Two weeks ago, I was kinda confused and apprehensive when I walked in the classroom for the first time as I had no clue whatsoever about what to expect. Now, if I'm still very far from being experienced, I developed classroom instincts nonetheless, such as the ability to differenciate good students from bad ones even before they say or do anything.
The first thing is the physical disposition of the students. Those up front have more chance of giving a shit that those sitting at the very back of the class, 25 meters away from the annoying long-nosed laowai. This is fairly obvious, and does not need to be explained furthermore.
The second factor, quite obvious also, can be called the Ovary Factor. As a rule of thumb, the girls will be better, sometimes way ahead than their pepito mustache male counterparts. The girls tend to concentrate on their studies a bit, while the boys only care about basketball and playing computer. That's kinda unfair and widely generalized of course, as I encounter once in a while some very good, focused and hard-working dudes as well as absolutely terrible female students, but 90% of the time my first impression is true. And also it is worthy mentioning that the almost totality of the students who attended English corner (see "Negativity moé l'sac") were, well, little girls.
The next one is a bit tricky: since the classroom seating arrangement is made of these nice two-place desks, most students sit by pairs. Some of them, though, sit by themselves, usually 3-4 per class. It is very misleading, as the lone student can be either asocial, borderline sociopathic and therefore a very bad student, someone who just likes to sit alone and be able to concentrate more or just simply due to the odd number of students on the list. I still have to learn more about the classification of lone students, I will keep you updated.
So if I see a male student, seated in the last row by himself, it's a dead giveaway. This dude is basically worthless and it will be very hard to get him to do something.
But what is the SSF I talked about in the first paragraph? Ah yeah... Well, it's something I've noticed during my first few lessons. The Spoiled Sluttiness Factor. Even within female students, there is a classification to be made. Chinese girls seem to be quite conservative but once in a while you spot the odd chick with a scandalously short skirt, high heels and a preppy girl top, but with misspelled English sentences printed on it. The English name they choose is usually vaguely pornstar-like, such as Angel, Rebecca or Lollipop. Nah, just kidding... I have no students named Lollipop. Anyway, most of these girls I've interacted with in a classroom environment just play with their expensive pink cell phone and do not learn. And yeah, since it's getting colder and Chinese people can't endure cold, these girls get overdressed for their SS status and therefore hard to spot at first sight.
So if the SSF lowers the chance of a random girl to be a good student, when it comes to male students, there is also a gender-specific factor: the boy sitting next to a girl will usually be her boyfriend, as the sexes don't really seem to mix in China. On campus, you see either large groups of girls, large groups of dudes, or couples. Never large mixed groups... So basically, the male student sitting next to his girlfriend will usually be way above the average of his male classmates. I don't know the true explanation for this, but my hypothesis would be that since he is in a relationship, it means he has somewhat of "a life", something that is incompatible with video games. Video games who distract the rest of the male student body.
So these are a few of the aspects I base myself on when comes the time to determine the probable value of a student. It is not scientific and error-proof, but still I'm getting good at this.
I have students from five different majors, a whole bunch of Chinese dudes and gals that I interact with once or sometimes twice a week if they are lucky. 1h40 or so every week to teach oral English to large groups of sometimes totally unresponsive students whose mother tongue has virtually nothing in common with the taught language is quite a challenge, but I like challenges and this kind of warm feeling running in your balls when you overcome them.
All the classes I am assigned are sophomores, therefore they are about 19-20 years old. I was quite apprehensive at first because of the very low age gap putting me almost at their level, but in Chinese society (as in many places in the world, at the exception of, you know, North America), teacher is a highly respected profession. The vast majority of the students are very polite (I giggle like a little girl every time somebody calls me Mister Felix) and those who aren't, at worst they don't give a shit and just look away when I engage a verbal exchange with them in class, until I reiterate my approach (heille le cave, c'est ma JOB de t'apprendre l'angla faque argore moé pis réponds ma question). Then, he quits playing with his cell phone and looks over his classmate shoulder to see what page he was supposed to be at for the past 25 minutes. Still, I cannot imagine a student openly and verbally disrespecting a teacher, and my colleagues who have been in this biz for a long time and to whom I have asked about it told me it has never happened to them. I also don't want to imagine what would happen to this poor kid after he has to face the discipline board or whatever.
If my students are all in the same age range and therefore have all been learning English in the Chinese school system for the same amount of time, one could expect them to be fairly at the same level. This is like hopping with a first-class ticket on the train towards disappointment, first stop, my Internet major class.
But first let me introduce you to my Business English students. I have two groups of them, and they are actually some of my favorite classes to give. Even if they are far from being fluent, the almost-totality of them can have a conversation of some sort. But most importantly, they are more motivated that my other classes. I gave them some dialogues to prepare and present in front of me, 90% of them put a lot of effort and nailed it, the other 10% not even being able to recite a dialogue that a 5-year old would find not elaborate enough. There are no in-betweens. So in these lessons, I just work on dialogues, fine-tune their pronunciation and expand their vocabulary. They actually have a relevant and kinda interesting textbook, unlike my other classes.
