First of all, thanks for the responses. As a young instructor who's only trained a few students, the advice is really appreciated.
Walk:
1) We have whiteboards everywhere around the school, so I bring a dry erase marker to every lesson. I'm very fortunate that my new chinese private pilot student asks lots of questions. After my first Chinese student last year would barely talk to me, I made sure to make him understand that it's ok to ask me questions.
2) Besides teaching the DECIDE and PAVE models, I've tried to teach my students the building blocks of decision making and good judgment through experiences I and other people have had. I also try to have my students make as many decisions as they are capable of, depending on where they are in their training.
However, this hasn't always been enough. One student told me it was okay to fly a plane with a busted PFD on a cross-country flight. This was an instrument student who knew full well how to use an MEL, understood decisions making, and FARs, yet still felt it was a good idea to fly in order to satisfy external pressures. Besides metaphorically beating it into his head that doing so is very not okay, how else can you teach better judgment?
3) I don't really mind that much since i get paid for pre and post flight briefings. So it helps out my bank account.
Vagabond:
I guess I should rephrase "dumbing down" how I talk during the flight. I still use standard aviation phraseology, however, I try to make the sentences as simple as possible. Because most of the chinese pilots have never driven a car, they're very busy just trying to fly the plane and don't have much attention left to listen to me talk.
Thank you for the background information on Chinese culture though. I didn't know a lot of that. As a new hire last year I was never taught any of that during indoc, which has led to me having to learn a lot of this on my own or from other people.
And yes, I would love some chicken and blokli. I always get a kick out of hearing my student yell "Clear Prop!" for obvious reasons
