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Working and teaching in China for many foreigners has been a wonderful life experience. They will go home and speak fondly of their time here and of the great students they have worked with. China's passion for learning is culturally and historically entrenched and is evident in the many assorted private learning institutions one can find in any Chinese city or town. Perhaps one of the downsides of the push into foreign language study and the mass marketing of language learning has also been the tendency for the occurrence of cliché. Phrases once original and interesting now prevalent in an IELTS practice exercise book soon become worn out after several million students have learnt them. For example, there often appears a tendency for the use of the phrase, “a hot topic” or “heated controversy” to refer to a question. Elsewhere the expression, “every coin has two sides” or a “double edged sword” has been used too often when trying to present a balanced argument. Likewise the introduction opener, “with the increasing development of society… bla bla bla” Now there is nothing wrong with using such “key phrases” though students need to realize that as soon as they do, they are more easily and rapidly grouped at a 5 or 5.5 level. Using a cliché’ symbolizes to an examiner that the candidate hasn’t yet developed an English level high enough to move beyond “rote learning” phrases. | 
