...TheLaowaiTattler...
"It's Something"
The day I realised that teaching English in China is an effort in
futility was the day I had to teach primary school students new
vocabulary for fruits and vegetables, as well as ways to indicate they
like or want something.
I was using a Chinese produced English textbook which came with a set
of flashcards to be used by the teacher in class. The
material seemed straight forward enough and a lesson plan was
easy to prepare.
As the class began, some of the seven year-olds were restive. They
wanted to be outside in the spring sunshine playing games instead of
being stuck inside learning English after the regular scheduled classes
of the day had ended. The distraction of the happy noises
being made by their friends as they headed home outside the
class
windows encouraged those who remained behind to engage in
rowdiness.
To get the rugrats to calm down, I shouted as loudly as I could at the
30 students: "Good Afternoon. Sit Down Please!" And then followed that
quietly with: "little
bastards."
Before I could teach the terms "I want" and "I like", I first had to
introduce to the class English vocabulary for foods.
Once the students were seated at their desks, I launched into my lesson.
I held up a flashcard and asked: "What's this?"
"It's apple!" The kids shouted in unison.
The next flashcard had a picture of smiling banana. Can you guess what
the little ones said?
Right.
"It's banana!"
I'd follow up and check the pronounciation of each individual student
and try to get them to include the article "a" or "an" as
required before a noun.
And so the process continued for about five or ten minutes. We went
through all the pictures provided with the textbook. The kids knew them
all on sight.
They must've been doing their homework because they could all
recognise apple, banana, watermelon, potato,
tomato,
cabbage, carrot, peach, strawberry, and the other 25 words for fruits
and vegetables that the Chinese English Textbook writers had
considered important for China's primary school students to
memorise.
Everything was going swimmingly, until I came to the last flashcard.
I held it aloft for the children to see. Before I even asked them what
it was, they shouted all together:
"It's Penis!"
I was taken aback. Did I hear right? I took a quick look at
the flashcard to make sure that one of my co-workers had not
played a joke on me and switched a picture of a benign fruit or
vegetable for a pornographic image.
Nope...it wasn't a penis after all.
It was just a picture of a couple of harmless Peanuts.
But now I was faced with a dilemma. How could I correct the
kids' bad grammar?
Explaining the difference between the usage of "it's" and "they are"
for singular and plural objects to students with only the most
rudimentary English skills is not the easiest thing to do.
Oh, and I'd have to do something about their pronounciation of Peanuts,
too.
Damn.
If you don't think that's so bad are over 18
and want to read more,
click
here...
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