Sept 1995
I prepared myself well for teaching my first English lesson in China. A full detailed lesson plan and copious notes to be copied onto the blackboard, I arrived early to class. Finally finding the correct classroom on the top floor, the door was locked. So was the other one. I knocked. No reply. Checked my watch: 8.50am. The class started at 9.00am and I had a ton of exercises to write on the blackboard before we began. I raced down to the “office” or what was the closest looking thing to an office to get a key. This proved impossible for several reasons: 1) the office manager hadn’t arrived; 2) no-one spoke English; 3) I didn’t know the Chinese word for “key”; 4) Chinese have never heard of charades and I suspect they just thought my hands and body were uncoordinated; and 5) the class monitor had the only key.
By 8:59 all the students had arrived except the class monitor and we were all smiling at each other in the corridor. I didn’t want to jump the gun on asking their names. Finally he arrived at 8:59:59 and let us all in. He was all smiles and seemed proud to have arrived right on time.
I flagged the idea of covering the blackboard with chalk. The desks and chairs needed rearranging and I decided to make them in a U formation, and proceeded to do this. The students, seeing their teacher suddenly working, got a terrific fright and insisted I stand back and they do it. Which was fine except that the desks remained more or less in the usual grid pattern.
I explained I wanted a “U.” The students looked at me with foreheads wrinkled (quite hard for Chinese.) A student with glasses strolled over and said to me, “You want me, sir?” “No,” I replied, pointing at the desk. “I want a U.”
Chinese are much better at English grammar than NZers and certainly better at grammar than at conversation. This had them beat. “Sir,” said another, “A You? Why the indefinite article?” A little mystified at where this conversation was going, I replied, “Not one indefinite article. All these definite articles in a U.” “But sir,” the student insisted to my complete bafflement, “Even if you is more than one, you still don’t need an article.”
Some of the students were beginning to wonder what odd country I came from. I was beginning to lose control of the class and the desks were in disarray so I yelled, “Stop!” Obviously foreigners had never yelled at Chinese before because this whole group just shrunk and cowered into one corner. I took the opportunity to run around and formed a U of all the desks. (Several weeks later the class monitor commented, “Have you noticed, sir, that all the desks form a U?” I made the mistake of making a joke of correcting his grammar. It was 3 lessons before he understood the joke and another 6 lessons before we were friends again. )
In my TEFL course I learned the brilliant method of repetitive echo. I would ask a student his name, he would reply, then I would copy this around the room. Such a simple yet effective technique. In addition, being assured my Chinese adult students had had at least 3 years English at primary school, I decided we’d concentrate on replying to the question, “What’s your name?” An easy place to begin to give them all confidence and time for me to get to know them.
I asked student 1, “What’s your name?” Student I replied, “Xin Yang Ming.” “Xin”(Sheen) was the class monitor, supposedly the brightest in the class and it was good to see the lesson was going to proceed as planned. I asked Student 2 his name. He looked at me. Perhaps he was deaf being considerably older than the other students. “What’s your name?” I said quite loudly. That gave him a bit of a fright but still no response. Well, being older, perhaps he needed the question asked more slowly. I stated it a 3rd time, very slowly and loudly. “What’s…. your…..name?” He looked at Xin. I was going to learn over the next few weeks what great mates these two were. Suddenly student 2 smiled. Ah ha. A response. Perhaps he understood at last. I smiled back. He smiled again. The whole class smiled. We were now all great mates! But still no verbal response from student 2.
Xin leaned over and translated into Chinese my question for student 2. Student 2’s eyes flashed, he leapt to his feet and loudly responded “Xu Jang Mia Xi.” I thanked “Xu”(Xu) and asked him to sit. (Strange names these Chinese!) He proudly continued to stand until Xin translated my instruction and Xu sat. I asked Xin to tell the rest of the class in Chinese that they didn’t need to stand (a Chinese custom).
Students 3 through 9 delighted me no end my catching on to the drill and each gave their name, even if each name sounded like a muddled up version of the one before. Then I came to Student 10 who was younger than the rest at about 23 years of age. I asked him his name. He smiled and looked at me with a huge warm smile. It worried me.
