A British teacher gives an English lesson at a kindergarten in Shandong province. Many Chinese children start learning English when they are toddlers. [Sun Shubao / For China Daily]

Connecting East and West in a kindergarten classroom

在中国的双语幼儿园里， 穿着开裆裤的小孩也肩负着中西文化交流的重任。

Memories of my first day teaching kindergarten are as hazy as those of being in kindergarten myself; I got through it on adrenaline and "baa-baa black sheep". Two dozen tiny willies were winking at me from non-sewn up trousers, and my classes burst into tears at the sight of me. I could happily have joined them.

In China there is enormous pressure on students to learn English. They start as toddlers, sitting straight-backed on their tiny chairs, repeating lines of the ABCs.

The school I worked at was trying to cater to two styles of language learning. Modern educational studies show that people absorb information in different ways. The most balanced and effective approach to teaching is to make it varied and fun. Tradition, meanwhile, dictates that students are drilled, drilled and drilled again, particularly when learning a language.

The Chinese teachers drilled all the words, phrases and songs. My job was to bring the variety and fun. I wanted to teach something meaningful: communication, in the widest sense.

I pasted on a smile, dredged nursery rhymes from my memory and did my best to make the ABCs, flashcards and nonsense from their textbooks exciting. ("On the road, I see a car. / I see a car go Ba! Ba! Ba!" ... Riveting stuff.)

The Chinese teachers and assistants were a combination of dictator, warden and mother. After shouting the children into submission and marching them out to the playground, the teachers tucked their tiny students in for their naps and cuddled them when the sight of speckled foreigners became too much.

Since I parachuted in just once a week, it was hard to tell if the Chinese teachers resented me being there or not. My nervous smiles met with blank expressions. They handed me flashcards and said, "New words" or "Review".

I concentrated on trying to teach the kids and got by on what essentially amounted to physical comedy. I enlivened the song Ten Green Bottles with a series of falls from the tiny classroom chairs. The teachers looked on, mildly scandalized by my lack of dignity - but the kids loved it.

Once, during my least favorite class - 48 five-year-olds - I walked in to a roaring chorus of "Good morning, teacher!" and "Review!" before having some flashcards shoved in my hands by Mandy, my assistant. I did not know that those flashcards were all the kids had seen that week.

For five minutes I had their attention - and then the room broke into chaos. Groups of kids got out their maths books; others began wrestling under desks; a couple of girls started singing and one little boy actually started climbing the walls.

I was shouting (into my microphone headset), but none of them took notice. Banging my fists on the tables did not work, neither did silent glaring. Playing Jingle Bells on the keyboard did not work. Not even getting out my Chinese phrase book and appealing to the classroom assistants worked.

Me: "Umm ... a little help here?"

Mandy (looking up from texting): "Ha ha ha haa."

After this lesson, I resolved to improve my Chinese. I learned the most useful phrase any would-be English teacher in China can add to their repertoire: Qingwen ni keyi fanyi ma? (请问你可以翻译吗? Can you please translate?)

The phrase had an electrifying effect. My smiles got answering ones. My broken, but persevering attempts at Chinese got halting English in return. The teachers and I started communicating rather than making desperate, disjointed efforts at teaching the children. I learned how to keep a class focused; they started introducing games and competitions into lessons. Two assistants even got involved by demonstrating a backwards race.

I am not sure how much the kids really learned from me, nor how long they will be bouncy little monkeys who will do anything for stickers. I do know they will be drilled in grammar and vocabulary for the next 15 years.

If China's goal in teaching English is not only doing business with the West, but clearing the way for the cross-cultural sharing of ideas, then flashcards and grammar lessons are not going to make global communication a reality. The beauty of importing foreign teachers is that we are able to bring a different approach to education, one that promotes lateral thinking, inquiring minds and creativity - all skills that, while less tangible, are just as essential as facts and figures.

But it is not just students who benefit from this kind of exchange - I think both the Chinese teachers and I gained more than we realized from working with one another. What we discovered is that you never stop being a student.

I might not have been able to teach grammar, or get the words of Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes across, but, in the end, I started encouraging communication, and that is a lesson worth learning.

Courtesy of The World of Chinese, www.theworldofchinese.com

The World of Chinese