A hush falls over the crowd

Did you ever see the movie Hot Shots: Part Deux? If you haven’t experienced this classic of 90s comedy, there's a segment where Charlie Sheen runs through an Iraqi prison camp dressed like Rambo, shooting everything in sight. The movie – a spoof that it is – begins to tally a kill count like an old arcade game from the 80s. In short order, hundreds of Iraqis lay dead – after falling, spinning, somersaulting and pirouetting to the ground in some of the most ridiculous and comedic ways imaginable. Just as the last few enemies are wiped out in slow motion doing swan dives like synchronous swimmers, Charlie’s machine gun clicks dry, out of ammunition. Suddenly, a fresh group of soldiers comes out of nowhere and charges into the fray. Then – to my maniacal amusement – Charlie grabs some bullets from a nearby crate and sprays a handful of harmless metal casings in their direction, which of course kills them anyway.

Now, the fact that I have laughed at this scene until I cried on several occasions has nothing to do with the topic of this blog entry. However, throwing a multitude of small objects at a group of “newcomers to the fray” does much to illustrate how to teach the complexities and innuendo of the education field to some 20-odd missionaries in a mere 8 days. These consisted of loose-leaf papers and helpful advice. "A good EFL teacher has no dignity" was one shell casing tossed at us in mid-June during our Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) Basics course at the University of California Irvine.

The UCI staff did a marvelous job of putting together such an ephemeral affair. (Yeah, I know. But it’s good to look up words in the dictionary.) Though it meant we were peppered with handouts on EFL methods, games, behavior management, lesson planning, curriculum creation, linguistic analysis, and that mystical giant, formal grammar and all its proper appellations, (like gerunds, dependent clauses, the past perfect progressive tense, etc. ad nauseum). Two books and 42 class hours later, we were ready to set out into the EFL teaching world. One particular aspect of this profession was covered quite well, though it didn’t penetrate my sensibilities until I actually experienced it. It, being the stark silence of a foreign classroom, or – as I’ve called it here for the purposes of creating an attention-grabbing story title – “A hush falls over the crowd.”

And it falls quite suddenly. I suppose all junior high school kids are like this (and this pertains mostly to the boys), but during their 10-minute breaks between classes, they run around, put each other in headlocks, force other students behind doors and jeer at them, get into verbal bouts with the opposite sex, feed an insatiable yearning to rehearse their respective repertoires of Chinese expletives, and punch each other in the groin. (In fact, it has even been suggested that groin punching be included in formal lesson plans with an exercise in English exclamations, because they enjoy it far more than corny EFL games.) But as soon as those musical tones denoting the next class start buzzing through the courtyards and classrooms, hordes of mayhem-aficionados dash to their seats and soon exude glazed-over expressions that could, with the right connections, get them cast as extras in low-budget zombie movies.

Asking them questions is usually a fruitless gesture from that point on. Perhaps if they appeared overtly confused, or gave even a slight nod of understanding, the situation wouldn’t be so ambiguous. But, as it stands, middle school Taiwanese kids only gaze in my direction with sheepish smiles or blank stares after I implore their comprehension. No matter, I tell myself – I’ll ask them in Chinese. Yet this is almost as unsuccessful, for admitting a lack of knowledge is still a “loss of face” to many students, despite the years of indoctrination into Western styles of teaching.

I soon learned that extravagant pantomime, exaggerated pronunciation, and exceptional patience are necessary to teach English in a foreign country, along with a penchant for stale jokes that they don’t get in shameless attempts to keep otherwise apathetic young students interested enough to give you the courtesy of eye contact or a modicum of participation. (I have a new appreciation for all of my past teachers, by the way.) Be boisterous, perform with dramatic flair, do anything to keep those scattered minds on the task of learning another language before they fully learn their own. But that’s another blog entry. For now, I must be patient and nurture an indifference for repeating myself. Otherwise I might get punched in the crotch.