What Do you Look for in a Chinese Class?

As you know if you’ve been following my blog, I recently began taking a Chinese class at MTC.  To be perfectly honest, I am not very impressed.  Part of it is because the level isn’t really appropriate, but that part is not the school’s fault.  The part I plan to complain about in this post, is the school’s responsibility.  MTC is a very popular program (popular does not equal the best), and it is recommended by a lot of people.  Because of this, I expected more.  

First of all, I expected to have a better teacher.  It is a Chinese program at a university known for teaching, so I think they should be very picky about who they hire.  I think that my teacher should specialize in teaching Chinese to foreigners.  However, I recognized my teacher.  Her day job is teaching a health class at a local high school.  If she just happened to be an exceptional teacher, then i wouldn’t have a problem with it, but that isn’t the case.  I don’t think she prepares much for the class, she doesn’t check the assignments well and I’m not fond of the activities that she chooses for class. 

1.  Not properly prepared for class.

How do I know?  Well, she is surprised when we come to the end of a reading, etc.  She didn’t really look to see what was left, so then she has to come up with some other activity to take up the time.  We ended up playing a game that in my opinion is a colossal waste of time.  One person leaves the room, and the others think of a vocabulary word.  When the student comes back into the room they have to ask questions to figure out what the word is.  Well, that takes 10 minutes to go over one or two vocabulary words and only one student really gets practice speaking.  Not an effective use of time.  Unfortunately, this game has now become a regular class activity.

2.  Doesn’t Check Assignments Well

She asked us to write an essay to see what our writing was like.  I registered late and then sat in on another class, so I had missed a few days and was behind on the classwork.  I didn’t have time to write a decent essay, so I just quickly wrote something, and only finished it just before the beginning of class.  I expected to get a paper back filled with red marks.  Instead, she complimented my writing and there were only three corrections in the entire essay.  If I had not taken other Chinese classes before, then I would probably be impressed with myself and think, “Wow, I’m really good at writing Chinese!”  However, this isn’t the case.  The last class that I took with another teacher (who apparently also teaches at MTC) was much more diligent in correcting essays. I spent a lot of time writing detailed essays, checking and rechecking, making sure to use certain grammar points, etc, but when I got the essay back there would still be a lot of red marks and suggestions for improvement on it.  Furthermore, my teacher at the time would write meaningful compliments and give constructive criticism.  This teacher didn’t write a thing, and I’m telling you, this essay was nowhere near as good as those other essays that I wrote.  

3.  Attitude: 

She is friendly and positive, but I get the feeling that she is just doing this to earn some easy money or something.  She is constantly trying to give less homework, suggesting that we don’t have to take the chapter tests if we don’t want to,  Well, I am not paying a lot of money and making myself crazy busy from 7-10 every day to slack off.  I want to improve my Chinese.  I am not some kid being forced to take a class by parents, so I don’t really want to do anything.  When teachers do this, the truth is ususally that they don’t want to spend the time grading.  As a teacher, I’ve had co-workers like this. 

4.  Not really a Chinese teacher:

And it shows.  She doesn’t really seem to understand what level of reading etc. is approprate for students in this level.  She assigned a story set in the Warring States period that is the origin for some chengyu.  Well, I read it and could understand it, but I didn’t think it was easy (I’m supposed to be in a higher level).  The other students couldn’t even recognize most of the words, and definitely didn’t understand the story at all. So, we ended up not even going over the story because it was way beyond what was appropriate for this level.  If you were trained in teaching Chinese or had a lot of experience, you would never make this kind of mistake. 

That about covers my complaints so far, but it has also got me thinking about what the ideal Chinese class would be like.  I’m not really sure exactly, but I would like less emphasis on just reading vocabulary words and example sentences since I can do that at home.  I would like more drilling and practice coming up with sentences using the vocabulary and grammar in class, so that I can get a lot of practice using it while being corrected by a native speaker.  I would like more discussion, rather than being lectured at or having to listen to long stories about the teacher’s life.  If I want to practice listening, then I can watch T.V. or whatever.  i want to do things that I cannot do properly at home by myself. 

What do you think?  What do you look for in a Chinese class/ teacher?     

 

Hiatus

I haven’t been posting for a while now, and likely won’t be posting anything new for a while.  Things aren’t going well at the moment.  I will write about the class that I registered at MTC though before taking a long break from this.  I took the placement test today and according to my score I was right between books 4 and 5 of Practical Audio-Visual Chinese.  I wanted to take the intensive course from 6:00-9:00(?), but unfortunately, there aren’t any other students interested in taking either of those levels at that time and it is the only time I can take a class.  The only thing available was a regular course at level three.  I have to say I am pretty disappointed.  As popular of a school as Shida is, you would think there must be some people in Taipei interested in taking Chinese classes there at that time.  Apparently not.  Now it is too late for me to apply to another school for this term.  I decided to take the class, even though the level isn’t suitable, just so I can study something.  I guess I’ll just have to see how I like it, see if anything will open up next semester and apply to another school just in case.