I taught a university class last week. Obviously, as a visiting lecturer in a single class, I can't call myself professor. I can't even call myself a lecturer. You get no title for one day's work. If anything, I am that lady who came in that one time. Some of the students called me laoshi, but that was more about being polite than anything on my CV.
Am I qualified to teach a university class? Not in the least. And yet, I did so in Hong Kong two or three times. That was because the actual professor of that class wanted someone to come in and explain to her students how screwed up the educational system is in the United States. I was the only American who could communicate with her students that she could find on relatively short notice. Rather than teach the class, I simply talked about my experience with American public education and answered, or tried to answer, about a million questions. I was nothing more than a guest speaker.
On another occasion, I spoke to a different class at the same school about American politics. This was at a time when American politics were considered the most divisive they had been since the Civil War, and yet, compared to today, seem like a quaint and innocent distant past. While I have no interest in discussing American politics with Americans, it can be an interesting subject in a classroom full of Chinese students. Absolutely none of them regurgitated a single talking point from any of their favorite “news” shows. They only used their own words and were open to actually discussing the subject. I don't remember exactly how much I was paid, but I remember thinking that an American teacher would love to get that much money for so little work.
My tenure as a professor in Kaohsiung was something different. An actual professor at my sister's school had to go out of town for a family situation. Rather than cancel her dialectology class that day, she asked me if I could be her substitute. Reasonably, I pointed out that I am neither a professor nor lecturer, have no teaching license or certifications, and have not taken a dialectology class since 2015. I assumed that the university had some form of substitute teacher system in place. Surely, they must do something other than cancel a class whenever the professor is unavailable. But looking at my own time as a student, I cannot remember ever having a substitute teacher after high school. When the professor was out, class was canceled that day.
As a substitute “professor”, all I really had to do was follow the real professor's lesson plan. The book does most of the work if you read the unit, and most of the students came to class prepared. But the lesson plan was written by and for their professor. As someone new and different, the class had a number of questions for me. Fortunately, no one asked if I was at all qualified to teach the class. They probably assumed that since I was standing at the front of a class at their university, I must have the right to be there.
Dialectology is the study of dialects, obviously, and a fascinating subject. I don't know the first thing about most of the languages on this planet, but the one or two languages I know have a wide variety of dialects. Chinese dialects are so varied that some people consider them separate languages. If English has anything in common with Chinese it is the vast number of mutually intelligible, and sometimes unintelligible, dialects around the world. Just as someone from Alabama might have difficulty understanding someone from Scotland, someone from Xinjiang might have difficulty understanding someone from Fujian. The dialects can be wildly different, but the languages are the same, more or less. The people from Xinjiang and Fujian can read the same words, as can the people from Scotland and any literate people from Alabama.
My students for the day were well aware of the differences in Chinese dialects. While they all learned Chinese in Taiwan, many of them had traveled to various parts of China, where almost no one speaks Taiwanese Chinese. Even the few who have never set foot out of their home country have seen movies and TV shows filmed in a hundred different dialects. With so many Chinese people on the planet speaking a language that has existed for thousands of years, the variety of dialects is completely natural.
What the students all seemed surprised to learn was that English has almost as many different dialects as Chinese. They know that it is spoken everywhere the British subjugated the native people, but they also know that it is a new language. When watching English-language movies and TV, they mostly see American shows with actors who learned how to speak in the most generic of General American accents. Even the British and Australian actors on American TV are trained to use a General American accent. Someone with a good ear for accents and dialects can tell you where most of the top Chinese celebrities come from. Despite the hundreds of Australian actors in American movies and TV shows, Americans point to Crocodile Dundee as an example of an Australian accent because everyone else had to master General American. When I was in junior high school, I took a theater class on the Mid-Atlantic accent. I think that one is pretty noticeable, but no one uses it anymore.
Since I am from Minnesota, I speak with a slight Upper Midwestern accent and occasionally use words and phrases like boughten, spendy, skol, you know. This means that when I say dot and daughter, the vowels sound the same, as do bot and bought, stock and stalk. To people in other parts of the United States, those vowels have different sounds. Pin and pen sound completely different to me. Mary, marry, merry all sound the same. Roof has a shorter vowel sound than boot, casserole is hotdish, couch is sofa, cola is pop. To most Americans, Minnesota means the characters from Fargo, but that was obviously an exaggeration of how they speak up north. Most Minnesotans sound like Dakotans. And those of us with theater training can use General American if necessary.
To my Chinese students, everyone who speaks English sounds the same. Just as the students all sound the same to English speakers. To me, they sound Taiwanese, which is a world away from Hongkonger. I'm starting to hear a difference between northern and southern Taiwan, but that could be my imagination. Too many people in Taiwan grow up in one part of the country and go to school in another part. After school, they might go back or stay. All the movement around the country makes it much harder to pinpoint accents and dialects. China is much easier. When you meet someone from Shanghai in Xiamen, you know they are from Shanghai right away.
But the biggest surprise in teaching the class, hands down, was the use of cell phones. Back in my day, phone use was strictly forbidden in most classes. Today, it is their most useful tool. Almost none of the students bought a physical copy of the textbook. They all had it on their phones. It took me a while to get used to everyone staring at their phones when I asked them questions or read bits from the book. As an American, my first thought was that there is no way to know if they are looking at the book or just screwing around on their phones. But I got over that pretty quickly. This was a university class. Every one of them had to earn their right to be there. Though not exactly the most prestigious university in the country, it is competitive enough that coasting through is not an option. This was not a general education class. To most of the students, it was required for their major. Paying attention was in their best interest. Of course, that is true with most classes, but these were not American students. Announcing your laziness and stupidity are not considered cool in Chinese culture.
A few days later, the actual professor told me that the students liked having me as their substitute teacher. Of course, that could simply be a case of something new and different to break up the routine. She asked me if I would be willing to substitute again, if needed. There is no way I could ever make a career of this, especially since I already have a career that takes up a good deal of my time. But I can see myself in front of another class again someday.
