A RESPONSE TO "TO ALL ENGLISH TEACHERS"

New Roman" size=5>TO MONICA AND KATHY

    I agree with most of what you are discussing and what is in Monica's article.
However, things in china are a lot different from that of foreign countries.
I agree with Kathy that the students are greatly restrained by the word limit when they are supposed to write a composition. They can't express their thoughts and ideas clearly. I ask my students to write something down daily as a journal. They can write everything may pop up in their minds and they can write as long as they like. It is ok for them to drop only one or two sentences down for one journal.

    For vocabulary, I have reiterated several times here I have been misled by the educational system in China. You can go to any university and inquire into the students' English study, you will instantly find that the priority for a students to learn english is to learn my heart the words. They are so tough a task for students to fulfil. They are like monks, reading books of vocabulary every morning as a mass. I have done the same job. Luckily later on I changed my way into reading english literature instead of only memorizing each word without contextual usage. Nevertheless, vocabulary has helped me a lot in a lot of exams and in reading. As to my daily teaching english, I think we have put most of the time to word learning.

    Monica, I respect your help to every english learner here. However since you are from Newzealand, you never will know in what a way chinese students are learning english. What I want to tell you is that English is the most important subject in china. No students can afford to give it up. The main purpose of the students to learn english is to take exams, and then to communicate with foreigners.

    Especially in writing, as foreign learners of english, my students including me, can't find the most suitable and adequate words to express what we are thinking. We have to use the words or phrases that are available in our mind to express our thoughts and ideas. So we from time to time may write Chinglish. I don't think we can write perfect english as you  native english speaker may do. I don't know if  you know any foreign languages. If you do, you may make the same mistakes. If we say "hello" "how are you?" and then shut our mouth, maybe you will say that we are speaking perfect english. If we continue talking, then our chinglish will inavoidably been brought to the light.

    I have been using english-english dictionaries for a long time. However, I don't think the oxford Dictionary of english is as useful as longman dictionary, which is concise, clear, and with a lot of word usage. So I asked my students to have Langman dictionaries each.