Chinese students are used to sitting in class like mannequins and listening to their teachers drone on for hours. That’s the typical method of Chinese education. Teachers talk and students listen. And never the twain shall meet.
So it’s been quite a challenge to get my students to lift their heads off their desks and participate in class. I’m making progress, though, thanks to a little Yankee ingenuity.
When I started teaching at Henan University of Technology, I’d ask my students questions and be greeted with a sea of vacant stares. The idea of speaking in class was as foreign to them as the World Series.
I tried all kinds of gimmicks and lies to get them to raise their hands. I told them it was a form of exercise. I told them my eyesight was terrible and it would help me recognize them. I told them it would help them learn English.
But nothing worked until I came up with a simple solution: Raise your hand and get a better grade. As soon as I relayed that message, hands began to shoot up faster than cornstalks in Iowa.
Bribery apparently is an international language.
