CHINESE TEACHER - PLEASE CONTACT US HERE NOW!!!!!!

Re: CHINESE TEACHER - PLEASE CONTACT US HERE NOW!!!!!!


You beat me to it, Chai. I was thinking the same thing. I believe that we on A2K can give the Chinese students a great experience. If the teacher becomes involved, it would be even better!

Yes, I believe you were the one to give me this idea.

People here really could have a lot to offer if it wasn't so all over the map.

bm

I'm only here to discover what you want to say to the teacher, Chai. :wink:

maybe there are no chinese teachers.
at all.
anywhere.
ever...

Now you're going to become Setanta's bitch.




Disclaimer: I thought a while before posting this, but decided to do so because I think it's funny. If you don't, that's OK.

I was frothing at the mouth on this subject back on Saturday ...
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2088453#2088453

wow osso.....you really covered it all.....

has asked any other these students how much time they get on the computer, if they know other people are asking the same questions, and possibly if they can ask their teacher if they could post here?

msolga - just trying to see if there's any way that these chinese kids can maximize their learning.

the strangest thing is the way they ask for help without saying a thing about what they want....you'd think by know, after people have responded, at least one of them would have had the time to read the suggestion not to do that.


maybe one of the students that actually posted back saying thank your for the help would be more likely to spread the word.

If they can figure out how to post a question, and have the time for that, they should be able to look at and read other students posts as well..

If they are going back to class with info from here, don't you think there would have been some sort of realization by this time?

Well, I don't know...

I tried this exercise once......waaaaaaaaaaaay back!

http://www.able2know.com/forums/about74610.html

It made no difference.

How's about we ask to speak to their teacher on EVERY answer we give.

Maybe...just maybe, someone might respond.

My experience of "computer labs" is that one has a short, scheduled period during which one has access to the computer. I doubt, given the manner in which these questions appear, are responded to, and the response acknowledged, that there are large resources available to these studenst. At one university at which i was employed, in the days before (just before) the appearance of personal computers, there were computer labs in the basements of various campus buildings. Ours, in the basement of the Foreign Language Building, had 80 consoles, and students were luck to be able to schedule a single 50 minute block of time each week. When the Mariel boat lift from Cuba took place, we were flooded with Cubans sent in by the government which was paying for ESL them--the scheduled time shrunk to 25 minutes. With eighty people using a terminal for 50 minutes each and a single proctor, the proctor has an average of fewer than 40 seconds to devote to each user, without considering that he or she has to keep an eye on the entire room as much as possible to obviate vandalism. In practice, the proctor was obliged to tell any studen who didn't know how to use the terminal to address their questions to their instructor, who was supposed to have provided them sufficient instruction to log on and complete a task.

I rather doubt that you will get a response from any particular teacher at CUMT, or any of the other institutions from which these students are logging on here. You might, and that would be a good thing. However, i consider it far more likely that we will continue to get a great many questions, many of which will be duplicates, and no small number of which will be so badly phrased as to make it difficult or impossible to discern what it is the student wishes to know. We've had a few Chinese members, and ^J^B^ (did i get that screen name right?) is a good example, who have had far more access to a personal computer--i don't know if they own one of their own, or have sufficient means to use an internet cafe. These will likely remain the exceptions which prove the rule that these students have a very narrow window of access, and that it is unlikely that we'll ever make contact with their teacher.

I will continue to answer their questions as best i am able, and try to keep irritation out of my responses. One strategy might be to end every response with a request that the student ask their teacher to log on here and post a thread in the English forum so that we can make contact. That might work, but frankly, i don't think we have any reasonable option to resolve this problem.

I see E has made the same suggestion that we request contact from the teacher with every response. Proof positive that great minds run on the same course.

I'd go with that.

today I started posting a "Help" is not a good thread title message in all the posts starting with a "help" type topic title.

I ran oout of time after 4 or so but at least I tried.

I think you're right, Set.

Set knows this already from my PM to him back in May, but a friend of ours went to work as an English teacher in China not so long ago, just for the experience. She was only over there for a couple of months, and it was voluntary work. She had only just qualified as a teacher, and was therefore surprised when she was handed her first lesson assignment....

