Futility

I just confessed (though without much 'guilt') over on The Barstool that I had cancelled a class I was supposed to be teaching this evening.

I had a reasonable pretext. I also had the not unreasonable underlying reason that the timing of the classes (6pm-7.50pm: start in broad daylight, emerge in nighttime; miss dinner!!) was inexorably eroding my will to live.

However, I do fret that a further component of my lack of enthusiasm for this class is a general disenchantment with the whole field of business English teaching in China. I spend more and more of my time lobbying with clients, trying to persuade them that they don't really need English training at all (which, obviously, isn't great for business for me) - or that, if they're sure they do, they need to commit a serious amount of time and money to it in order to achieve some worthwhile and lasting results.

It's always the same. We (my more serious-minded and idealistic colleagues, I mean - there are a few of us) try to persuade clients to commit to a long-term, year-round training programme. They agree..... and then discover that they only have the budget for a short-term, one-off programme that's unlikely to be repeated more than once a year, and perhaps only once every 2 or 3 years. We try to persuade them that they need to allocate 15 or 20 weeks if they want to achieve any kind of meaningful improvement in their employees' English. They nod sagely, and then book a training session of only 8 or 10 (or, if we're really lucky, 12) weeks.

1 or 2 hours a week for 12 weeks is not going to get you anywhere. It's completely bloody pointless.

I taught once before at this small IT company where I'm working now; it was about 18 months or so ago. One of the students in my new class there also attended that former training. Despite having 10 or 12 weeks of my inspiring teaching, and despite making some advances (I like to think) in his English in that time, and despite my having given lots of tips on how to continue to study and practise English in daily life, and despite the fact that he works for a Scandinavian employer where English is regularly used in the workplace....... his English today is hugely WORSE than it was when I first taught him.

This is a depressingly common phenomenon. Most Chinese - even those working for foreign employers - have little free time to devote to language study, no real motivation to do so, and they are completely naive or unrealistic about methods of study and language learning goals. I think you'd probably have to give them several hours a week of intensive study for 2 or 3 years to get them to a level where they could communicate confidently and lucidly with native English speakers on work topics or, as many of them aspire to do, go to an English-speaking country for advanced study (that would be at least IELTS Level 7, ideally IELTS Level 8 - most of the people we deal with are Level 5 at best, but they really seem to think they can make the jump to Level 7 in 10 weeks!!).

Most Chinese HR managers haven't got a clue how to plan or budget for English training.

Most employers - Chinese or foreign - are unwilling to make language training any sort of priority.

Ugh. I'd better stop now...... before I start weeping and chewing the carpet.