The ability to speak English is part of an English teacher’s professional requirements. However, across the country, it is acknowledged that Chinese teachers of English are weak in spoken English. And the inability to use the language for a real life purpose is one of the reasons why ELT is so boring to many students.
I became the team leader of our grade’s English teachers last year. I had always wanted to speak English in the office but couldn’t without other teachers’ participation. I would have been considered mentally ill if I had talked to the wall or to myself in the office. Luckily, at the beginning of Grade 1, two younger members suggested we should speak English in the office and for our work. I gave my support to their idea at once, and others joined me.
The beginning was hard. We English teachers shared ONE office with the math teachers. So you can imagine the math teachers’ shock at our talking in a language they could not follow. Of course we ourselves felt uneasy when talked in English in the first few months. This was something unheard of in the school history. Our practice incurred misunderstanding and mocking, and fear. Some guys feared because they thought we were talking about them in English. And that is true. We found one of the benefits of talking in English was that secret could be shared among English teachers safely.
The English speaking program has benefited all of us. Firstly, playing with the language all the time has enabled us to acquire a degree of comfort with our mouth when we talk. Anyway, English is not our mother tongue. And our fluency has increased. The first few months saw us talking quite slowly. And these days all of us are able to converse much faster. Besides, our accuracy has been bettered too with better fluency. We have found that only by making some unavoidable mistakes are we able to kick those mistakes off. Also we have realized that when we Chinese talk English our mother language always interferes. It is a struggle to find the balance between the two languages. We also understand why Chinese English is unavoidable when the language is used in the Chinese context and in Chinese culture. The biggest gain is that our confidence has increased a lot over our ability to teach and work.
What has been started is something others still laugh at at times. We will turn their laughter into admiration one day.
