China: campus reactions to the NATO bombing in 1999

Contemporary Review, Feb, 2003 by Garreth Byrne

Monday, 10 May: Off to the scheduled English class at 7.30 a.m., held on the third floor of Building 20, a ten minute stroll from the apartment. The second year students and I plod through the two-hour session with a short break in the middle. I then take the 30 first years for the final session before lunch. There is a restless feel about this group, but I let the first forty minutes continue as planned. The invisible vibrations do not cease; minds are not fully on vocabulary, grammar and comprehension tasks, so I decide to face the matter that has dominated their dormitory discussions of the previous evening.

TEFL conversation thrives when the subject matter touches on the concerns of English learners. I ask them what happened in Belgrade on Friday night and what they and other students did and saw on Sunday afternoon. I follow conversation procedures recommended by TEEL manuals. Elicit is a golden word used by TEFL textbook writers, so in this case I elicit simple English sentences from members of the class. I give them a model sentence opener: We took buses to Shamian Island [where two foreign consulates are located]; and I chalk up some key verbs on the blackboard. Thus, I write 'make banners' and ask a student: 'What did you make?' hoping that the prompted reply will be something like 'We made banners and placards'. I write items like 'march in groups', 'shout slogans' and 'express anger', and elicit sentences around the youthful freshman class until the description of the Sunday afternoon demonstration is well aired.

Then I call two students to the creaky wooden dais and ask them to translate verbally from a morning newspaper that I have brought along. The Chinese characters are large with dramatic photographs of destroyed embassy buildings in Belgrade and weeping China-based relatives of the dead journalists caught in the devastation.

One piquant detail is a quoted statement from a 69-year-old retired Chinese soldier who has offered to rejoin the People's Liberation Army so that he can bravely defend his country against NATO. The paper doesn't speculate about the unequal contest between an AK-47 rifle and a computer-guided cruise missile. From the classroom floor a female student speaks with emotion in English that rolls with the momentum of her feelings. Her words are interrupted gently, as she is apparently quoting and translating from a speech she heard yesterday during the demonstration.

I thank the students for their vocabulary building efforts, and without commenting on the NATO air bombardment in Yugoslavia, I promise to show the newspaper to friends on my return to Ireland. To my relief the lesson ends half an hour early - the students are scheduled to go into town again after lunch for a second demonstration.

Strolling back to my apartment I pass an open tarmac space fronting the splendidly modern science building. I count up to 15 buses parked outside the entrance. One of them is marked Bus number 64.1 wonder if its normal route ever takes it near the British and US consulate buildings.