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Q: How horrible is your assistant's English?
I teach kids, and it's obvious that we're being filled in with Chinese English teachers in-between our lessons. My assistants all have some pretty horrific English. Except for 2, it's a Zombie-Apocalisp.
We have the students singing along with two Chinese girls on the DVD. My favorite song is "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe" (written on the screen as "Eeny meeny miney mo"). The Chinese girls on the screen sing "Erny meeny mimey (sometimes mimeny) mo, kotch a tiger by da(sometimes za) toe. If he hawrrahs ret him go, erny meeny mimeny mo."
There's also "Twinker twinker rittle star, how I wonder what you are. Up above the word so high, like a dyemin in the sky."
Seems anything with "v," "th" and sometimes "l" makes for some pretty funny failures.
It seems that, being paid to teach for only 20-30 minutes per class max, my role is completely insignificant. The Chinese teachers drill horrific English into them in-between our classes.
So how bad are yours? Got any funny stories?
11 years 4 days ago in Teaching & Learning - China
I've had several teachers over the years whose English was apparently better than my own, according to them at least. I just smile and nod my head and let people continue living in la la land. It's not worth the agro.
To be completely fair, I always compare my Chinese to their English.
Last week, I asked 5Y old students in one very lively class: 'Do you know Yao Ming?'
There was complete silence in the classroom, after I asked about Ming.
Chinese assistant later told me, I said something about death or dying with my incorrect Chinese name pronunciation.
Hulk:
How is this fair? They're teaching English. Are you teaching Chinese?
icnif77:
I got your point, butt...what choice do they have? They must start somewhere.
I am here to teach and help them. I don't waste my time with Chinese teachers pronunciation mistakes. I correct them, and move on.
I find similarities between them and myself: 'I couldn't qualify to teach English in UK or USA, but in China I am very busy. Same is with Chinese English teachers in China: 'market demand'. They are all qualified teachers. Are you qualified teacher? I am not.
Hulk:
If they can't pronounce very basic English, I don't know why they're teaching. It's their school, though. They treat me really well, and we all have a great time. I just think it's so weird that they're teaching English, and using curriculum from Chinese English speakers who are very bad.
crimochina:
i think you are missing the point. they teach english you don't teach chinese. get it?
crimochina:
yu don't get it. by teaching them english incorrectly, it will be damn near impossible to fix later on in life. it is better to not teach them english at all.
xinyuren:
@crimo- while your theory is correct, you fail to see that under the current system, it is impossible for a typical Chinese student to learn correct English! Their Chinese teachers will fill their head with Chinglish from the very beginning. They will have limited exposure to proper English. And their fellow students and peers will all be speaking Chinglish. Even if their foreigner teachers strive to teach completely correct English, the students have too much influence outside their limited class time. You're right, it's damn near impossible to change their English habits. Unfortunately their English habits have already been formed long before you got there.
Hulk:
Exactly, crimo. This is exactly why I'm worried about it. There are ways to teach without Chinese English speakers, especially since they rely heavily on video. All you need are a few foreign clowns (such as myself) to pronounce things correctly.
Hulk:
It's not impossible. They can learn it from videos of native speakers if they bothered, rather than videos of Chinese teachers.
However, you are 100% right about the Chinglish.
xinyuren:
Reread my comment, please. Under the current system, it is impossible. the average student has limited exposure to such material and even less exposure to a native speaker. This is a poor country, not America.
Hulk:
But this problem is not impossible to change. That's Chinese thinking, imho (I hate being told "so and so is impossible" because it's so defeatist. The majority of these kids are learning a lot of speech from training videos. Training videos with Chinese actors speaking Chinglish. The TA's repeat the videos word for word. So what do you do to fix such a problem?
It's easy. Record videos and develop curriculum with educated native speakers, not Chinese people. It's not really hard to do, regardless of whether or not this is a "poor" country. All of my students' parents have a car, some of them ride around with vehicles with $100k+ price tags.
xinyuren:
You're still talking about changing the system. There is a reason things are the way they are. One day, you will understand that reason.
CARLGODWIN1983:
Xin,
Would it be because, like Hulk says, and like I have come across so often, particularly from my ex-wife, there are so many people, and this is why you can't change it.
Many people in history have shown the seemingly impossible to be possible. It's just the majority are too lazy, or stubborn, or narrow-minded, or defeatist, or a number of other things, or a combination of any of these things to be able to change.
Here-in lies the problem.
This is China. Their English education is very very rudimentary with very little oral English practice and a very low native speaker per classroom ratio. It is expected that the English teachers will not know much oral English since even their standardized English exams omit oral.. Try not to judge them by American standards. Just like everything else in China, they are still developing. Try not to criticize, just correct when you can and do the best with what you have. They are the product of a system they didn't create.
Hulk:
Actually, I think they created it by being arrogant and too proud to hire foreigners to make videos for them.
Hulk:
To make matters worse, if you actually try to fix their bad English, they complain and say it's your fault. Their perfect books written by Chinese people are infallible. Come to think of it, they did indeed create this mess.
Hulk:
When they expect me to teach American English, I judge them by American standards.
When they refuse correction because they believe they're right no matter what, they are contributing to the Chinglish problem.
When the Chinese people think they can actually read, write, and speak English like a native speaker, and then create textbooks with horrible spelling and grammar, they are contributing to the Chinglish problem.
