| MythMom - The TV is just a side issue to the whole topic. In China everyone has a TV at home just like here. All the young people know all of the American movies and culture. We visited 6 cities in China and had a different tour guide in each city, ranging in age from 24 years old to (I guess) mid-30s. Their English (with one exception) ranged from very good to fantastic. The one who had the best English and used all kinds of idioms and popular expressions perfectly had never visited an English-speaking country and had majored in "Tour Guide" (as opposed to some of the others who majored in English). We asked her how she had developed such great English speaking skills (obviously, she had a natural talent for it) and she told us she watches a lot of American movies and TV shows.
Who knows if Chinese h.s. students watch TV while they do hw? Maybe some of them do. Our friends' 14 year old excused herself to do hw after dinner, and her dad turned the TV on and put on an English language channel for all of us adults to watch. FWIW, my daughter did the same thing, excused herself after dinner to do hw, five years ago when she was 15 and we had one of my husband's Chinese colleague (a young woman) at our house for dinner on a weeknight. It was really funny because she was surprised that we told our D to go do hw. The Chinese stereotype of Americans is that they don't study, and it made a big impression on her that when she visited an American home, the parents told the kid to go do her hw. Then she asked to look at my daugher's books (Chemistry and Algebra 2) and she said that it was the same stuff she had studied when she was 15. |