Hello All,
The following Excerpt was written by two Graduates of Global TESOL College. They are currently teaching in China & they requested I pass along this small excerpt from their book to you all.

Who’s Who in the Chinese Classroom?
By Susan Black and Frank Black

"From the Son of Heaven down the mass of the people, all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of everything besides".
- Confucius
Fig.1--> TEACHER
MONITOR-GROUP LEADER-STUDENT ON DUTY-CLASS OBSERVER
Figure 1 Structure of the classroom in China


The Teacher According to Students
According to 1,156 grade one, two and three senior middle school students in China, a teacher, whether Chinese or foreign, should be kind above all else. The students filled in a graphic organizer to express their ideas of what the best teacher should be and the results generated these descriptors. Grade one, two and three senior middle school students are equivalent in age to Grade 10, 11 and 12 high school students in Canada. According to the students, the best teacher has the following uncomplicated characteristics: beautiful, funny, kind, pleasant, strong and wonderful. Below are student revelations about their best teacher.

My best teacher is Long Tang. Because he’s very friendly and he very likes to forget. Some things we can’t forget but he says forget. If we are a little or a lot sad he says forget. I like him very much. He likes words. I like how the words feel. It’s very nice. He told us a lot of things. He made me happy. He made me don’t cry. He is unique. Yang Yang

The Monitor
The classroom in China is firmly controlled by the communist system and follows the communist philosophy of obligation. One of the system’s strongest advocates of duty and teacher support is the classroom Monitor. Meet classroom Monitor Yue Yu, a grade two student in a senior middle school in Yichang, Hubei province. Grade two in China can be compared to grade eleven in Canada. Yue Yu’s duty as Monitor is to observe and report the overall conduct of the students to the Head Teacher. The Monitor is also responsible for reporting on the conduct of the teacher, English or otherwise. Yue Yu dutifully reports student and teacher absence, misbehaviour, inappropriate language, inappropriate topics, late arrival, unfinished homework and homework not handed in. Yue Yu takes her duties as Monitor very seriously.
“Yue Yu, how did you get chosen to be class Monitor?”
“The Head Teacher chose me as Monitor because I have high marks in every subject.”
Yue Yu’s English is a band score of 4 IELTS. IELTS stands for International English Language Testing System. It is a test of English language skills designed for students who want to study in the medium of English either at university, college or senior middle school. Yue Yu’s band score of four indicates that she is a limited user and that she has basic English language competence that is limited to familiar situations. Yue Yu has frequent problems in understanding and expression and is not able to use complex language. This is good news and bad news for the English teacher, because part of Yue Yu’s responsibility is to report your words and actions in the classroom to the Head Teacher and you want her to comprehend your meaning. It is common that you’re watched and reported on everywhere you go in China. Yue Yu is not wearing the distinctive burgundy armband worn by the street-corner observation representative in China, but in her role as classroom Monitor she might as well be. The duty of classroom Monitor is described by Peng Wen Juan, a Chinese English teacher, this way:

"In my opinion, the job of the monitor in a class is to be a good example and a good guide, to lead the class to having a good attitude towards studying, and also help teachers to have good classes."

To paraphrase a quote from Mao Tse Tung, “if you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. If you want to know the structure of the classroom in China, you must take part in teaching English as a second language in China. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience.”

Hi Reader,

We are genuinely interested to hear your comments about this small section of The Little Red Book Teaching ESL in China. You can contact us at lejjjar@gmail.com Best regards, Frank and Susan