What I am going to DEMAND from my students next semester...

If I can accomplish anything next semester, I want it to be successfully changing the way my students study English. Far too many students 'study' night and day trying to remember grammar rules, vocab and translation and then wonder why even the most basic reading comphrension or speaking or writing (that isn't recited or stolen from the Internet) of English shows they have an inability to communicate. This, despite having English classes every year since primary school! That is just sad. As one Business English student said to me yesterday, "Even though we study all the time and have so many classes, we don't actually learn anything, just remember things for the exams". As tragic as that is, most students here are too reliant on teachers and textbooks as their sole sources of input for learning and are quick to blame the school, teachers and seemingly anyone except themselves for their English struggle. Sure some of the textbooks and exams aren't ideal, that isn't in dispute (I heard that some of the English textbooks haven't changed in 20 years), but we have access to so much English, access to opportunities to learn and use English, what is stopping them???

MY DEMAND: That students take responsibility for their OWN education and get serious about learning English.

No one can put a gun to their head and make them improve their English except themselves. If they don't have the willpower or confidence to develop and use their English outside of the classroom, then they obviously chose the wrong major. After the same style of teaching in middle school (towards passing exams not towards developing ability), do they not realise how ineffective their current learning habits are? If you learnt anything for several years and then another 4 years of university major dedication to one specific subject, you would expect to be almost a master of it, would you not?