The time has arrived to talk about tests in China. I’ve put off both the experience and the writing of the encounter long enough, but Chinese tests found me with a vengeance.
The tale starts 2 weeks into the semester, in a meeting with the Dean of the English Department. I had been teaching 3 classes called “New Concepts English 2,” a class filled with art majors who, after the first week of classes, appeared to have almost no English skills whatsoever. In our meeting, the Dean (Professor Shu) stressed that these kids were to be judged to a lower standard than the English major students. “As long as they follow you,” were his exact words. In other words, if they come to class, they pass. “No tests,” he said. Just spend class time getting them to speak and improve their conversational English abilities. Leaving that meeting, I felt hope for the first time in a stressful, troubled time.
The weeks that followed got better and better. I devoted less class time to book work and more time to fun activities that got everyone speaking. Everyone was improving, including Jack Wang in the back of class 10(2) who couldn’t say his Chinese or English name on the fist day of class because he was riddled with fear of talking to the ‘foreigner’. I began to enjoy teaching them. The middle of the semester approached and I decided that since I didn’t have to give them a test, I would have everyone do reader’s theater plays for the class. We spent 2 classes practicing, in which I would look around and everyone was talking English to each other. The Chinese classroom was filled with English. I think this was the first time this had ever happened for these students. The third class was spent performing and nearly everyone came, which was a surprise from classes averaging 85% attendance. The plays were a huge hit and everyone did great. It was an exercise worth repeating and some students even surprised me. Tim, who had been quiet, distracted, and uninterested all semester, traded his minor part for a the major role of Calvin, and on the final day gave a comical performance Robin Williams would have been impressed with.
But at the end of all three classes, someone or a group of students always came up and asked if there would be a test next week. “Of course not!” was my reply, “That was the test.” Relieved, they left for an easy weekend and I felt content making kids talk English and have fun at the same time. Then came Monday, Halloween. We talked about costumes and candy and Jack-O-Lanterns; Luke’s class came to trick-or-treat, as well as Robin, dressed as a jelly fish; we ended the class with watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer “Halloween episode,” complete with Chinese subtitles; I dressed up as Eminem. It was a fun class. Halfway through Buffy, a student from both classes came up to me and in a whisper, asked if we had a test that night. I laughed, paused the movie, and told everyone in the class that, “NO!!!! Of course we don’t have a test tonight! Relax and enjoy the movie!” They were all relieved. And remember, when my second class on Monday asked the same question during Buffy, I replied the same way, stopping the movie to stress that there was no test.
I left class a little confused. How could a rumor have spread that there was a test? I went to the English department to investigate. Hannie, the assistant with the best English, looked just as confused as I was when I asked her. “A test? Of course they have a test tonight! Its middle term!” Huh? Many emotions ran through me at that moment, but mostly I felt bad about telling my students that they didn’t have to go to this test that I, their teacher, didn’t know about. “No one told you?” Hannie asked. “No, of course not,” was my reply, noting that this was not the first time unexpected expectations were demanded from us. Hannie told me the room numbers each class had to be in at 7:30 that night for the test. And asked me to tell Luke that his class was cancelled that night so his students could take this test (the first time he heard about it too). All I had to do was go to a fancy dinner with the president of the college at the nicest restaurant in Pengshan.
Which, by the way, was awesome. Some of the best food I’ve had so far. Seafood dumplings rocked my world, a rich and creamy (which is rare here) yellow soup was delicious, blackened fatty pork (yay to not being vegetarian), mushrooms, grape wine (yes!), fried beans, roasted peanuts, amazing duck, multiple fish, and more. My taste buds thoroughly enjoyed themselves.
But throughout the car ride and the dinner, I was dealing with calls and messages from students, all wanting to know why they suddenly had a test and wondering where they should go. Then I found out that one of the rooms Hannie told me was wrong, but they eventually found the right one. It sucked, it was stressful, and most of all, I felt bad for misleading my students. Everyone but one made it to the test and the next day when I saw them around, they all said it was an ok test. Whew.
Then on Wednesday, I stopped by Hannie’s office again and she dug through the recently appeared mountain of folders and handed me two yellow envelopes that were very thick. “What are these?” I asked. “These are your tests,” she said. “Grade them and get them back to me on Friday.” ＂什么?” was my reply (WHAT?). “Can you do that?” she asked, as I opened one and looked at a 60 question multiple choice answer card and a one page essay per student. “No way,” was my reply. “Monday at the earliest.” We left it at that, me being asked to grade 150 exams that I had never seen, knew about until yesterday, or had any say in deciding, in 5 days. Welcome to China I muttered as I left a little angry.
