Something about "Attitude"

I have had other experience about “attitude” lately. I took a job offer few weeks ago. It’s a company class in Taipei city. The boss there provides the environment and the tuition for the employees to learn English, but they need to pass the GEPT test and can’t be absent from the class. Basically, they are forced to be there. They don’t really want to take the class. The resentful feeling to the company is transferred on me.

I didn’t know that in the first class but just felt the atmosphere was a bit weird because the class leader wanted to quit his job after I introduced myself. It made me feel there must be something wrong. During the break time, the “ex” class leader told me that he quit because he didn’t want to communicate with the supervisors there. I thought that was okay for me but not really.

The second class, there were two new students who were absent in the first one came. They started asking me where I graduated, how long I have been teaching English and if I have taught this kind of class before. When they realized that I just graduated from a Christian college and have never studied overseas, they started to give me the kind of face which tells you they don’t want to give a shit of you. The reason why they are here is because they have to, not because they want to. I tried to ignore that but during the class, I told them if they want to make their English ability better and pass the test, they need to practice it all the time. They didn’t really give me any reaction, so, I tried to let them focus on what I wanted to say. I then said, “You really need to practice using English every “f..king” day, talk to yourself… “ Before I finished my speaking, one of them started laughing and said, “You’ve really never been to the states.” The other one of them replied right away, “She just sees too many movies.” The following week was even worse. I gave them some practice about GEPT and had them discuss the answer and then talked about the grammar structure. After that, I gave them some handout for practicing speaking because their speaking ability is not really good. They have no problem on communicating with others but they can’t say it in proper English, they are using “Chinglish”. When they got the worksheet, the same guy just laughed and said “Oh, I know what it is. It’s just asking questions about the topic. .. bla.. bla.. bla..” Then, he started doing the activity with his partner.

I looked at him and I was thinking you guys are sitting here with that kind of attitude and listening to my lecture in “English”. One third of you are about 10 years older than I am. I am not saying my English is very good, but I believe I am still able to let you learn something you need to, like how to pass GEPT and how to sharpen your English speaking ability. Of course I didn’t say anything about this but just pretended I didn’t hear and see what they were saying and doing. =>(Thanks to my parents for teaching me good manner.) But, do you guys really think I can stand in front 15 of you and teach you just because I’ve seen too many movies???

Well, I think that’s the reason why they are NOW sitting down there wondering how they can do to pass the test.