(I)                 Wrong Way - English Oral Presentation in 1 Semester  迷思 - 3個月讓成都學生說流利英文

Being a foreign English teacher in Chengdu for some time, all my friends asked me the standard question out of curiosity, "How was your time with the ‘hardworking’ Chinese students?" I always told them, "Yeah, they do work super hard. I’m just concerned that they might be using the wrong method!" They could pretty well be joking, yet still manage to pack a punch in terms of my feelings--reason? I’m going to share the whole story of this semester in China and the way I managed to solve it back then!

In fact, so was it here in Taipei. I came to Taipei in 2013 for a short while and commenced to do my English oral training courses online/in person. A student of mine told me about the situation here before the education reform.

在成都教了一段時間的書，剛回到台灣，每個人都問我：“怎麼樣？大陸的大學生都很認真吧？”我總是說：“是啊！但是都用錯方法了！”大家都以為我在開玩笑。事實上，我很認真，今天我來認真解釋一下。

事實上，早期在台灣也是這麼作的。13年我在台北短暫停留了一陣子，開始在網路上延續口語訓練教學。從一位上班族口中聽到教育改革以前也是類似的做法。

My job in Chengdu was to make hundreds of undergraduate students of the first and second year to open their mouth and speak English, whatsoever. I thought it would be a simple task, just talk, having such a nice payment. However, it unexpectedly turned out that I faced one of the most frustrating difficulties in my 22-years life. No matter what I told them, they would merely nod to me and remain at their seats, having the education I called “ordering education” which was accepting all I gave them without any reaction. With this ordering education, they would never be able to deliver any speech apart from reading from the notes or repeating after me.

In the first lesson, I asked all of them to come to the podium and say something they could. To be exact, they were supposed to tell their own name and three sentences related to their current experience which should be two truths and one lie for the audience to guess.

Hereafter, these dudes came up to the stage and read from a sheet (that’s cheating!), telling me some names they just made up -- at least I'm sure Adidas and Sprite did it --  “My name is Adidas.”, “I have a sister”, “I love Pizza” and then they paused for seconds, looking at me, to make the lie. Okay, such a decent honest student!

我在成都的工作是口說演講訓練，分別帶了一、二年級的本科生。就讓他們開口說任何英文就可以了。我以為很簡單，待遇還這麼好。然而，剛接這份工作時，我面臨了22年人生最大的挫折之一。這些學生長期接受我所謂指令式的教育，說一道，做一道，完全沒有辦法即興發揮。

第一堂課，我要每位同學上台介紹自己的名字、三句自己最近的經歷，包括兩句真話和一句謊話，讓大家猜。

結果，同學們都帶了小抄上台（偷帶！），有人還d了剛才取的名字——至少我敢肯定愛迪達和雪碧同學剛剛才決定好——“我是愛迪達”、“我有個姐姐”、“我愛吃披薩”然後就他們多半停在台上看著我想謊言。何其誠實！

So I decided to drink up the wine in my water holder(I believed everyone thought that’s tea or coffee at 8 o’clock in the morning) and give up all the materials I prepared for this very first lesson. I knew my job here was only to make them speak(and I thought sharing my wine with them would just work). In this regard, I just asked everyone to make some simple sentences in turn to pass my 90 minutes for the day, which made the majority of them feel bored and, I guessed, insulted.

I gave the easiest example “party” to a kid who looked very nervous while he was introducing himself as Sprite. I swear to God, I was really trying to make him relaxed. But, you know, a few minutes later, the kid went, "Under the leading of the Chinese Communism Party, China successfully protected the Diaoyu Island from Japan." (It was in September, 2012 in Chengdu when the anti-Japan protest just finished)

所以我決定我要放棄那天課前準備的教材。我知道我的課程有個最主要的目的：一步步讓學生們開口。於是，我臨時改成一些非常簡單的造句練習只想著先度過第一天的90分鐘。這對大多學生來說可能非常無聊甚至覺得備受侮辱­。

我讓每位同學輪流造句，我特別給一位剛才自我介紹看起來很緊張的雪碧簡單一點的詞兒，party。我確實是要讓他輕鬆一點，但是幾分鐘以後這位同學告訴我：“在中國共產黨(party，政黨)的領導下，祖國成功地捍衛釣魚島的主權。”（按：2012年九月於成都）

The experience forced me to rethink the courses for them. Hopefully, I had a whole semester to go and it should be enough to guide them step by step from the very beginning.

