A Student Named Bob

I feel like this when yelling at Bob!

I teach two upper level classes, one being C12 in which I have seven students.  Three of the students (David Fish, Debbie and Iris) I have taught in C11 and they are great students.  One student named Sky, is 22 years old (very intelligent but needs help with pronunciation) and two other goofball boys named Neil and Oneil who are easily distracted and also easily bored.  

The last student is named Bob, which describes him perfectly he is quite tall for his 16 years of age.  He never misses class and is usually on time, but he literally does nothing.  He just sits in class and only speaks Chinese.  I yell at him at least six times every class because he is speaking Chinese; like this: "Bob!" which scares the hell out of him, which in turn makes me feel better. Don't get me wrong I have a lot of patience for students but nonstop Chinese is quite distracting in class, especially since I don't know what is being said (C12 is just me no translator). This class is C12, so these students should speak English about 70% of the time at least, Bob I think has said three full English sentences at a C3 level.  Moments like these frustrate me because if he isn't at the level as the other students he shouldn't be in the class, but because my school is a business most students are just passed along each level because their parents pay for that.  

Every week I have to fight to get Bob to say anything, let alone doing the Writing Exercise every day or the homework.  About midway to the Midterm I give my higher levels an idea of their grades privately, telling them about missing homework or tardiness and their behavior in class.  One of my best students is being affected by Bob in class because he is a huge distraction.  I know Bob isn't stupid because he laughs at some of my jokes in class, which means he has some listening and comprehension skills. 

"I'm calling your Mom" - Exactly like Bob's face LOL

My happy dance!

When it came to Bob's turn for evaluation I went and got a Chinese teacher to translate how serious I was.  Bob had all 0's, which I showed him and I told him I would Fail him if he didn't show improvement.  I also told him I would call his mother and show her all his 0's.  The look that came over his face was priceless.  When I said the word mother he got scared, so I assume his mother would be horrified at her sons lack of taking these expensive English classes for granted.  

The next week and the week after that he made up the six assignments he missed; his spelling was decent and writing was thankfully legible (average writing and grammar skills).  He can't make up most of the participation points he missed, but at least he is doing his homework.  He said two full sentences by himself last week and read some written sentences, which I feel is an accomplishment.  Now I just threaten to call his mother every time he misbehaves and my other students don't encourage Bob to goof around as much because they are afraid I will call their mothers LOL.