As an English teacher what is your best way to...

[Pedestrain]

There are tens of millions of students who are studying English in China, but as an English teacher my students often ask me a question embarras me :"Sir, i am not interested in English though I know English is very important. Do you have any idea to help me interested in it?" and what is more unfortunately is: most of those students have bad performance in English.

Oh my god, I am very sorry to those students because I really don't have any good ideas in my mind but every time I will tell them :"Try to do something in English you are interested in. For example if you like movies just watch english edition and if you are interested in sports just try to surf the sports websites written in English." But some students will say:"I prefer to watch the chinese edition and I can get any information in chinese."

So if you are a teacher teaching English as a foreign language, what is your best way to help students develop their interest in and motivation towards english studying?

[Torsten]

Hi Pedestrain,

If a person says to you "I'm not interested in learning English although I know that English is very important" I would ask them why they think English is important. Isn't there some logic missing here? It seems that the people you are describing simply don't know what they want to achieve in life. They might have heard that English is important but they don't know why it might be important and as a result they have no connection to the language. The vast majority of all people live in mediocrity. They are not interested in politics, technology or literature. All they want is a simple job so they can earn enough money to get by. Why would they want to learn English? The Chinese government might say English is important but does the average Chinese agree? It's very difficult for them to make a connection between the English language and their standard of living. So instead of trying to teach unmotivated masses, you should focus on the small percentage of people who do want to learn English themselves. Find those students in your class and work with them. After a while they others might actually follow.
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