Job Discussion Forums

[iknowwhatiamtalkingabout]

Hello. Any BC teachers out there from myclass centres?

Anyone care to offer their views on the myclass system both from the perspective of the teacher and on its usefulness for students?

[bograt]

Ex BC here. It's popular with students because of the flexible booking system and communicative lessons, with emphasis on speaking. I'd say less popular with teachers who have to manage classroom dynamics afresh with each new class and get sick of the repetitive structure of the lessons.

[iknowwhatiamtalkingabout]

[I'm With Stupid]

I've taught it.

As a teacher, there are good points and bad points. I'd say that it reduces the teacher's workload compared to a normal course, because you're not responsible for giving any homework or doing any marking (although there is a lot of printing involved). It puts most of the responsibility for progress on the students, and I guess the fact that they only study the language points that they think are relevant to them could be considered a good thing, but it relies on students being quite aware of their own needs.

The materials are a bit hit and miss and the audio recordings are not typically up to the standards of some of the newer course books by the big publishers. The main problem is the fact that you never get to build a relationship with a class. They are kind of getting tailored input in the sense that they are choosing the classes they go to based on their own needs, but they're never going to get that "right, I've heard you have a problem with this aspect of English, I'm going to prepare a lesson about that" that you get with a traditional course. There's also not a lot of room for creativity. You can't go into a class and say, "I thought you'd like this story/video" because they've signed up to study a particular aspect of language. I would guess that for most of us, the part of the job we enjoy the most is either creating interesting lessons, or the relationships we build with people, and myclass isn't great for either of those things.

Having said all of that, as someone who's tried to sign up to courses at language schools and found nothing that fit into my schedule, I would like the flexibility of myclass. But then as a language teacher, I work obscure hours. I don't know if the appeal is that great for people who already have evenings and weekends free.

[iknowwhatiamtalkingabout]