At first, I made a point of waking them up with simple questions.
"What's your name?"
"Guh."
"Hello Guh. Where are you from?"
"Guh."
"Do you speak English?"
"Guh."
Do you speak Chinese?"
"Guh."
This never got me anywhere, their cavemen responses being intelligible neither to me, nor to the other students who I asked to help me understand. More often than not they went back to sleep, their upper-halves crumpling back onto the desk, as soon as I turned my back . For a time (about 49 seconds) these sleeping heads worried me - were my lessons really that boring? From speaking to the other teachers, however, having comatose kids at the back of the room is pretty normal - they don't want to learn English, it's 8am and it's tiring being dozy all the time you are actually awake.
One head on the desk belongs to William. William always sits in the back corner, near the window, normally obscured from my view from the front by the rest of the class sitting up and paying attention.
For the first few classes, he was getting some good shut-eye in English class, and having failed so far to meaningful communicate with the other grunters I was fairly willing to let him sleep.One Monday morning, though, I was surprised to see him sitting upright at the back. Intrigued, I walked over to check how he was getting on with the exercise I was nearly certain he wasn't doing.
He must've had 250 RMB in fivers on the desk, counting it all off against a list of names, flicking through the stack like someone who's used to handling a lot of cash. He's a fairly big guy, sharply dressed and, I realised, a lot meaner looking when you find him doing his accounts for the racket I immediately assumed he was running. Or dealing.
"Um... er, William, what are you doing?"
"Guh."
"Yes, I know. Ok. Um, exercise three, please." I said, and retreated back to the less scary students.
The next class, he was sat at the back again, head on the table but no cash on the desk. He must've collected all his dues, I guessed. Underneath his sleeping body, however, I noticed that he'd completed exercise three, and four and started number five and actually got them all correct.
"William... hang on," I said as the class ended. "I think you're English is pretty good." His face lit up the way all the students do when I tell them this white lie. "Even if you don't want to learn English very much," I continued, "I think if you speak a little bit more in class, it might help the other students to listen to you. What do you think?"
"Guh."
I must've got through to him. A week later, sure enough he's sat in the middle of the other students. Not at the front, nobody ever sits at the front, but still, you could've mistaken him for a member of the class. It was certainly no miracle, but he answered the register, his hand went up for a few questions, he called out some answers... he was totally different.
I was so pleased and I think the class could tell. Things were going much faster, they were laughing and calling out great answers, imaginative responses and, dare I say it, maybe even learning something. Until we got to verbs.
My question of "What's a verb?" was met with blank faces and silence, and William's head hit the desk. I was losing them! I gave them a few examples and they got what I meant and I thought we ought to reinforce it with as many examples as we could think of.
"OK, when I point to you, I want you to tell me one verb. They must all be different." Going around the class, we exhausted play, eat, drink and sleep almost instantly. 20 kids in, it was getting harder but they managed dream, wonder and relax.
And then there was Ben. Ben's nice, probably, he doesn't sleep but he also doesn't speak a word of English and doesn't have a clue what's going on. He didn't know what the current exercise was, let alone a verb to offer me. Fortunately, William was there, sat next to Ben, ready to help.
William cups his hand and whispers an answer in Ben's ear. Ben looks confused, not understanding but listening to repeat the sound of the word William has advised him will please the foreigner so that the attention can move away from him.
Looking me straight in the eye, with an expression of 'I hope this is what you mean but I really don't know what's happening', Ben says "Fuck?"
Cue riotous laughter, a speechless me and a big, big, annoying smile on William's face.
I've learnt an important lesson about teaching, I know that. I'm just not sure what the important lesson is. Let sleeping dogs lie, perhaps?