From Dean Xia Jimei

OF THE STUDENTS, BY THE STUDENTS,

and

FOR THE STUDENTS

Book to be published July 2010

Foreword

It is my great honor to be invited to write this foreword for Dr Martin Wolff’s new book. To be honest, it is my first time to write a foreword in English for a foreign teacher’s book though I have written some previously for books in Chinese. I accept the invitation because I admire Martin as one of my best foreign employees, career comrades, international colleagues and educational friends in the TEFL field in China.

Martin’s educational concepts, methods, attitudes, acts and contributions impressed me by my class observation, our casual chats, skimming his large number of teaching journals and the formal talks between us. His educational concepts such as “holistic development through English learning”, “Chinglish is better than deaf and dumb English”, “non-native English speakers talking to each other is like iron sharpens steel”, “acquiring English in the non-native English environment needs man-made English immersion”, “be brave, never be a coward in opening your mouth speaking English” and the like, agree with the updated foreign language educational beliefs and principles. Underneath the rationales, his teaching seems very “pushy” and often too hard to accept by the Chinese students at the beginning, mostly because they were used to instruction-based teaching and examination-driven learning for over 10 years of English classes. However, Martin pushed them into the “English swimming pool” to “survive” which made them feel “unsafe”. First of all, he made his classroom into a real English community in which only English is the unique communicative language. To some extent, to the Chinese-native adults who are non-English majors, it is scary and difficult because they lack confidence and competence in that community but loosing face every minute. Besides, he assigned a lot of after-class tasks requiring his students to read/send English emails to each other every day, go surfing on the internet in English, watch the specially selected English movies for culture studies, write movie comments and many other tasks, all in English. All these were regarded by many students as forcing added burden onto them.

From the educational point of view, Martin is successfully practicing many modern educational conceptions and methodologies such as student-centeredness, task/problem/project/action-based approaches, learning to speak by speaking and practice makes perfect, autonomous learning and learning by doing, just as Dewey’s theory about “school is society”. Martin’s teaching style is not by instruction in theory but by application in action. No matter how reluctant his students feel at the beginning, as a result of his efforts, many of them transform, change and shift from “paper-score men” to “real-world communicators” although the process is full of hardship or even culture shock resulting from misunderstanding. Some students gave up, some complained, some took the action and achieved in the end. It turned out to be a test, a real test to the Chinese students in many ways. It proved to be a challenge, a bi-folded challenge to both the teacher and the students. Martin himself enjoyed the process and, most reward of all, the students’ positive changes, visible and invisible.

As a faculty of College English instruction in China for over 30 years myself, as a TBEL (task-based English Learning) approach promoter and practitioner for over 10 years, and as an ELT researcher and teacher trainer, I really appreciate and highly praise Martin’s educational spirits and career ethics. I try to conclude them into“3 Ls”, “3 Es” and “3 Ds”, i.e. since he loves teaching, loves students and loves China; his teaching is enthusiastic, experienced and enjoyable out of his devoted, diligent and demanding efforts. Facts prove that his teaching provides his thousands of students with lifelong benefits in the multi-functional, multi-faceted, multi-effected holistic development journey. That is the destination target of higher education.

Read the book, you can find the practice, statistics, feedback and comments that record the great deeds. Read the writers, you can feel their soul and mind. The key is, get the message from it: what’s wrong with the TEFL for the Chinese students in their learning and what’s their potential? Get the hint from it: He can, they can, we can, and you can. Why not try!

With best wishes to a greater success in TEFL reform in China

XIA, Jimei (Angela)夏纪梅

Professor of English education

Dean of English Education Faculty

Sun Yat-sen University中山大学

China中国

written on the Spring Festival (Year of Tiger), Feb 16, 2010 庚寅虎年初三康乐园