After a semester and a half of teaching oral English, I think I’ve discovered a few flaws in the system. No doubt they’ve been “discovered” by others as well, but I’m still going to outline them for my own benefit and to vent a bit. You see, last week, only a handful of my class of 32 students actually did their homework. It wasn’t even difficult, it could literally be completed in 5 minutes if they were lazy, and yet so many just didn’t do it. At first I thought it was my fault, perhaps I hadn’t explained well enough, perhaps there was a miscommunication. But if a handful could do it correctly, I must’ve communicated to them (unless they’re mind readers)! Nope, it was simply out of laziness that they didn’t do their homework. But why should they? There’s a laundry list full of reasons why it’s not important to do your homework, or attend classes.

The biggest one, is that classes are graded mostly on exams. No one really cares much about performance, it’s all exam, exam, exam. That’s the way the Chinese educational system rolls. Students in high school spend 3 years preparing for the Gao Ke, the exam that decides what they will go to University for, and which university they can attend. So likewise, here at the university, it all seems to ride on exams. In fact, when making my final grades last semester I was told that the final exam should account for 70% (!) of the final grade, and all that work they did the previous 18 weeks? 30%. Thirty-six hours of instruction, participation, and homework results in 30% of your grade. No wonder no one cares to come to class or do their homework. If they can get even a decent score on the exam, they’ll pass just fine. Getting a decent exam score isn’t too hard either, cheating is rampant among written exams.

It is possible to fail a class, but here’s the kicker, the student still moves on with their grade level and classmates, despite having failed a class. If the student fails a final exam they have a chance to retake it! This exam may or may not be proctored by a random teacher who has nothing to do with the class (read: doesn’t care), more times than not, the retake will result in the student getting at least the minimum passing grade needed. If somehow the student does fail the retake (rare) they often receive the passing grade anyway. Can’t hold them back from their class now can we! Besides, the school is going to look bad if we have students failing or dropping out of school. The more students we can graduate, the better we look!

This might seem a bit sensational, but it really happens. However, these are the typical D – F students, if you remember the typical bell curve, there usually isn’t many of those, maybe a handful, these students have pretty poor English skills (they CAN tell you that though). On the other side of the curve we have the students who are always there, and are always anxious to learn something new, these students usually have a relatively good grasp of using English. In the middle of course we have the average students, they’re in attendance most of the time, and do some of the homework, but lose interest quickly.

I know that the trick here is to be a good teacher and keep their interest, and trust me, I’m trying all kinds of different things. Some turn out great, and others not so much. But I will say this, at least I can see an improvement in many of my students, despite the frustrations I might be having. That’s worth something.

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