Chinese Students New Year's Resolutions

On our first day of school, I simply asked my students to write their new year's resolution on an index card, since it was their new year two weeks ago.
(Thanks FJR for all these index cards, they are very useful)

At first I was thinking of making them write a composition, but I changed my mind since many of them still need help in basic sentence construction.

The instruction was to use the following words and phrases in at least 5 sentences.

a. quit/stop

b. cut down/reduce

c. keep doing

d. give more effort

e. start/begin

Most of them said that they would quit playing games, specifically computer games. Well, if they were really serious about it then they could possibly do it. I just think it's a less possible since most of our students are addicted to computer games and inside the class you have to keep on reminding them to put their phones away. More than 90% of their phones are internet capable and almost 100% is loaded with QQ, a very famous Chinese Instant messenger that has features like yahoo messenger. Every now and then you would qq beep. The next popular New Year's Resolution is about studying English "hard" that they even more than two words and phrases to emphasize their point or it could be that they could not think of other changes they want to have.

Honestly, I am a little frustrated with students learning behavior in general. It is only here that I see many students who just come to sit in class and wait for the time without showing any effort to learn. Why did I say this? I observed that many of them attend classes with only their phones in their hands, yes they have two or more phones by the way.When I wrote something on the board or show some important points on the big monitor I thought they were memorizing them. Sometimes I even think that writing something is useless, no one is trying to take some notes.

Last week, one of my colleagues told me, "These students are not worth my time and effort, they just don't want to learn. They are so lazy and just wanted to play." She is a very good teacher who finished her undergraduate and post graduate studies in Peking University and yet she is struggling on how to make these students learn-specially English and Japanese languages. So what she did was call the father of a boy who always sleeps in her class. The father told her, " I'm sorry teacher, my boy is such a pain so we sent  him away because we can't control him and it is his punishment, your school serves as his prison."  She was frustrated with his reply and said that this year will be her last year of teacher in this school. Wow! I can't imagine those words came from a father who pays a lot just for his son to be in this very expensive software engineering school. I don't know if  any foreign teachers teaching English in prestigious universities have the same struggles as we have in a technical school where many students are only interested to get a diploma. So I wish them luck in realizing their number one New Year's Resolution, "Quit Playing Games." 真的吗？

Here are some of their New Year's Resolution:

* give effort to pay more attention to my teachers

* cut down on drinking beer and wine

* save money for travel and Spring Holiday shopping

* make more friends

* find a gf/bf  (2 boys wrote this and a girl said she hopes she will find a bf)

* pass the English level test this June

*try hard to lose weight

*reduce internet surfing time

*start going to the library ( I still see it as  a dating place...hmmmmmm)

* quit using mobile phone (huh? did I read this right?)

*start reading books

* start finding a part time job

* stop sending text messages in class (just like quit playing computer games?)

One resolution really caught my attention, "I will start feeling good about life." He said that he felt bad about life last year since he failed in the University Entrance Examination in China so he couldn't get a degree.  I understand his sentiments about their educational system. I hope the standard will change soon, but he said  he'll be old when this happens.  
Teaching in China is a very challenging job, specially when it comes to students behavior in learning English. In spite of all these teaching challenges, I still feel good about life. I am thankful about everything. It made me realized that making a difference in someone life is such a tough job, but  it's not impossible so I'm not giving up. Although change is the only constant thing in this world, there are things that are impossible to change and I just have to accept them.  Some very important values that I believe I developed here in China are patience(learning is so slow so as much as possible repeat explaining thing a thousand times), hard work, tolerance for diversity, flexibility (due to changes that could happen in the last minute), independence (you have to figure out things for yourself). Happy Chinese New Year everyone!