I gave in a bit, allowing them to bring the notes with them. Write it down, read it aloud and try to speak without it…

A week before the midterm, ​​the dean of the Foreign Language College came to me asking me to have one-on-one interview as midterm exam with some students from one of my classes who were going to New Zealand as exchange students in the upcoming semester, so that they would perform better on the university entrance test in a few months. In this regard, I finished my course a bit earlier in the class a week before their midterm interview. I told them, "In the rest of the time today, I’ll need you all to prepare a piece of paper, write down the story you are gonna tell me in the interview next week. And I will help you guys check the grammatical mistakes."

For this 5-minute-interview, all my decent hardworking students filled up their sheets with hundreds of words from childhood talent class to profound astronomy knowledge, giving me a super tough reading time before I finished my job that day.

When I was finally checking for the last few students, a quiet girl came to the lineup again and told me, “Arthur, I have memorized the whole corrected writing already. May I have my interview today? ”

To my surprise, surprise, surprise! I did tell them before they wrote it, “ It’s just your own note for the interview. Even if the contents are different from the things you are telling me in the interview next week. Who knows? Just tell me in the way you are comfortable with then. Now I’m just helping you to reduce the grammatical mistakes.” What’s more, I realized the girl was the one who composed the astronomy things. I would never be able to memorize it in such a short time!

這次經驗讓我把當時編寫的講義修改很多。所幸，我有一學期的授課時間。我把節奏放的非常慢，甚至允許同學上台前先擬草稿。

期中前，外語學院的院長要求我對其中一批即將去新西蘭做交換生的班級做一對一的面試作為期中考，讓他們在新西蘭入學面試前先有個準備。於是，我在期中考前的一堂課，提早把課程停了下來。我告訴大家：“今天剩下的時間，你們把下週的面試稍微準備一下，寫下來，今天我先幫你們檢查有沒有文法錯誤。”

5分鐘的面試，每位同學都洋洋灑灑寫了好幾百字，從才藝班寫到天文學，我讀得非常辛苦。

當我終於替最後幾位學生看的時候，一個女生又到台前排了一次隊來和我說，她已經全部背起來了，想要今天提前面試。。。

我非常驚訝，我並沒有要他們照著背啊！我已經說過了，只是手稿，就算最後在台上說得和寫的有出入也不會有人知道的，它只是幫助自己別漏了些想要講的內容。更令人驚訝的是，這個女生就是長篇大論的其中一員。寫的多得程度是我自己永遠都不可能背得起來的！

After the midterm, I did lots of changes on my teaching for each class again.

For the final exam, I followed my own way. I held a couple rounds of debate in each of my class, which I had been very satisfied with. In this last lecture, I spent most of my time listening, laughing, and getting my paid of the oral training course without speaking much. I knew I finally made it!

過了學期中，我又分別在各班做了很多的修正。

期末考，我決定按自己的方式。我在我教的四個班裡各別舉辦了幾輪的辯論。我非常高興，在最後這一堂課我大部分的時間在聽、在笑，沒說到幾句話又領了薪水。並且我非常有成就感！

I am absolutely not referring to the poor English proficiency of these students. But when a kid could write well but not speak at all, we knew there’s something wrong. It was that all the Chinese students were using the wrong method to learn English! And it’s definitely not the way they had used to learn Chinese. Therefore, the English level of each student in the same group might be very different by the method they used. Some students who knew how to use and spell a word but couldn’t pronounce it; those with more outgoing personalities usually did better; girls did better than guys in general as well.

I collected these results along with my teaching materials last Christmas hopefully to share with all those kids with the same issue, and luckily soon I got chances since the dean wanted me to deliver speeches to other colleges in Sichuan province.

I will share all of these methods in my next six writings.

我不是要說這些學生英文學不好。當一個學生可以舞文弄墨卻無法淺談學問時，我絕對相信所有中國學生都用錯方法了！同一個團體裡的程度落差也非常大；多數的同學會拼單詞卻不會念；活潑外向的學生學得特別好；女生又尤其比男生敢講。。。

在接下來的六篇文章裡我將把這學期的解決辦法整理出來，它們是後來院長要我到四川省其他學院演講時我的主題。