What Students are Saying

STUDENTS OF HOLISTIC ENGLISH ARE WELCOME TO POST AFTER YOUR FINAL EXAM IS FINISHED AND NOT BEFORE.

Xinyang Agricultural College

“Our new spoken classroom at the school 2-302. It’s different from other classroom. New Oral indeed different from the previous classroom, very English atmosphere. We like it.” Venus Class: 06-business 1 NO: 067013119

“First I am very appreciate for you to build a wonderful English class room for the English major students. It is not only the first time for me to see this kind of classroom but all the students as well. I pretty enjoy the design in our classroom. It is convenient for us to communicate with each other. Especially that you can see every student very clearly and easily. Then I highly support your view of buying a large new TV in our classroom .Because there is no TV or computer in our dorm .In order to save money, some students do not want to go to the internet bar to view the events ornews happened in our nation or in the world. So this is a golden opportunity for us to open our eyes to the world. Next I want to give you a suggestion. Last class you told us that only third yearstudents and applied English class students can go to the room to watch the news from CCTV-9, BBC, CNN. But I think you should give this chance to every student who really wants to go there. Because Xinyang is a small and poor city in China .But we can not put ourselves in this limited space, we should keep up with the world. In my opinion there are a lot of students who need or want to watch the news in our wonderful room. So I hope you can open to the students who would like to go there.” Jane Class 2 Tourism English NO.18

“Our new classroom is really great. It’s clean, comfortable and attractive. So that the classroom can stimulate learning and help build a classroom community. I prefer the U-shaped configuration in our new classroom, where everyone has a frontrow seat. We can make eye contact with every student and reach each student with easy. It’s good for us. I like the plants in our new classroom. Because the plants are an excellent way to make our classroom look more welcoming. They also improve the air quality in air-conditioned building. When I am thirsty, I can get water from the water machine. But in my opinion basic bulletin boards are not enough. I believe in a very colorful classroom with poster, photograph and other interesting things to enhance the environment, such as a small refrigerator, electric heating, TV, and a stereo system with a CD player. If they can achieve, I will be very happy. But now what we can do is cherishing the hard-won good learning environment and thanks to our Professor. Thank you for thinking of us”. Maggie Tourism English Class One NO:04

“We are extremely grateful that we could have class in this special classroom. It has unique decoration and it makes us fresh and refined. Especially in the shape of “U” and the back row is higher than the front. It makes every student express his own opinion as he pleases and talk to each other. It really provides a good circumstance for us to train our oral English. All of us love this new special classroom very much.” Lisa Class 4 of Business English NO: 23

Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics

Student #1

The special course of learning English by watching movie really helped my English skills, the major advantage of this method is that watching movie is interesting rather than others which is boring and difficult to keep. I think the specific improvement by this course include these aspects following.

First, it improves my reading as well as listening. The first time when I came to the course, I was almost puzzled by the fast spoken English with the fast going English subtitles. But after a couple of courses, I can understand the major content of the movie. Now it becomes much easier and more comfortable for me to catch onto the movie.

Second, during the discussion, I also improved my oral English. Actually during the day of discussion, we talk about anything we like not only the movie. During the discussion, we learned from each other. Many mistakes was found and then corrected during the talking.

The last and the most important is that the course built in me the English thinking. Before taking this course, the way I used English is thinking in Chinese then translate it into English, after all that process, it came out of my mouth but still with a lot of mistakes. But now it only has one process that is saying what I am thinking.

Now English is no more that bad for me, and I owe all my confidence to this special course of learning English with fun.

Student #2

I like your new method of teaching English. Through your class my English has improved a lot. And the most important point is that my oral English is much more fluent than ever.

Here is my opinion about the advantages of your book:

First, I learn through watching movies, which makes me more interested and concentrated. And I can remember longer than reading ordinary textbooks.

Second, after watching the movie, I have works related to it to do which will make me more impressive. And we will discuss the movie. This is the most important part because it makes me think and express ourselves and my oral English has practiced.

Third, there is a lot of information in the movie. I can learn many professional words and expressions and the use of them. After reading your book we can have a better understanding.

Student #3

Thank you for helping me with my oral English. I do not dare to say that after joining your special English class I have improved my speaking English very much, but I did learn a lot from it.

And also, thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for your fantastic movies. They shared a lot of funny things and also professional subjects to us. At the same time, watching & learning. For the movie’s part, I have something to say and must to say about what it brought to me. Meanwhile, I do hope that my experience and point of view would give you and the forthcoming students a few suggestions:

1. Scanning materials.

Before you watch the movie, it’s necessary to read the materials that you have. It can help you know the background of the movie, and you also can go on the Internet to find the data or information that helps you to get in deeper with that movie.

