I will start off by saying my English sucks. I hate grammar, I always skipped English classes, etc… It just never interested me whatsoever. That is why I do not teach. However, I am capable of writing, especially when it comes to business letters.
Anyway I am very proud of my SO’s capabilities. She just made a 112 out of 120 on the TOEFL and she has never studied overseas. So this semester she thought it would be a good idea to take a business writing English class at her university (one of the best in Taiwan btw). On her first assignment she had to write a letter and she did pretty good on it. I helped her make some changes and told her why the changes were made. Nevertheless, I wasn’t expecting her to get a perfect grade, but when she told me she got an 80% I about shit my pants.
So I took a look at what the teacher marked wrong and I was completely shocked! Not only did the dumbass teacher change things to make the letter completely to wordy, the corrections she made were full of grammatical errors… Tenses were all fucked up with spelling mistakes, etc.
Then today she showed me her assignment and it was to read classical English sentences and rewrite them in modern English? What the hell is the purpose of this? What a waste of time. How the hell can students be expected to learn something when they are taught like this? Poor students that is all I can say.
I’d say another frustration teachers have here is we WANT to be teachers. We try to teach the students what they need etc. but all our hard work gets undone about 1 hour after they have left the language school.
After a while, you just think “F*ck it. I may as well be a clown teacher, it pays more money and I’m guaranteed lots of hours…”
Tell the old lady to find a REAL business teacher, not some arse who thinks they know what they are doing.
You can tell this post is stream of consciousness (my apologies)…
A lot of the Taiwanese here will tell you that alot of their homework was irrelevant. I have heard adult students tell me that they had to memorize all the train stations between Beijing and Shanghai in one class, for no real reason
English is a foreign language here. I had to take two semesters of French when I was in College and my teacher couldn’t speak French. I had no expectation that I would be able to speak French. Just recognize certain words and phrases.
Just really couldn’t believe that at NCCU a professor would make the mistakes that this one did in marking the paper. I thought that since everyone says how great it is that the professors would be required to maintain some sense of a standard and not make that many and those type of simple mistakes. It wasn’t just one, it was many! Just sort of shocked considering that this is supposedly one of the best universities on the island… Amazing.
It is in teaching where the effect of “following the leader blindly” vrs. critical thinking and creativity really comes through. How do you adapt the lessons to your students’ needs? How do you figure how to use different materials?
That teacher is teaching the way he/she was taught, and so on. No one has changed -nor dares to change- the procedures hammered down in the 1950’s. Why should they change? That is the way the tests are being made. It is the whole system.
One book, one test, one way. You can blame lack of training plus emphasis on memory plus emphasis on testing.
I have my own theory. When I was studying to become a teacher, our professors told us that a student can learn by any system, but that research and experience had shown that teh most valuable tool was motivation. Motivated students make great students. Does the system employed here motivate the students? No, beacuse it is a sifter. Not even the teacher is motivated.
I have customers correct our English translation, because they think they have the right to and because they’ve been abroad for more than a day. Needless to say, that their English sucks, but hey, they’re customers…
The wordiness is culture. Chinese consider wordiness to be a good thing in writing, or so I’ve been told.
I teach at a private junior/senior high. Their idea of a writing class is to show students a picture, have them write about it, then fix the mistakes. Talk about putting the cart before the horse! But the Taiwanese education system just LOVES picture stories.
My first 2 years at the school, I did the 8th grade writing class. They let me use a book of my choosing that gave a solid foundation on paragraph structure and organization, along with writing practice. Then, they insisted that I use some picture story book because they felt writing practice was more important than learning how to write in the first place. I told them I’d quit teaching the class before I’d use that book. So they got another teacher for it. All the better, because I would spend hours and hours trying to re-write their “essays”. I’ll stick to the conversation classes. Much more fun!
Without meaning to sound, “Hoity toity, aren’t we grand?”, my experience has taught me that those with the best English are usually business graduates first and science graduates second.
Both fields of study offer something most don’t: conciseness and accuracy. Business grads (I’m one) are taught to write clearly in the fewest words possible, the old “Reader’s Digest” style of sentence; it ain’t pretty, but everybody understands me. Science grads generally understand rules and methodology better, plus they have to be precise about what they’re talking about i[/i]. Not to be insulting, but people from other studies, especially Arts, are smart and educated but don’t always have strong writing skills.
One basic rule I give students is keep sentences between six and ten words. It’s better to write two short and clear sentences than long one that’s long and unclear. (Scratch that; with my students’ ability, I’d be happy to get ten word sentences out of them.)
