Warning! This has turned into a bit of a rant, and it might not be of much interest to anyone who hasn't ever taught English!
I've been in Hong Kong for about 12 days (it feels more like 12 months) and I've been attempting to learn some Mandarin before I go to the mainland sometime next week. It's certainly an eye-opener being on the receiving end of language tuition!
I'm staying with a host family, and they are absolutely lovely. Staying with them is the best thing about being in Hong Kong. The mum, Georgina, grew up in Coventry so has a little bit of Midlands in her British accent. They've lived in England, Belgium and Dublin, and Zoe, the daughter, still has a bit of Irish in her voice which was a bit disconcerting at first as I couldn't place where the accent was from! The whole family have been so welcoming, kind and helpful. Georgina is a great cook too, AND because she grew up in the UK, there's proper Tetley's tea with milk and sugar in the morning, and once we even had custard in the evening. How cool is that?! : ) I'm very glad I decided to do a homestay rather than stay in a flat or a hostel, it's been a much warmer experience and it's nice to be in a residential area not the centre.
I can't decided if being a language teacher is making this experience harder or easier. In some ways I feel it is an advantage as I have a lot of ideas as to how to study. I think it really helps being able to think in terms of grammatical structures (see why I put a warning!) or arrange vocab according to word class on different coloured cards (I know, I know! I should get out more). But there's a definite disadvantage too in that I can't stop myself passing judgement on the teachers and how they teach, especially when there are soooo many things they're doing badly!
In my first week I had one-to-one lessons and those have been good. Because it's just me, I can say what I want to learn and the teachers have been nice and helpful. One of them is into football so I've had some nice footie-related language from him, including how to say Tottenham Hotspurs in Chinese which I'm sure will come in very handy! This week I was able to join with a class which I had been looking forwards to this as I thought it would be good to learn with other students; more opportunities to practice the language, meet cool people etc etc.
Unfortunately, one of the teachers is not that great. I know teaching beginners is hard, but really! There is no way people can learn how to speak in a new, and difficult, language if they spend all lesson listening to someone speak in a language they already know. The book we're learning from is pretty unexciting (how I miss 'Face 2 Face' and 'Straightforward' now!), and the teachers have no other material, games or anything extra to provide some stimulation or light relief. A lot of the lessons are quite unfocused with no clear language objective or focus. Consequently, none of the students, myself included, leave the lesson any the wiser, or with any increase in speaking ability, however minuscule. Pronunciation mistakes are not corrected, and Mandarin pron is fiendishly difficult; next time any student of mine complains about 'ship' Vs 'sheep' I'll get them to think about some of this crazy Chinese stuff! And it's really, really demoralising.
One strange upshot of this is that I actually miss teaching English! Never thought I'd experience a pang of nostalgia for grammar auctions and making sentences with cuissnaire rods! Certainly I realise how lucky EFL students are, even though they're not aware of it. There is such a vast range of materials, activities, games, thoughts, ideas, books and research into how people learn, and I suspect that most other language learning is years behind. Especially, perhaps, in Asia where so much learning is still done by rote and is very teacher-led.
Anyway! Feel lots better for getting that off my chest! Next blog entry will be about Hong Kong as a place and so will be more interesting to everyone.
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