Don’t know Lei Feng and Yuan Longping, where is the English education in secondary vocational schools?

As a speaking test examiner, I recently participated in the invigilation of a certain national English test. Candidates are basically junior vocational students, aged around 15 years old. After completing 9 years of compulsory education, they were diverted to secondary vocational schools for in-depth professional and technical studies due to a variety of reasons, voluntarily or helplessly.

The difficulty of the oral test is very low, which is equivalent to the picture question and answer of the first grade Chinese. Students need to understand the pictures and work in pairs to ask questions and answer each other. Among them is a set of pictures with the title: my best-liked friend. The pictures of Yuan Longping and Lei Feng are given on the test paper. Obviously, the teacher who gave the test is very attentive and well-oriented: telling our own heroes in English and guiding students to chase “The brightest star.”

Recall what was our most vigorous mandatory activity in March of that year? It is to learn from Lei Feng and build a new style. I remember that in order to get praise from the teacher, the friends really used various relationships and racked their brains to do good deeds. The heads of Lei Feng in various shapes on the blackboard newspapers on campus are so impressive that you can hardly notice them. The story about Lei Feng is well-known, no matter whether it is accurate or not, it shouldn’t be difficult to tell one. There is no doubt that Lei Feng is the brightest star in March.

Yuan Longping, the father of rice, is worthy of our study and admiration. He devoted his life to one thing: breeding hybrid rice to help humans get rid of hunger. Yuan Lao’s deeds should be mentioned by teachers in ideological and political classrooms in primary and secondary schools.

I have a brief discussion with my partner teacher, and I think the students should be fine with this group of topics. There are 50 students in the entire examination room, except for single-digit questions and answers, everyone else is stuck on these two questions:

Q1: What does Yuan Longping/Lei Feng do? Q2: Why do you like him?

Some people can’t answer because of lack of vocabulary, and more often they answer incorrectly because they don’t know Lei Feng and Yuan Longping at all. The old Yuan in the picture is dressed in a simple dress and a paddy field beside him. Many students answered: He is a farmer./He is a worker. Why do you like him? The picture gives a bowl of rice. The classmates have opened their minds again: Because he likes rice.

Classmates, what you said really makes sense. Yuan Longping is an authentic farmer. He loves rice all his life! But from the examination point of view, we should be more accurate: He is an agriculturist. He cultivates rice and help many people get enough food.

Speaking of Lei Feng, I really want to collapse. Seeing a picture of Lei Feng holding a steel gun, someone said: He is a dancer. Uncle Lei Feng is alive in the sky, will he cry?

In our compulsory education stage, what kind of stars are the students chasing? What exactly should our English classroom teach children? How to reform the English classroom in secondary vocational schools?

The author once had a teaching career in a secondary vocational school. It is common for business English majors to be outdated textbooks, students reluctant to learn, and teachers reluctant to teach. Non-English majors give up English learning related to their majors, and the difficulty of the textbooks is equivalent to that of the first grade. Therefore, many students graduated from secondary vocational schools in three years, and basically have no progress in English, and continue to retrogress.

How to teach English? How to learn? Do all people learn together? Worth pondering.