the other 20%. The students know that such is the case. Consequently, when the day of the final exam rolls by, you see some students you’ve never seen before in your life. Which was all well and good. I just wished I could give more recognition to those who had soldiered through showing up every day in class. Anyway, I had them do two different parts of a final exam. The first part was to memorize a poem and recite it. Depending on how long the poem was determined how many points they got. And the second half was a group effort—they had to develop a project as a group and fill out information on its design and create advertisements and whatnot. I was proud of my students on this one. They did a wonderful job, and created a few products I’d like to see—like a color-changing umbrella that could fold up to be the size of a piece of candy. That would be quite nifty to see.

I had to teach on Christmas, as it fell on a Thursday. I let my students vote on different movies. They then chose which one they wanted to watch. I didn’t get very emotional on the last day of class—except in my freshman class. Goodness, I didn’t want to say goodbye to them. They were all so eager to learn and participate in class. They were the ones who got me to sing first in class. And they also arranged to throw me a surprise party on my birthday. I wish all of my students the best of luck in their coming lives. I only hope my lessons added at least something to their understanding of English, even if it wasn’t much and they wouldn’t know how to vocalize it.