2013 / 03 / 22
Today I would like to share with you some quotes from my Chinese teachers during the lesson, here we go:
After teacher C. failed to explain a grammar to the students “ I do not understand why you do not understand. All my linguistic students understand. Teaching linguistic students are much easier, because they know the basic knowledge of linguistic, you don’t.”
After teacher H. failed to write a Chinese character “Who will use the pen to write Chinese? We are in the modern time, everyone is using Smartphone and PC. There is no need anymore to study Chinese characters.” After a while “Ah! I remember it; I just forgot it, because I have not written it for at least 50 years.”
After I confronted teacher H./C. for teaching not-in-dictionary-existing-Chinese-characters. “Where did you buy the dictionary? It must be a dictionary not made in China. That’s the reason, why you cannot find it in the dictionary.” ,
“You just do not know how to use the dictionary. Let me look for it!” After a while “Strange, I cannot find it. This cannot be. Ah I know! This is a fake dictionary. I bought it in Shenzhen. They often sell fake products.”
“I am the teacher and you are only student. And your dictionary is lying. Do not trust it. This Chinese character really exists. I always write it like this. You need to trust me. Without any trust, I cannot be your teacher.”
“I know you need to be detail-orientated in your job. But there is not any need to be like that in the Chinese lesson. If one or two strokes are missing, it really does not matter, because it can be guessed from the context. So, do not worry about it!”
What I think about it?
Well, Chinese is a very complex language and I do understand that some teachers might forget some strokes or even do something wrong, as nobody is perfect. I assume those teachers know that they did something wrong, but cannot admit it otherwise they would loose face. How come a student advice the teacher, she is wrong?! That cannot be, right? In fact, here and in other parts of Asia loosing face is a big issue, so usually people tries to defense rather than loosing face. In my opinion, it would be ok if the teacher is honest to me. She could say “I am not sure at the moment, but I will check it for you.” It would be fair for both sides.
At the beginning it was frustrating and I doubted I could learn some useful Chinese from them. In order to avoid learning wrong Chinese characters I started to review my lessons very carefully, which is actually a good practise. And every time I come across those quotes now, I am just smiling.
What do you think about the quotes? Do you have similar experiences?
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