Off Topic

Last night was the weekly installment of the craziness known as English Corner. Last year, for the first semester, this club was exiled to the dance room complete with terrible acoustics and gradually declining attendance. This year, it appears to have started on a high note!
By the time I got there, about 10 minutes before it was due to start, all the chairs were taken and there were 2 rows of people standing at the back. It had also already begun, I guess to calm the assembled masses. HongNgoc, the leader of EC and subject of "Teacher Conversation" was supposed to give a talk about tips for improving the students' English and making them more confident when speaking to foreigners. I said I could help and before I knew it, the interviewers of TC were informed that I would be doing the talk with her.
At the given time we were introduced and asked questions like "how can students overcome their fear of making mistakes?" (get over it), "how do you (teachers) react when noone wants to volunteer or it's always the same people who volunteer?" (we get sad, then just pick on the quiet ones... mwahaha), "should we be working on learning slang and idioms to make the conversations go more smoothly and to sound more native?" (you can, but if you overuse it, you'll sound like a weird movie-quoting machine) and, bizarrely, "to the teacher with red hair, is that your natural hair color?" (my dear, noone naturally has hair this color). Why the student thought that this was a question people wanted the answer to or that it was the right time to ask it, I have no idea!
The biggest issue, other than departing from the topic quite so thoroughly, was that the students couldn't keep quiet while others were speaking. Be it tomyself, HongNgoc, the MCs or to other audience members, it was basically impossible for the students to listen quietly. We asked them to be quiet, I walked around and sushed them, we all tried but totally in vain. They could not physically listen quietly. Have they learned this impressive skill, or is it genetic?

Yet another China mystery to add to the list!