It is quite known, especially for those experienced in managing and working with Chinese employees, there’s a significant difference between the Chinese and Western approaches to studying new material, starting new projects, facing new challenges at work etc.

This article aims to help and bridge between the foreign instructor or speaker and his Chinese audience in order for the two sides to gain more. One should emphasize that

this does not imply that the western way of education is better than the Chinese one or vice versa, but it is designed to help understand the different approaches of the 2 cultures. The Chinese education system deals with a large scale of massive volumes in terms of studies (630,000 new graduates engineers every year), and a similar article may very well be helpful if it would address Chinese instructors coming to lecture in a western environment.

As a foreigner, when explaining something new to your employees or trainees, you will find the Chinese way of studying new material, solving a problem, facing a new challenge and even asking a question to be different from yours:

You will find that the audiences are asking fewer questions, if any, not willing to provide feedback, almost never challenging the speaker, etc.

In my field of work, as the CEO of John Bryce China – a global IT training company, our instructors have always mentioned the big difference in teaching Chinese audience compared to western students. In this article I aim to research these differences, their origin and possibly how to bridge the cultural gap.

A glance backwards

So what are the reasons for the differences in approach?

The complete answer is a combination of many factors: the culture, society structure and hierarchy, one-child policy (and as a result, the importance of the child within in the family), massive government influence on the education system throughout history and more aspects that comes in different depth and layers.

Here, I will focus on the Chinese education system and its significance.

Back in the ancient days the Imperial examinations (pinyin: kēju) in Imperial China determined who among the population would be permitted to enter the State's bureaucracy elite. The Imperial Examination System in China lasted for 1300 years (!), from its foundation in 605AC, during the Sui Dynasty, till its abolition near the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1905. The Imperial examinations were extremely important to the Chinese individual career. In Southern China, a traveler can still find stone carving of past students with the highest scores. Basically, the Imperial Examinations goal was to prove deep knowledge of five holy books. The education method for passing the exams was to memorize large text volumes. The actual test was to write an article about one of the topics in the books.

After the Communists Revolution in China, the exams stopped, to came back only after the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). During the Cultural Revolution, many people have not been granted a chance to receive a proper education and develop academic careers. President Deng Xiao Ping brought the exams back to a "regular routine" in 1977. The National Examinations were now the tool to select high-school students for higher education institutes and universities.

These days, the students find themselves under great pressure. This is still the crucial exam that influences greatly one's chance for a decent job and an option for higher education. In addition, the massive population in China in comparison to the position available, as well was being an only child to parents who didn’t get the chance to develop academic careers, puts even more weight on the ‘student’s shoulders.

The education methods and classroom culture that are common in China are all intended for the student to pass a big exam. Middle school education rigorously stresses success through tests and memorizing. This way of teaching trains the students to always try and get "the right answer" and makes them fearful of giving a wrong answer; thus un-equipping the students in “out of the box” thinking.

Other issues to effect are based on the Chinese culture not to cause obvious dispute out in the open - a classical Confucian attitude, which advocates more rhetorical teaching, with clear hierarchy structure, vs. leading discussions with questions, amplified by the large numbers of students per classroom. As a result, Chinese students usually less likely to question the teacher and are not encouraged of doing so.

Tips from the classroom

For this article, I’ve gathered inputs and feedbacks from foreigner teachers and John Bryce training global instructors who have the experience with Chinese students.

Inputs by Tamara Brodinsky, Design Lecturer at Raffles Design Institute in Shanghai and several of John Bryce Training instructors:

Planning

- Add many exercises, demos and hands-on practice.

- Present the syllabus in the beginning of the course, and demonstrated the course plan progress every once in a while. Keep the whole picture clear.

PPTs

- Break down the text to many slides (a bit of text in each slide)

- Use as many graphics as you can to support and explain the text.

Interact!

- Working in groups creates more interacting among the students.

- Use the un-formal breaks - The teacher dismisses the class only to have many of them run up to the desk to ask their questions.

Communication and atmosphere

- Always assume you are misunderstood.

- Simple question of “Did you understand?” is not effective. You will always get a “Yes” as an answer (it’s a polite student behavior in China, and doesn’t mean they don’t have questions)

- In order to make sure you’re understood, you can ask a single student to explain how he or she understood what you just taught.

- Write the topics (X, Y, Z…) on the board. In case you have language difficulties – use someone to write the important terms in Chinese.

- Break the traditional classroom placements. Use U shape, chairs only, move around the class, Etc.

- Actively prevent interference – the teacher is superior - you should not hesitate to use it: Close the door, shut down the internet, confiscated mobile phones.

- Don’t be afraid of humor, but don’t be cynical or sarcastic. “Laugh with the student and not on his expense”, “I also find that laughing about myself a bit, helps to remove classroom tension”.

Criticism and Feedback

- Tamara finds it very tricky and recommends the following: “I refrain from using “bad work”. Better use “not good enough” together with constructive feedback. A possible template may be: “The idea is good, I see you have tried to implement it in X, Y way… but the result still not good enough. Let’s think together why… I know you can do it better next time. What do you think?”

- Always ask for their feedback after giving criticism. It will help you to understand what they have learned and get back inside the process.

- If possible, make an effort to memorize the student’s names – it gives a better class environment.

Language

English level might be excellent at some audience but might be poor as well.

- First, make sure to understand your audience English level by using interaction.

- Speak slowly and clearly and don’t “show off” with professional terms.

- One sentence = One idea – don’t make complex long sentences.

- Choose one capable individual among your audiences to act as translator during Q&A sessions.

Class Exercises

David Sackstein, John Bryce Training expert, who gave advance C++ programming course to Chinese engineers: “In a lesson on performance in C++, I gave the class a competitive exercise. Each student was required to complete a programming task. The fastest, correct program won. I wrote a program that ran all of the participant’s programs to test them. (I also participated in the competition and came in second : -). This goes back to “ways to encourage students to participate in the lesson.” It worked, and I even got updates by email in the evening back in the hotel. There was also plenty to discuss when we reviewed why the best program won…”

Rotem Bar, Fashion designer at adidas – Shanghai, and previously Design Lecturer at Raffles Design Institute in Shanghai: “As a design teacher, explaining and encouraging original thoughts, was and still is a big issue. I saw it as a teacher - students did not understand why it is wrong to copy, and by that totally missed the whole concept of studying design. As a teacher - whenever a student's project looked interesting or new, the first step I had to take was to look for it online, or in magazines - and I must say that unfortunately, most of the time I found the original work on designer’s websites.

I also faced the problem of plagiarism, while teaching students how to write a dissertation. Students were copying texts from the Internet (and never used books).

As I moved forward from teaching to commercial design, I found that some Chinese designers and marketing people sometime don’t understands the difference between researching and learning by doing competitive shopping and copying.”

In Conclusion,

I hope this short article will help you and your future audience. Although the world is considered to be flat, there are still differences, mainly cultural, and it should not to be ignored. As a foreign teacher / presenter you better always assume you are not understood the way you think you are and act to validate your teaching progress.

For the same reason, there definitely should be the similar article written for Chinese experts that will come to lecture in other countries. Embrace the difference, learn from it and enjoy.

Many thanks to Tamara Brodinsky for the tips and editorial help.

Yoav Chernitz,

John Bryce Training, China CEO