To Show Them That It Can Be Done

A lot of students ask me how they can improve their oral English. Maybe they are looking for a miracle fix, but as we all know, there isn’t one! I say that they should practise English outside the classroom. They say they have no way to do so. I say try English corner. They say not enough foreigners go there. I say that they don’t necessarily need foreigners in order to improve their English, I say they could spend 10 minutes a day practising English with each other. They say they have no time. I say they could do it at lunch time. They say it is too strange to speak English with another Chinese person. Excuses, excuses, excuses! I say they need to get over it and just speak to each other.

They find this hard to grasp.

Today, I rang an Irish person I know, who is on her exchange year in Dalian. She is studying Chinese in Edinburgh. Guess what, we did start off speaking in English but it turned out that we used Chinese for maybe 90 percent of the whole conversation. Granted, it did feel a bit odd to speak Chinese with an Irish person where clearly we could have communicated better in English, but it was good practise for our oral Chinese and next time it won’t feel so strange! So, I guess I now have the proof that it can be done, so the students have no excuse for avoiding practising their English with each other!!