...standing in a stadium, all on her own (with a hand held microphone) and giving a lesson to a couple of thousand students, all eagerly hanging on her every word.

She was staggered by the numbers. Literally thousands of people in each large town and city have either been instructed, or have applied, to learn English.
She was allotted her own classes at the school, and taught virtually non stop for six hours a day, six days a week. She was exhausted at the end of her placement.
There were 50 in each class, and the ages ranged from children of thirteen up to adults in their 40's and 50's. In her classroom there were three old computers, and the internet service was not exactly broadband quality. Her own personal emails took three days to arrive from the UK, and another three days to return. If the emails contained certain "trigger" words, such as "freedom" or "democracy", the word or whole sentence would be kept as chinese script, or would just simply disappear.
If an email contained the word tiananmen, it would be guaranteed not to arrive.
She was told by a co-worker that there were at least two "spies" in her classroom, giving back reports on the subjects she covered, and one of her colleagues was asked to leave beofre the end of her placement, because she held a debate about democracy in one of her class lessons.

Working on what she told me, I would think that when a question is posted, the student will be sitting there with a large queue of other students behind him/her, and time online will be strictly limited, questions monitored and answers screened for trigger words.

I've noticed that the "thank you's", rare as they are, arrive the following week, when the student is once again allowed the privilege of going online with the west for his/her allotted ten minutes.

One upside to my friend's work experience....when it came to Christmas, she was at home, fixing up the decorations, when the postman arrived with over a hundred or so christmas cards from her students back in China...all hand made. She said she sat down and sobbed for a while.

She reckoned that they were really lovely people, who have very little, but make the best of it.

Well, that sheds a lot of light on the problem....thanks.

Good background info, Lord E.

One thing I'd add to what has already been said is that the whole point of their being here is that they are learning English and are nowhere near mastery yet. The kind of information-gathering (which forum, which title, which spelling, etc.) that we're putting out in various threads take a lot more facility with the English language to find and comprehend than they likely possess, even if they had enough time (and I agree it's very likely that they have very little time).

Wow, L'Ellpus, that really fills in the picture for me. I've read a book within the last year about a young woman teaching english at a chinese school, not the precise situation you describe but still very interesting.

It crossed my mind a few days ago that we might try to contact CUMT and the "english teacher or department" ourselves, but I immediately rejected that as unrealistic.

I guess I don't want them to stop asking questions - would like them to understand the concept of a "thread", and that there are "threads" on forums...
I remember myself not all so long ago having no clue what a "thread" was.
Back when I first posted on another website, my first experience at all with the internet other than signing up for the New York Times by email - that I asked a question about corgi behavior and expected all sorts of corgi experts to answer me speedily. I was all confused about that large web forum, yet had no language barrier or short access time to complicate matters.

Sozobe, I agree.

I know the few times I've tried to help that my responses about using A2K were much too complicated. I thought that about them almost immediately, and now with Ellpus' input I really understand that.

excellent suggestion about trying to contact a teacher, and kudos to everyone who's tried to answer some of the queries, especially Set, who's provided many detailed, carefully thought out answers. i've taken a stab at a few, myself, but most of the time, the questions are too broad to attempt any sort of satisfactory answer on my part.

putting aside niceties and reverting to my cynical nature, i wonder how many of these questions are even intended to elicit a response? it could be that the primary assignment in many cases is merely to post a question on a2k, and any answers are a bonus. i ask this, because of the repetition of the same questions; if there's genuine interest in the answers given, shouldn't there be more follow ups?

if we do have contact with the teacher, lets remind him or her to ask her students to click on Your Posts to see if there's been a reply, so that the reply will be acknowledged, as courtesy dictates.

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2080808#2080808



I gave a crack at answering that, but I'm not sure mks would have been able to understand, or apply, my response.

Didn't mean to downplay Set's role in helping me understand how little time the students have on the computer.. he had been saying as much. Ellpus' example about teaching at a stadium really brought that through my thick skull.