[quote=“Sleepyhead”]Without meaning to sound, “Hoity toity, aren’t we grand?”, my experience has taught me that those with the best English are usually business graduates first and science graduates second.
Both fields of study offer something most don’t: conciseness and accuracy. Business grads (I’m one) are taught to write clearly in the fewest words possible, the old “Reader’s Digest” style of sentence; it ain’t pretty, but everybody understands me. Science grads generally understand rules and methodology better, plus they have to be precise about what they’re talking about i[/i]. Not to be insulting, but people from other studies, especially Arts, are smart and educated but don’t always have strong writing skills.
One basic rule I give students is keep sentences between six and ten words. It’s better to write two short and clear sentences than long one that’s long and unclear. (Scratch that; with my students’ ability, I’d be happy to get ten word sentences out of them.)[/quote]
Sorry, I don’t understand you. Only kidding.
I’m not sure about business graduates, but in my experience science graduates may be concise but they often don’t make sense. Perhaps it’s just the ones I’ve met.
[quote=“Sleepyhead”]Without meaning to sound, “Hoity toity, aren’t we grand?”, my experience has taught me that those with the best English are usually business graduates first and science graduates second.
Both fields of study offer something most don’t: conciseness and accuracy. Business grads (I’m one) are taught to write clearly in the fewest words possible, the old “Reader’s Digest” style of sentence; it ain’t pretty, but everybody understands me. Science grads generally understand rules and methodology better, plus they have to be precise about what they’re talking about i[/i]. Not to be insulting, but people from other studies, especially Arts, are smart and educated but don’t always have strong writing skills.
One basic rule I give students is keep sentences between six and ten words. It’s better to write two short and clear sentences than long one that’s long and unclear. (Scratch that; with my students’ ability, I’d be happy to get ten word sentences out of them.)[/quote]
This is really subjective, and my experiences are very different from yours. I think considering writing goals and audience is critical in deciding how to write and how to evaluate writing.
Years ago, when I was a freshman at NCCU, I had an English teacher who, I believe, was very good at hypnogenesis.
Her tender voice and the material she chose made me feel sleepy.
And I almost failed in English then.
[quote=“Sleepyhead”]Without meaning to sound, “Hoity toity, aren’t we grand?”, my experience has taught me that those with the best English are usually business graduates first and science graduates second.
Both fields of study offer something most don’t: conciseness and accuracy. Business grads (I’m one) are taught to write clearly in the fewest words possible, the old “Reader’s Digest” style of sentence; it ain’t pretty, but everybody understands me. Science grads generally understand rules and methodology better, plus they have to be precise about what they’re talking about i[/i]. Not to be insulting, but people from other studies, especially Arts, are smart and educated but don’t always have strong writing skills.
One basic rule I give students is keep sentences between six and ten words. It’s better to write two short and clear sentences than long one that’s long and unclear. (Scratch that; with my students’ ability, I’d be happy to get ten word sentences out of them.)[/quote]
And the Science grads probably read their textbooks in English.
[quote=“TheGingerMan”]All good writing come from the soul.
Nothing more, or less.[/quote]
I don’t think we’re asking ESL students to write novels or anything profound. I’d just be happy with paragraphs that have topic, supporting and concluding sentences.
Over the years my thinking has changed about teaching English, and now I’m starting to think that maybe the ability to recognize and say/write a decent number of words and phrases is an acceptable outcome for most students and for most teaching situations. In an average kind of class here, I think that just giving students some preparation in hopes that it will help them pick up the language later in an English-speaking environment (should they ever find themselves in that kind of environment) is a reasonable goal.
I’m just speaking for myself, not trying to tell anyone else how they should think or what they should do.
[quote=“CraigTPE”][quote=“TheGingerMan”]All good writing come from the soul.
Nothing more, or less.[/quote]
I don’t think we’re asking ESL students to write novels or anything profound. I’d just be happy with paragraphs that have topic, supporting and concluding sentences.[/quote]
Fair enough. However, I would posit that teaching Taiwanese students to write coherently does involve breaking down artificlally externally imposed & established habits, getting them to think for themselves, and put their own individuality into their paragraphs.
That’s exercising one’s soul.
To me, writing is much akin to playing a musical instrument. Which is as close to one’s own soul that one can get, if the rythymn is there. Same with good writing. Phrasing, counterpoint, andante, …, and let’s not forget the crucial bridge…
Composing is art, no matter the medium.
Form is only one element.
