After ten years as a teacher on the evening programme, I was made the co-ordinator for the evening Chinese section.
The students on the evening programme were all mature students (no student under 18 was eligible to join), with a lot of them easily above 40, if not 50. Some even had PhDs. Some were high-flyers in their professions (an intellectual property rights expert, e.g.).
September is when registration for evening classes starts. There’d be just two evenings set aside for it, one each in two consecutive weeks, although people could still turn up late, after term had started.
Those who were not absolute beginners had to be assessed for placing in the right grade. You had to ask them how much Chinese they knew, whether they knew any characters, and how many if they did. You also had to give them a quick diagnostic test on the spot to help you place them, e.g., give them something to read out loud for character recognition, etc.
Because of the small time window, the queue could start to build up. Waiting times could be as long as half an hour, if not more.
In my first year as co-ordinator, someone in the queue got a bit fed up of the long wait, and said, “Oh, why are we doing this?!”
A continuing student (who therefore knew me well) quipped, “Because the co-ordinator knows where we live!”
(London, 1995)
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