2. Words and phrases.

In the movie, there are so many “American” phrases and slangs that you can’t understand. After watching the movie you will know their meaning, how they are used, in what circumstance you can use it naturally. Of cause, most of them were listed in your workbook; so, it really saves you a block of time.

3. Movie discussion

I like the movies, not because the movie itself brings satisfaction, but it also helps me to improve my listening and speaking. But actually, it’s more than that. You will find it’s a quiet different thing between speaking out and just watching. During the discussion, you will find there are a lot of ideas and feelings that you got from the movie. When you open your mouth and speak out to express your own opinion and try to convince somebody, you will have absorption of other people’s viewpoints, which you didn’t realize. And finally agree to disagree.

4. Think actively

I think it’s a great help for me that I took the special English class. Seize the chance to express your unique opinion; it will bring you an unexpected surprise. So you think actively and act quickly!

5. Nervous & scary? —-NO!

As the class continues, you will find you are not afraid of speaking in public anymore, not afraid to make mistakes, not afraid to lose your valueless face, because you have grown up!

Sun Yat-sen University

My English semester is going to be over, I have learned a lot in this half year, to be intrinsic motivated and be on time to attend professor’s classes and so on. Besides, it helps me to know how to continue my further English study. So I write this letter to thank you for what you have done for all of us students. Best regards. (Ivy Huang)

Thank you so much for providing such a fantastic English learning envirment for all of us. Your work did make us use English better although it sometimes took more time than it should be. But we really thank you for facilitating our English class, for providing the place for us to watch the movies, for finding such an unusual but really kind hearted and helpful and creative foreign teacher. Thank you so much for everything. (Annie)

Thank you for building an English Movie Library for us. I’m Sarah Qiu from Lingnan College, SYSU. Thank you for caring about us, I’m sure the English Movie Library will enrich our university education. Thank you again, from my heart. (Sarah)

I am Simone, a student of Martin Wolff from English class 21 .Thank you very much for your great efforts to build a English movie library for our campus! You know there are a lot of difficulties in our English learning, the most important one is the lack of a good environment. You care about our English learning so much that you created the library to enrich our resources of English learning. Watching English movies is a most favorable way to improve our English. (Simone)

I write this letter to thank you for the English Movie Library which is absolutely a good way for us to improve our English. It is very wonderful that all the movies are with English subtitles. (Eris, Class 14)

Thank you very much that you are so caring about our English study and give us the new book “International Business Law (3^rd Edition)”.

We had your lesson once at the beginning of this term when Ms. **  hadn’t arrived in our campus. Your lesson was impressive and helpful. And I remembered that you have told us English can be a kind of lifestyle. Your class is enlightening and I find that I have more enthusiasm in English when it comes to my daily life. (Jessica Xu, Class 11)

joe Class 2c Submitted on 2010/05/11 at 12:28am SYSU

Professor Martin is leaving, and I don’t know the reason why. I admit that I didn’t read much and neither of my comments on this websit. But I feel my English has improved a lot this semester, so I thank him and I will miss him. Wishing him a good trip around this country and the world. He really had done a very wonderful great work.

Yes, I was drowned in you assignments. The beginning was hard to me, and I would feel tired and a little bit scared of your e-mails. But now, I nearly regard reading your essays and posting comments as a part of my daily routine. I used to be confused by seeing you afford so many controversial materials in you web site, but just after your second class when you asked us to do comments in a rational and neutral attitude I got my answer. E-mail you sent yesterday made me upset and hard to believe it. As you’re changing us gradually and making yourself be heard more and more, why you chose to leave? Now I know your reason, and I just feel that it’s a pity you will leave and it’s my honor to be one of your last students in SYSU.

Best regards.
Caren

Dear Prof. Wolff,

I feel upset after reading your last mail. I should say that you are a good and responsible teacher in my heart. You are, as you said, a teacher I have never met before. You open a window for me, through which I see more; give a platform for me to say more and share more. I appreciate what you have done to us very much.

I do not want to judge my peers. But as to myself, I would like to express my profound appreciation to you. It is my honor to have you as my teacher. And it would be SYSU’s loss to lose you.

Thank you again. Look forward to seeing you in two weeks.

Best,

Linda, Class 14

Amy Class 12C

I think, Martin is a earnest and responsible teacher. Sometimes, several
students complain that there are lots of homework and assignments, even some
students are afraid of his English class. In my opinion, we grow up in China and we
never receive such strict and systemic English lessons before. Facing with
Martin’s special teaching, we often feel very difficult at the beginning. But I
believe, we can accept Martin’s teaching style by degrees and at the end of
this term we can get great progresses.

