January 25, 2015 - 15:00
It was my sophomore year in this international/British high school and all my teachers were from English-speaking countries. Different from typical international schools, none of the students in my high school has international background that all of us were born and raised in China, so Chinese is the first language for all of us. And one day during my Chemistry class, my teacher Ms.A asked us to do group work and suddenly the class was filled with discussion in Chinese. She reminded us of using English twice and then she just got mad and stopped our discussion. She said to us, in both annoyed and a little bit arrogant tone, “I assume you guys came to this international school for studying in English-speaking countries. So I think you prefer English and English speaking countries over Chinese and China or you would not choose to study abroad. In order to study abroad, you need to practice your English all the time instead of rudely using Chinese in my class.”
The whole class was in shock and I could not stop thinking about that class even after my graduation from high school. I wanted to ask her if by going to another country for education or working means preferring that country over the original country, than does coming to China to teach mean she thinks China is better than Britain? But I never asked.
I agree using the language that both she and the class understood, in this case English, is better for our communication and is for us to show our respect to her. However, it is not the language we should use that bothers me, but her attitude and thoughts towards us, students who want to study abroad. I do not deny that some of us want to go to another country for education because UK or U.S. has better resources, or is a better country, but there is still a lot of us only want to get to know another part of this world. However as an educator, she assumed a lot of things and then prioritized her language and her culture, and she even put herself at a higher place to speak to us and demand us to speak the language that she assumed “we preferred”. And it bothers me because there are so many teachers like her who teach in their languages in another country, and what if they all assume the same thing that student learn the language because they love that country better. And it even bothers me more after I came to America because i don’t know if people around me assume the same thing.
I really did not mind speak English at any occasion, but after knowing that speaking English and coming to America might make people think I love America more than China, I started to think carefully before I speak English every time.