When the TA's refuse to change the lesson plan when confronted with the fact that it's not only bad English, but will hurt them later in life, they're contributing to the Chinglish problem.
When Chinese schools think that those terrible Chinese books are the best books (they're getting kickbacks from these publishing companies), they're contributing to the Chinglish problem.
I meant to say that China created this problem for themselves.
xinyuren:
That is an interesting viewpoint, Hulk. I will start another thread about this.
Hulk:
Please do. I wanna discuss this! 
I upvoted you, despite disagreeing because you gave a well thought-out answer.
You have an assistant? Someone get Occupy Wall Street out here, we got us a one percenter!
Hulk:
Believe it or not, I have 19 assistants (3 in each room, 1 in the good class). Most of them stand around looking bored, and hate their jobs. 4 or 5 of them are very nice, patient, and willing to learn. They even let me correct their pronunciation so they can get better. I appreciate that.
What pisses me off is the Chinglish videos. That is uncalled for.
I have no English assistant teacher. I teach little kids too and the Chinese teachers manage only a basic English. They prove humble enough to never correct my pronunciation. But there is one single Chinese teacher, who always jumps up trying to correct me when a word doesn't sound the way she was taught. It's funny because she doesn't speak English either. Hahahahahah, LOL. Issues like this made me to gear up myself this much that I've become like a stone when she tries to argue with me. Actually I've always been this way with her and the only way to catch my attention was when she would behave herself.
Lately, I found out that in the Baby class, the Chinese teachers play some English-Chinese videos before I start my class. I'm not upset about it and I just understand that there is a great benefit about it. The very little kids are getting used with different pronunciations and they would grow up learning that English it sounds in different ways. So, Hulk you can see the brighter side of it and just enjoy it.
I am sure you're having a lot of fun with your kids.
Hulk:
Yep, they're fun! I actually enjoy my job, but wish I could do better.
:
Why better? You're just at the beginning. Patience and faith you will be better. For now it's just patience and kindness for the little things.
I think it would be a good idea to have a tape or CD of Rex Harrison as an example of how to pronounce the English language. His pronunciation is as perfect as it can be. Maybe a standardized tape, CD?. Franck3
Traveler:
Anything from the BBC site (radio) is good. It also has the transcripts available for most of the radio stories.
Shining_brow:
I downvote, because the percentage of native English speakers would be less than 1%....
Hugh.G.Rection:
There is no 'perfect' pronunciation. Only varying degrees of accents. The broader the accent the more removed you are from the imaginary 'ideal, but defining that 'ideal' is impossible. What a British person says is a 'perfect' accent will likely be different from what an Australian would say is 'perfect' or an American etc etc.
Rex Harrison is now hopelessly outdated and you would be 'teaching' extinct idiomatic expressions.
I think the best we can do is be aware of what accent we have, be aware of the phonemics the dictionary says we should use (but of course which dictionary) and try and limit how much we vary from that.
In my opinion, in the UK people with strong accents from Glasgow, Newcastle, Sunderland, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Taunton are the ones who have to be most aware of their own pronunciation faults. Of course other nations have their own problem accents and non native speakers are another level of difficulty removed.
The answer is extremely simple.... the various Big 5 countries have news programs that are easily accessible online... BBC, VoA, ABC (and the others I don't know).
Just play them!
Additionally, the amount of TV and movies available online is staggering.
I had various teaching assistants at my recent school who varied in with their English. One memorable example was a very keen girl from Hunan who pronounced "I" as "Ah" (a-la Jamaican) and as she had a heavy Hunan accent pronounced her H's as F's, and her N's and L's. Judging by your previous posts Hulk I gather you were in Hunan for a while, and I'm sure you're familiar with the "I'm from Fulan" phrase.
My assistants were universally lovely, hardworking girls who loved, and were loved by, the students.
For all of them, their grammar was actually pretty good, although I did hit the roof when I found out a couple of them were, in their own lessons with the kids, convinced that the rules regarding plurals and subject-verb agreement were just too hard, so they decided not to bother properly teaching them (i.e. "it are two apple").
Pronunciation.... mixed. Some were actually pretty good, some were really bad. The good thing was that none of them ever tried to correct my pronunciation, as some of you have reported happening (I have a very weak, somewhat mid-Atlantic, accent anyway) and I taught all the pronunciation in my class.
Actually, thinking about it, the TAs were hands down the best part about the school I worked for.
Welcome to China! My assistant spelled Tiger with a double g; making it Tigger! Well, at least I now know where the word, Tigger, comes from.
Best to laugh it off!
I remember walking into my classroom one morning and I realized there was no students anywhere to be seen. I asked my co teacher "where were all the students at? "She looked at me in the eye and said "the students are busy this morning, they have an erection".
The Chinese teacher kept telling the kids I was saying the words wrong and that they should listen to her. When I spoke to her and tried to correct her pronunciation, she was still certain she was right and I was wrong. Why the children think a native speaker would be wrong about his own language I don't know. I had to invite the American teacher into my classroom to convince them.
i just need to know, was "apocalisp" intentional? it's genius. in my old school, i taught 2/3 pf the lessons, so the assistant only had 1/3 drill time. and they learned a lot from me. perhaps mycynicism and arrogance earned some cred with them, so the paid attention to my style. the played the same games and used the same phrases i did.
I've had several teachers over the years whose English was apparently better than my own, according to them at least. I just smile and nod my head and let people continue living in la la land. It's not worth the agro.
