Well, it finally happened. Today I received a complaint from a student regarding my teaching. I had heard that everyone gets one of these at some point but I had, until this moment, hoped that I had broken the trend. Now, before I show you the e-mail, I think I should first mention that this student is not, in the truest sense, my real student. You see, about a month ago our school asked us to take an additional 4 classes a week at a different school just down the road. At first we were a bit annoyed as we”re not really contracted to do so but, as a gesture of goodwill, we accepted the position.

We”ve been visiting this school for about a month now and, though it’’s a bit annoying having to give up our Monday and Friday lie-ins to cycle to the school, the lessons had been going, I had naively thought, pretty damn well.

Okay, here’’s the e-mail…

I am your student. In the week, I don”t like your teching, not interested and funny, always make us talk with group, you can play games with us. I wish you can understand me. why not reply my e-mail, if you busy, you can write a little, I wish we can change into good friend, but now I know you nothing, you can tell me something about you. thank you

Basically she is annoyed that rather than simply playing games with her class every week we are actually trying to engage them in group based discussions and debates. She is also annoyed that I didn”t reply to her previous e-mail within 48 hours.

To be fair, students often come across as very blunt due to their limited vocabulary and I don”t think she meant to come across as rude (b**ch!!!). Nevertheless, I did think a response was needed:

Firstly, I”m sorry to hear that you didn”t enjoy the classes last week, but you”ve got to understand that I can”t just play games with you all the time. The problem with playing games is that many people in your class will not speak in English and just use the lesson as an opportunity to sleep, eat or listen to music. Often, when we play games, many of your classmates do not join in. What I try to do is use a combination of games and group activities. However, if students try hard and put all their effort in, they would realise that the group-based discussion activities can be very funny and interesting too…

There was a bit more in which I basically just thanked her for her comments and told her I would take the message on board. I also apologised for not responding to her previous e-mail sooner and mentioned that I had been very VERY busy. To be honest, I think she just wanted a reply and used the teaching criticism to evoke a response from me… it worked.

Ouch!

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