Dear professor Martin,

Hello, I’m writing to thank you for the last thing I learned in the class this afternoon, which is about Examination. Before, examination was much like an unavoidable burden, most of which bothered me a lot. But today I got to know more about it. I came to the classroom a little early and became the first one to be tested nearly as soon as I sit down, which told me that examination can be anytime when you get to the situation. When I was going to leave, another student just finished the test and was not satisfied about her performance, asking for another chance. Then you said that I’ve given you a chance. Suddenly I realized that examination was actually a chance instead of a burden. It is a chance to show how you perform on the particular issue, to let others know what you have got and what you have done. Without it, nobody knows your hard work and sweet. The examination is a chance pretended as a burden. And I know, even after I graduate, I will also come across lots kinds of examinations, and I think, with such an attitude about examination, I will do better and more relaxed.

I know that maybe you have come across some Chinese students who contacted you and said a lot of good words just for better grades. So I took a while to consider whether I should write this letter, because I do not want to be classified as such kind of students. Finally, I decided to write to show my respects because you are quite a special and interesting English teacher for me, and I did learn a lot not only about English and English learning, but also about life, work and attitude. Moreover, I wrote it as soon as I reached the dormitory or I would change my mind later probably.

At last, goodbye! And wish you have a good time in the latter days.

Sincerely, Eric class 16c

Professor Martin,

I know I should not send e-mail to you arbitrarily, but I have something to say necessarily. I think you maybe felt disappointed about some persons, or SYSU, or even education and policy in China in recent time, but please don’t feel disappointed to us, we support you, at least me I feel my spoken English improved much in this semester, which is your contributions. Thank you, you are supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Finally, I want to say that, this e-mail was checked by WORD, whose purpose is also not to get high marks.

Your sincerely

Levin

Dear professor:

When I came in the classroom this afternoon, I found a little unhappy on your face, in a word, there is something different, I do not know whether it is just because you caught a bad cold. in fact , I wanted to write to you to tell you something , especially you sent us an email named ‘clear?’ , in which , some friends and I found you were upset about the teaching situation , and we feel strange that you say so . We do not hope to see that, and we know that you must be misunderstood. From the email we guess your department leader may find you and tell you something frustrated.

The reason that why you were misunderstood is that , some students do not catch what the passage says in the web site ,because of the poor English and the limited spare time . we should let you know that , some students have seven subjects this semester , and they have classes from Tuesday to Friday all day long . After class there are a lot of books of their studied field to read and homework to do . Of course English is one of the subjects , however , it is not the most important one , though it can make money just as you says , the problem is that if we do not read a lot of books on our studied field , we can not graduate and even find a job accordingly . In the first two week , my classmates and I go to the web site and leave a reply , it is good , we love English , and make our mind to study well . However, one week you put two passages on Monday, Tuesday you put five and Wednesday there is two more , short to say , in that week we have to watch two movies and read no less than ten passages , even in the weekend! If we do not finish them, it will effect the sores of this subject, once fail to pass, we can not graduate on time and search a job. so , in that week we can not read the books or papers of our studied field , and then most of us began to hate English and do not want to see it , but actually we love to learn English at the beginning , because the homework you arrange to us is proper , one day a passage ,or no more than five a week . Maybe you will say it is a easy job for us to read two or three , but actually , because we are not the students of English major and most of us do not love to learn before , it is hard for some of us to read and leave a reply , take me for example , I have not type English words before , so when typing on the keyboards , I forget how the words spell , every time I have to spell in a paper and then find the character in the keyboard , which takes me at least 40 minutes to leave a reply , sometimes is an hour . If there is three passages in you website, I have to spend a whole night without doing others, not to say five! I know what you do is to make our English better, but the real situation is that some of us can not stand too many passages.

Another situation of us is that, before a postgraduate student, some of us do not come from this university; they are from parochial college which education in china is not so good, you may know this, so there may be some difficulties in reading English passages and give a comment on those sensitive issues. When facing “too much “English passages, and have no idea how to finish on time, some will lodge a complaint and doubt what are you doing and why you want us to face the political sensitive issues? Although in fact, you do not mean so, just as they think, to the contrary, you teach us so much, we should thank you for your effort.

In a word, I do not want to see and feel sorry to this situation now, and I do not know how to do , maybe what I can do is to tell you something you should know , communication is important , misunderstanding make both unhappy . of course , I do not know whether I have misunderstand your feeling , if so , please forgive my guesswork . Ok, it is time for supper, to write this letter, I have spent an hour, I think it is a progress for me to type so long without spell in a paper before so, thank you again and hope you get better soon. ….