I repeated the question slowly. He latched onto “What’s.” He repeated this several times. “What’s… what’s … what’s…” Perhaps he was practising the way I had said it. This was good. But after several more attempts to get him to reply to me, student 9 translated the question for him. Like Xu, he leapt out of his chair, saluted, gave his full name and recited his Communist Party serial number! “Wong Wei Go Bak… 111768932554.” It was as well we were doing names, otherwise I’d have been convinced he was warning me I was on a One Way street going the wrong way and was dialling the police operations centre.
With Student 10 eventually seated I saw the first hour had passed and we’d only been round the room once. Not that I wanted to go round it again with all those odd Chinese names. So I decided to give everyone English names. I would list them on the black board, we would practice saying them and then they could choose which one they wanted. Xin thought this was a great idea. Perhaps he didn’t like his name. Everyone copied his enthusiasm. I mean, he was the class monitor.
I wrote a list of simple English names on the board and the students, to my joy, copied all the names into their notebooks: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Adam, Eve, David, Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Zachariah, Peter, Paul, James, Timothy, Simon, Gabriel, Michael, Esther, Mary & Martha. There were only 2 female students in the class but it was fair to give them some choice. I said each name slowly and the class parrotted it back to me in unison.
Xin, being the monitor, opted to choose first and since Matthew was the first name I had written because it was obviously the most important, he chose Matthew. Xu was none the wiser to what was going on so Matt chose Mark for him. The rest got the idea and opted for various names until we had, in order around the room and in pairs (for drills): Matthew & Mark, Paul & Michael, Luke & John; Mary & Martha; Stephen & Zachariah; David & Peter (student 10).
To model the drill for the next exercise to be done in pairs, I chose Luke (who I later discovered was actually a doctor!) & invited him to the front. I asked him - “What’s your name?” “Look,” he replied, correctly, even if the pronunciation was a little out. Excellent. “Now,” I continued, “Ask me my name.” “My name,” he replied. “No,” I continued. “Ask me what my name is.” “What my name is?” I cleared my throat. “You say to me, ‘What’s your name?’” “Look,” he proudly replied.
After several more aborted attempts I tried his partner John ... to no avail. He simply copied Luke. On to Zachariah whom I quickly abbreviated to Zak when neither he nor his partner Stephen could get their tongues round Zachariah. (Actually Zak’s real name was Zappar, a good Muslim name from NW China.) Matt had his hand up the whole time so I reluctantly chose him finally to model the drill and of course he got it right. Oh! Now 8 of the students caught on. (They all had high IQs I learned later.) The partners got to work practising back and forth and I wandered round the class to check their pronunciation.
Luke clearly had trouble with his hearing. His question sounded like “Wart hiss yow numb?” John naturally was having some trouble understanding the question but pretended he had asked the correct one which was very clever of him. Even later when John asked Luke in Chinese what he’d been saying, he was none the wiser for Luke’s Chinese pronunciation was just as bad!
Mary, thankfully, had it right but was almost having a cat fight with Martha. Since Martha seemed unable to tell me what the problem was, I asked Mary. She told me that Martha hated the name Martha and wanted to keep her original Chinese name Dung Pu which she much preferred. I didn’t want to begin a racial war so I agreed to her request. I decided I’d call her Pu rather than Dung Pu. She shrugged her shoulders but let me in the end.
David was having trouble with his name, calling himself Dabid. I said it would come with practice but he never got it quite right. Peter liked his name but got stuck asking the question of David. I found him looking through his Chinese/English dictionary for the word “what’s.” He was never without his dictionary though I discovered after the 4th week that he’d never used a dictionary before and couldn’t understand why none of the words I used in class were ever in his dictionary. (It being in English not Chinese alphabetical order.)
The gong sounded to end the lesson. All the students left, except Peter who wanted to thank me for such an interesting class but with no English words on the tip of his tongue (or in his brain), resolved to give me a bear hug and offered me some sweets. I thanked him and received the sweets with thanks. Over the next 4 months I was to receive so many presents from Peter I would rue the day I accepted the sweets.
Though I reckoned I’d done a fair job teaching, in the end I discovered all I had were great parrots.