[Dominick: not his real name]
It was my idea to have a two-teacher system for each grade, so that the students could have exposure to more than one accent, one style of teaching, etc.
The teacher co-teaching Dominick’s class was a fresh arrival from Taiwan, who told me about this episode with Dominick.
In his typical cantankerous style, Dominick kept interrupting the teaching, asking questions about this, that and everything else.
The teacher from Taiwan, a soft-spoken gentle bookish soul, said, “He wound me up so much that I just flipped. My English wasn’t very good at the time, so I don’t know where I found so much, and the appropriate level of, English to tell him off. I said to him, ‘You’re on a Chinese course, so you have to observe all the cultural behaviour rules that come with learning the language. This means respecting the teacher and not interrupting the teaching, as it’s very disruptive.’
He was dumbfounded by this tirade, delivered in fluent English, and was on his best behaviour from then on, even the subsequent weeks, not just for the rest of the lesson.”
(London, 1987?88?)
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