Best wishes,

Yours sincerely

Anonymous 11c

I think the reason why many students misunderstand or even hate you is that you are radical for Chinese students, and strict on the other hand. In fact, there are many teachers students believe to be radical, but most students like them because young people like the person whose ideas are different. And it’s natural that at the same time many students dislike them, just like the case of you. So I think you don’t have to worry about it, it’s common. The difference between the radical Chinese teacher and you is that you are strict with students. This brings about anxiety, not angry. Many of us worry about whether their are able to follow your requirements(My class mates said: unless I do not do have to do other things, I can not follow his instructions) and whether you would let them fail(In fact, I was worried too, but I can understand you). The perceived anxieties magnify students’ angry. In any case, you have opened a window for us to understand how foreigners think about China, so many of us value what you have done.

I don’t know what I have written above is right or wrong, I just want to help you to understand why.

Have a good day!
Peter 12C

Dear teacher,

Although I know nothing about why our dear teacher has changed his mind a lot about the requirements, what I want to say is: you are actually a good teacher, even the best one that I have met with. I usually think for myself if I have met you much earlier, maybe my English has already been improved greatly, and maybe now I have become an extremely successful girl. And now I begin to see why every of your children has been so successful during their lives and career. One of the most important reason should be they all have a very fantastic father who can teach them a lot.

So I am very proud of having been one of your students, and I promise you that I will keep working hard throughout my life and trying my every effort to learn more, create my own career, and become an outstanding girl who is able to help others a lot.

And thanks again for your approval and recommendation for my certificate of appreciation.

Best wishes,

Yours sincerely,

Oray

I gotta say your pedagogy works on me and I love it. No exaggeration and compliment.

Why can we teachable and reachable just continue this once-in-a-lifetime experience of English?

But I know that it’s all late for those complains that ruined all these.

I really appreciated your effort. U R GREAT! After all, having fun and feeling respected is beyond all.

Evelyn
“Evelyn”

Dear professor:
Thank you !
I don’t know what I can say now, thank you for teaching us, Thank you for taking us to a new world that I never have been.
Best wishes! I hope I can meet you in the future, I hope I can tell you I’ve gotten a success that day.
Goodbye and good luck for both of us.
Yours sincerely: Cecilia Class 8C

Dear Professor:
Thank you for all you have done for us. No matter where you go, we will miss you.
I’M not a good student, but I really like you and your words.
GOOD LUCK FOR EVER
Lisa Class 10C

Dear professor,
Thank you for teaching us this semester, you are a good teacher!
Wish you everything goes well!
Jessie Class 11c

Dear Martin:
Thank you so much for all the things you have taught us! Wish you good luck, no matter wherever you are!~
Johnson class 6C

Dear Martin,
You are an interesting teacher, thank you and enjoy your teaching life in China!
Julia Class 13C

Dear professor:
Welcome to China next time .We will miss you! Wish you a good summer! Goodbye!
Jo Class 12C

Thanks very much. And I really appreciate what you’ve done for us, I will miss you.
Angela Class 16C

Dear Professor Martin Wolff:
Thank you for this Holistic English course.
I really learnt a lot from it this semester.
Here send my best wishes to you. Hope you good health and happiness.
Joanna （15C）

Dear Professor Martin,
Thanks very much for your great job this term, I really learn a lot from the English class!
Best wishes.
Tiffany Class 3C

Dear teacher Martin:
How are you!
I think I get a lot of profits from your lessons. You give me a deep impression about the way how a man should speak english with passion and confidence. I would not forget you in my life.
Best Wishes ! Good Luck !
Your student: Greg (Lei Kang) Class 9C

Dear professor,
I am sorry to about the news that you will leave this university and may be we will never have the chance to meet you from this moment on. However, according to what you told us during that assistants meeting, I have the feeling that since you suffered a lot from a few unreachable and unteachable students here, perhaps it is a much better choice for you to leave for your country or some other pleasant universities where you can enjoy yourself. Dear professor, I really hope so. Although even someone have badmouthed you, I still be the student of your and I am also convinced that there are quantities of students like me want to appreciate you and will miss you no matter what ways they will be in. After all, you have been teaching us strictly, quietly and wholeheartedly. The knowledge is not paramount but all those advice, experiences and even lessons you said to us will be benefitable for our life forever. That is the truth.
Dear professor, there is a proverb in China. He who teaches me one day is my teacher for all life. So I want to dedicate this sentence to you, professor. Thank you for being our teacher. Wish you happy forever!
Sincerely yours
Maya Class 8C