50. Questions

The last 2-3 weeks of this school semester have been slightly monotonous but mostly enjoyable.

I teach over 600 students spread over 22 weekly classes in 4 different classes, and for these last few weeks I’ve lazily or bravely decided to give a one on one oral test with each and every one of them.

I put the formatted the test into four parts:

1.     Opinion on English. How have you studied it? What do you think of studying the language? How will you use it in the future?

2.     Drinking game Question. Usually consisting of a Would you rather, or What have you never done, or The Teacher’s Perfect But….This provided some insightful points.

3.     Course related question. In this section I asked the student a question about something covered in the last 12 weeks. They were fairly on the ball.

4.     Question to me. Took a while for the student to comprehend what they had to do here as they are used to answering questions. It offered an entertaining end to the conversation and kept me on my toes. Below are some of the questions asked.

YAH the good school

What do you think of the Chinese education system? Can I have your e-mail? What advice would you give to studying in China? How much do you know about the history of Shanghai?

Stop and think Questions questions

Why is Tom not here? Is this your first job? If you were a Zombie, what would you do? Do you like teaching our class/in our school? What do you think of me?

Factual Questions

How tall are you? What’s your Chinese name? Do you like rainy/sunny days? What size are your shoes? Will you teach us next year? What animal/film/country do you like best?

Out of the blue Questions

Are there a lot of farms in England? What kind of girl do you like?

Popular Questions

Where are you from? Why did you decide to be a teacher/come to China/Shanghai? How old are you?

And most common: Do you have a girlfriend <snigger>?

Chinese choosing English names

I asked for their English name as well before the interview started. There were some classics which were usually found on my more enigmatic students, names included Sharrot, Panda, Memory, Cinderella, Lucky, Ronaldo, Dinosaur, Dad, Boss, Kingslayer and Darth Vader.

Classic Quotes or Memorable Moments

‘You are you, I am I’, ‘I want to control robots’

A girl called Pigeon telling me she really liked Pigeons. Well durr.

The biggest boy in this one class called Dick. Tom was giving him the interview. The interviewee Dick was cracking me up with anything he said. Whenever he was stuck he’d just say ‘Eat’ with a big grin and when asked for his name he pronounced it ‘Deeeek’.

A girl called Jessica admitting to wanting to be a Zombie so she could bite people.

But the Bacon goes to this Korean girl who put me in stitches with a tirade on Chinese life. She gave quite a plain interview and had been quite quiet all year so I took it upon my English self to answer her ‘Why did you come to China?’ question with a slice of sarcasm.

Upon hearing that I came to China because of the school food, the tightly packed buses and the pollution, she was clearly astonished and erupted in an incredible rant.

She described the school food as ‘plastic’ and she once found insects in it. The school soup she said was yesterday’s vegetables, with boiling water and then oil on top. She described the Chinese people as ‘nothing’ compared to the beautiful Koreans. Furthermore she talked about it being so unfair that she couldn’t express her femininity in this ‘ugly’ school uniform. She felt embarrassed to wear it. The uniform she said could not even adapt to the seasons as students were made to swelter in the summer but then freeze to death in the winter. She talked of the ‘injustice’ that teachers could enjoy air-conditioned rooms but the same wasn’t so with the students.

It was breathless stuff. A good teacher I find is one that knows and respects their students especially when they are old enough to have an opinion. Having sat in an English lesson of one of the local teacher today, I find this is not the case with Chinese local teachers to their students.