Results tagged “language” from Birmingham Post - Lifestyle Blog

I love my Chinese students. And while it's a pain preparing lessons and having to wake up sleeping students in the back row every five minutes, it's always worth it to hear the little improvements, and their their logical method to approaching such an illogical language as English.

Last year I taught cabin attendants; classes of 40 impossibly beautiful Chinese girls and boys who were all far more interested in what I was wearing more than their English textbooks. They would spend our classes flicking through magazines and giggling behind their hands, taking photographs of themselves on their mobile phones using the standard pouting, wide-eyed pose, or giving the peace sign. The effort these girls went to to make themselves appear cute and child-like would irritate me at times. They were young ladies of 20 and 21, and yet they drank their tea out of baby bottles, sucked on dummies and spoke in sickly sweet childlike voices that would make Michael Jackson cringe. Predictably, though ever so disturbingly, the boys found it adorable.

In the same school I also taught the air mechanics classes. Most of these students were the boyfriends of the cabin attendants, or harbouring a massive crush on a cabin attendant. I loved these students, even more so when they weren't spitting out of the windows. These boys were amusing and straightforward with me, and so I tried my best to reciprocate. For instance, they all had ridiculous English names, like Adidas, Hitler, Rain and Kobe. So when two boys decided to call themselves Shirley and Mavis, I told them that they had old lady names and that perhaps they would like to change. They said "no thank you". Right-o then!

I swiftly became fascinated by stereotypes after moving to China and learning that not all Chinese people are really short, ride bicycles and do kung fu. So I am always curious to know what preconceptions my students have about English people. My class of air mechanics were the perfect candidates to tell me it like it is. The answers I got were..."Englishmen are gentlemen. They carry umbrellas everywhere they go." "English people live for football." "English people have big noses and red faces.." Maybe that's just me..? "English women are very ... open and drink too much". Most definitely not me... Ahem.

This year, having moved to Beijing, I was disappointed to hear that my students would be Doctors and Pilots. I expected them to be uber serious and boring, so no fun for me. Yet I've found quite the opposite. The doctors, for instance, are all old enough to be my parents, but instead of this being a bad thing, it means that I can have grown up conversations with them! We have debates, I teach them English cursing, and their eagerness to learn means that I can hold more in-depth and intellectual conversations with them than I can confess to having had with some native English speakers.

I figure that your early twenty's is a period of major transition. This is the changeover from child to adult. As a 25-year old, I simply can't hold a conversation with a 20 year old. We have nothing in common. Put me in a room with a 20-year-old of any nationality, and I guarantee there will be nothing but space between us.

From my experience, a Chinese 20 and 21 year old is significantly more naïve in comparison to Western young adults. As the average English 20 year old might be contemplating which dummy to buy their toddler, the Chinese 20 year old is wondering which dummy to accessorise with their pink hair ribbons. If you were to ask my opinion, I would have to say that teaching 20 year olds is very similar to teaching children, albeit considerably less endearing.

Despite my impatience with child-like 20 year olds, I am actually super-great with children. So much so that I have a part-time job tutoring two 11-year-old girls. Their English names are May and Lisa, and they are without doubt the highlight of my week. They make me laugh more in 2 hours of tutoring more than I do in a weeks worth of lessons and playtime. Their English is at a high enough standard for us to have semi-serious conversations. 'Semi-serious' because their facial expressions and the way they act out their conversations would put Lee Evans and Jim Carrey out of work. Last week I taught them the names of different kinds of sports, which they had to act out when I called out. My all time favourites being synchronised swimming and weight lifting. (Try and imagine their facial expressions please!) As people get older, they really do get less and less amusing.

So for a teacher who never wanted to be and still doesn't plan on being a teacher, I do so love teaching. I should imagine that teaching English students would be considerably less amusing. Especially seeing as teachers in the UK are never likely to be faced with the question "why don't we call toes, 'foot fingers'?"
It's a question that's still got me head scratching...