I think I took the test that night. Out of 60 multiple choice questions, 3 were answered wrong on the answer sheet, 2 don’t have a right answer due to typos, and 6 have multiple right answers. Some of the questions also don’t make any sense. Such as, “Mr. Scott cannot get a telephone for his garage. ______ he has just bought twelve pigeons.” The answer was “That’s way.” (This one was the one that made me the most baffled) Another had the right answer, other, as both option A and D. Out of 60 questions, 11 I can’t in my right mind count as grade-able questions.
The last part of the test was an essay. “Write a self-introduction of 100 words.” Some students clearly didn’t know what a self-introduction was. Most of these were absolute gems. The honesty and creativity shines on some of the pages and I was really moved by some of the students. I’ll post some of these next. But others, the ones who had no idea, just rewrote the reading comprehension essays from the test. On one hand, I empathize with their strategy. When you don’t know what’s being asked of you, just write something, anything. On the other hand, they didn’t write anything about themselves. In the end, if there were at least 5 sentences about yourself, you got full credit. I still don’t know what to do about the others.
But now I’m ahead of myself. It’s Thursday afternoon and I have a mess of a test and a pile of essays that I’m suffused to grade in 4 days, with not a hint of how to do so. I went back to Hannie and asked her what I’m supposed to grade. “Oh, you can use this machine to grade the answer sheets and you give the students a number between 1 and 20 for the essay.” Ok, then how do I use this machine, was my first question. “Oh you can’t, its broken. But it will be fixed on Monday.” “But these need to be done by Monday.” “Oh, then get them to us as soon as you can.” (Ugggghhh. So, as soon as the machine is ready?). My second question was what do I decide to grade the essay on. “Just give them a number about how good it is.” Ok…….
I read through them all on Friday and found 5 that were identical. This made me really sad, but I expected it. What astounded me was that one kid in a different class in a different testing room, copied Jenny’s paper, which was the paper 3 other boys copied in her class. Troubled, I spent class yesterday and today going over the answers, explaining why some are right and others not. And why some were bad questions. When I got to the introduction, I read them a brief on of myself and we talked about things you can talk about. And then I offered them a rare opportunity: if you cheated, I will let you write another intro, like what we just talked about in class. Be it copier or copied, if you rewrite it I’ll grade that one. If you don’t, you’ll get a 0. I hope they understood and take the opportunity. Jenny looked crushed in class.
I went in yesterday to grade the answer sheets. “The machine is still broken. It will get fixed tonight,” was Hannie’s answer. I went back today, “Still broken.” I talked with Professor Shu just now, and I asked him about the expectations of this class and why are they being tested when he said they weren’t going to be. His answer revealed to me just how good Chinese people are at skirting the true answer. He talked for a long time about how these students need to be judged to a lower level, how their English can’t be expected to be very good, how what matters is that they follow me, and that they try hard. But I’m still confused why they have to take a test at the end. Its just the Chinese way I guess. In response to grading: “If they came to class and they tried hard, give them a pass.” Translation: if they came to class at all, pass them regardless of their score of the test. So why are they taking the test at all?
I’m baffled.
Another oddity of the Chinese schooling mentality has become evident these last few weeks. Alex, another American teacher who was here last year, said that the English department asked him to give 4 students, who were seniors last year but failed their English class and therefore can’t graduate, another final exam so they can pass the class they failed and graduate. Note: these were not students of his last year. They had another teacher who either failed them because they didn’t come to class, didn’t pass the final exam, or didn’t show up to the exam at all. Alex refused to give them an exam and so they asked another English teacher, Michael, to do so. He said yes. And another student came up to Alex today, asking him to give him a final as well so he could pass the class he failed last year. Apparently exam scores are interchangeable here.
This philosophy bothers me at the foundation of my morals on education. I have gone to schools that at their core teach accountability. If you don’t do well or don’t do it at all, you pay the price, both through grades and what you miss out on yourself. This system here lacks any student accountability. If you fail an exam, you can take it again. If you don’t show up, you can take it again. If you fail the make-up, you can take it again. If you fail the make-up of the make-up? Take it again until you pass. Failure never seems to be an option. It appears that once you are here, you are guaranteed to graduate, as long as you take a test sometime, anytime, just as long as you take a test.
China, how you baffle me so
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