Wheat-dogg's World

JISHOU, HUNAN — The university draws students from all over Hunan, and from several other provinces as well, so one of its missions is to ensure entering students all have a reasonable command of English.

Passing English aptitude tests is a requirement for a four-year diploma here, and a major boost toward getting a job once you obtain that diploma. JSU, like any other institution of learning, wants its students to succeed, so right after their military boot camp, English major freshmen go to “English boot camp.”

For their first week of classes, these attend their regular classes and then go to evening sessions led very ably by the seniors in the department. (Who, if they happen to be reading this, should be proud of their good work.) The evening sessions are actually fun, so it’s not as horrible as I may make it sound. The seniors devised games and activities to remove some anxieties about university English classes.

During the first week, each student also receives a blue phonetics book, which I see them carry to class as devotedly as their cell phones. This book contains instructions on how to make the sounds of English vowels and consonants, along with appropriate practice words.

My world language teacher friends back in the States would cringe at this book, as it seems more suitable for a linguistics or speech pathology major than a beginning college English student. It contains the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols for the sounds alongside cutaway diagrams of a human head showing the placement of the tongue and shape of the mouth to make the sounds.

Looking at one of these books, I found myself checking where my tongue was in my mouth while vocalizing some English vowels. I do better without the book.

As a newcomer here, I would be ill-advised to criticize the philosophy beyond teaching English in this way. Few students arriving here have had access to native English speakers. They have just had their teachers (who I might add generally speak English pretty well) to emulate, which accounts for the wide variety of accented English I hear among my freshmen.

Some pronounce English very distinctly; others try to insert Chinese vowels where English vowels should go, or confuse one vowel for a similar one. We spent some time in class yesterday distinguishing between two pairs of words: snack and snake, and sheet and shit. You can eat a snack, but only a very few eat snakes. You should change the sheets on your bed. You definitely should change the shits on your bed.

Whether the imitate-and-repeat drills I hear in neighboring classrooms is effective, I can’t say just yet. The frosh have only been in class for a couple of weeks, with a week’s vacation in between. The phonetics book I never use in my class, figuring they use it plenty elsewhere. Instead, I have each student say a few sentences about some easy topic (favorite music, vacation activities), stopping between each to correct egregious mispronunciations (shits on the bed), grammar or vocabulary.

All my students want to learn American idioms, one of the hardest things to learn in any language. I have a book of idioms, plus a rather shaky knowledge of current Americanisms common among college-age youth — I taught one class “My bad!” — so I am trying to oblige them.

The students, for the most part, seem to hunger for instruction in proper English. They want to know how to improve their English skills. As the so far only native English speaker on campus, I’m doing the best I can.

Getting on QQ — China’s answer to AIM — can be perilous. In a fit of generosity, I gave my students my QQ number. They gave it to other students, some of whom don’t even go to JSU, so when I sign on I had better have cleared my desk of work for the evening. Working while keeping track of eight simultaneous conversations is more multitasking than my 1950s era CPU can handle.

Two freshmen — biology students — sat in on my conversation class today just to listen to the proceedings. Both asked me for my IM info so we can continue chatting in English on line.

Who knew speaking English would make me a media “star?” Now if I could only get a few gigs like Hugh Grant …