Then, I have three groups of International trade majors. They're a few steps behind my English majors, but way ahead of my other classes. For this reason, and also the fact that these are half-classes (about 30 students, just like my Business English groups) they're a bit more stimulating to teach. Most of them seem to actually care and I cover twice as much stuff as my low-level classes.
Finally, meet my four other groups. Two Internet majors, one Real estate, and one... Cartoon. Yeah, Cartoon. It is actually Graphic animation or something like that, but on my schedule they are called Cartoon. Real estate ain't extremely bad, just hard to manage, but Internet and Cartoon... When my peers saw these on my teaching schedule, they looked at me with big eyes and let out this kind of inhaled sound from the corner of their mouths, like when you feel really really sorry for somebody. "They can't be that bad, can they?" Guess again, and take a look on my September 19th entry.
I know very little about the Chinese post-secondary education system, but I have been told that the students are heavily tested before going to college. From what I've also heard (so don't take my word for it), the students with the highest grades get to go to the inexpensive, government-run universities while the others go to private colleges such as the one employing me. I find it quite odd because it is pretty much the opposite of the North American system. I don't want to imply that my college is a bad institution, far from that, but it just means that there are bad students. Awful students, even. The students also have to pass exams when it comes to determining their major, so yeah, some classes are filled up to the rim with mediocre, lazy students. You get the picture!
These classes need to be SPOON-FED, and still sometimes they don't get what I'm showing them. I try not to be condescending, but goddamn this stuff is really fucking easy! I showed them formal/informal meet&greet during two hours, and then directions in a city the following week ("go straight ahead, then turn right on Main street" and shit). What struck me is the fact that most of them do not only lack oral English skills, but logical and common sense as well. I went through most of my German classes in University mostly using common sense whenever I didn't understand what was going on. And you know, I didn't come to class to play with my fucking cell phone in front of the prof, but to... how is it called again... LEARN! But then again, I chose this class so I actually gave a shit, whereas English is forced upon them.
Now I may be ranting, but in fact I am writing all this shit right now with somewhat of a huge grin on my face. It may once again look like I hate this job and want to give it all up, but it couldn't be further from the truth. I just tend to focus my energy on something else, there's no way I'm gonna be let down by these lazy Chinese students. And actually, some of them make my day sometimes! Yesterday I dismissed my Internet 2 class a bit earlier than usual because some students had to leave for some extracurricular activity, so they all took their books and left the class. All but one. One dude, head resting in his hand, headphones tucked in his ears, eyes completely shut. He woke up, looked around, saw nothing but me erasing my board, panicked and then stormed out. How can you not love this shit?
Another thing about this Internet class... when I walked in the classroom, it kinda smelled. Not that I want to imply that they have intrinsic low standards of personnal hygiene, but I mean the classroom had a strong scent of "Goddamn, Chong Wing, is it 7:30 AM already? Have we really stayed up playing computer all night? - I guess so... Damn... should we take a shower before heading to class? - Nah man... no time. Let's go!" That's not cool.
I have 5 half-classes, and 4 full classes, so about 400 students on the relatively small total student population of about 8000, which means that whenever I go to the dining hall or some other place on campus, some people nod, wave or say "hello" to me. I feel pretty damn popular and cool. I know some of my students pretty well, but sometimes I am greeted by somebody and I don't have a clue who it is. Is it one of my own students, one of my friend's students, a guy I played basketball with, or just some random dude being polite? Sometimes I just can't tell. And stupid jokes aside, well, some of them are quite hard to differenciate. The student population is pretty homogeneous, ethnically speaking, therefore it is sometimes hard to recognize somebody as 100% of them have black hair, apostrophe eyes and similar body type.
Speaking of ethnic homogeneity, last Thursday the freshmen (1st year student) had their graduation parade. Yep, in China, students do a graduation parade before they graduate or even start school. It is because in fact, first year students have to go to a month or so of military exercise before starting classes. For the whole month of September you would see these poor kids all day, marching all around the area with military guys yelling commands at them. They even practiced this cool-ass Russian red square march with the legs fully extended. So Thursday was the final parade, I went to attend just out of curiosity and also to honor the fact that they have practiced hundreds of hours for that shit. We were there, watching this enormous group of 2200 students or so, all with dark hair, when I started wondering how cool it would be to see a blonde in the bunch:
Or even better: a redhead!
That would be awesome... the day I see a Chinese redhead, I will hug him/her so frenetically that it will look like a wrestling takedown attempt. If it is a redhead mullet, I will build a fucking statue. And if it is a redhead afro with tiger stripes, I will do the hunger strike until this day is internationally recognized as the Chinese Tiger Fro Day. Mark my words mofakaz.
Until then, well, I have one week off. Tomorrow I'm off to Luoyang, I'll post how it was when I come back.
Nah, just kidding... This one:
Just before filling the paperwork and making it official, I learned that my International driver licence is not valid in China. The Popular Republic of China is not part of all the list of 170 countries that signed the agreement, therefore I pretty much did that for nothing. And now, since the bike I wanna get is more than 50 cc, I need a licence to drive it and also to pay for the immatriculation. I was about to give up the idea, until the intrinsic fucked-up nature of this country struck me in the face... again.
