Cloudy in Beijing Blogging about my time in China

I’m a tape player

My job at my school can easily be summed up this way: they want me to be a human tape player.

This semester I was assigned to teach an English listening class. A booklet of standardized tests is the textbook we are using. A pair of CDs, filled with mundane slow-speaking exercises, are my teaching materials.

Go through a listening test. Press the play button. Then review the answers. That's basically what I'm supposed to do. My job, after all, is to teach to a test. Specifically the listening portion of the CET-4 test, which every college student must pass.

Already half of the semester is gone, but I haven't become a human tape player yet. In part because I don't wish to bore my students (and myself) to death.

The listening tests I was given still form the backbone of my lessons. But I refuse to totally go by the book.

Instead I always try to throw in some movie clips, TV programs, even music, to make the listening more genuine. Adding speaking and writing exercises also help to add some variety, and jostle my students out of the passivity that listening can bring.

Still, it's hard to turn something innately boring into something interesting. I think it's already taking its toll on my students. The sleepy/bored faces seem to be growing as the semester continues. I now feel like I'm inflicting a bit of torture on my students each time I press play. Last week, I just made up a game so as to spare my students (and myself) from listening to another exercise.

I just want my teaching to be meaningful. To give my students something they can't get from just buying a textbook. So to me, it makes sense to cut down on the CD listening exercises. The byproduct of this is that now I only have enough time to teach about half of the textbook. Or about half of what the school wants me to teach.

It's kind of been my secret way of fighting what I think is wrong with the school's education system. But I don't know if it can last. Today, I was reminded by a teacher today that I should stick to the book.

"The students will have a listening test as part of their final," she said. "All the questions from the listening test will come from the listening exercises you are supposed to teach. You must go through the entire textbook."

So what you are saying is I must bore my students to death, is what I thought to myself. But I just simply nodded, putting a lid on my anger.

"Being a teacher is very painful," the teacher added, as if sensing my frustration. "It is also very painful for the student."

Then why do you take this shit? I wanted to ask. But I was tired and didn't feel like talking about it. Not like it would make a difference.

What is best for my students? I don't know. Ideally I would teach my students to listen to real-life conversations. And so then eventually they could understand the slower, and easier conversations on the standardized tests.

But that's not exactly what the school wants. If all my students pass the CET-4 Test, yet can't speak a sentence of pronounceable English, well, I still did a good job.

Recently I overhead a college student lament and say: "Everything I've learned in college has no use in real-life. Society isn't quite what I imagined it to be."