Oral ONLY English classes in Beijing

[Genosha]

Hi all,

Well I'm working for an organisation from 9 to 5. During this time I am meant to create and administer an English programme. After 5 I meant to teach it. Thats right, I'm the "Everything to do with English" employee here. The reason why its such a full time job is that the demand for English is quite high. I have 235 people that want to be taught (It's a MNC so they are a little obliging) and so I've been told to give only Oral English classes and I can only do this during overtime. Of course it must be business focused as well!

In brief then, they want me to teach more (work more overtime) and have more students in my class. I want to teach less (work less overtime) and have fewer students in my class.

I have tried to come up with some creative solutions (which have been rejected) and I was wondering if anyone else had some other ideas. I have a fair amount of resources. Just not cash to buy in any outside help. Funnily enough they're willing to give me the cash to buy lots of materials though! It's a funny world we live in

I think the main barrier is that most students believe that learning can only take place through interaction with a foreigner. One of my ideas was to have the students watch a relatively difficult video and come up with some questions (talking in English the whole time). It was quite quickly rejected.

Anyway, so I have seen some creative solutions here and would love to hear from anyone else.

Thanking you in advance

[eslweb]

I know where you are coming from, thing is, it would appear you've now got a reputation, so they want YOU specifically! At some point you are going to come to a head with your employer and these things end one of two ways...
1. Your employer recognises your value and begrudgingly agrees to your terms
2. You find a better job elsewhere.

Anyway, in the meantime... Here's a couple of threads that I think you may find helpful:

This is about using PPT, which maybe helpful because you can use it to teach larger classes and it is possible to buy DVDs etc to supplement yourself.
http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/v ... ng+classes

And

This is about teaching large classes.
http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/v ... ht=classes

I hope it helps...

I've also got some Pronunciation material on my Website.

James

[Genosha]

Thanks eslweb.
Thank goodness I don't have to teach them all at the same time, but the ideas are the same if I want to teach a big class. I'm currently trying to asses everyone's English level and divide them into groups that have similar English skills. At the moment I'm keeping the class size at 20, but I think I'll increase that number to 30. Also thanks for the PowerPoint suggestions.

I'm looking more for ways to structure the class. For example one of my ideas was to reduce the teaching time and get the students to do some more homework, but giving everyone quizzes is not going to go down very well. Everyone is extremely busy, works loads of overtime and those that have class at the moment never really do much of the homework I set for them. I have an idea to give them each an interesting video and then they have to comment on it by recording a speech.
However this grand idea runs into some problems. I'm not sure about microphones, my boss has said I can't get them for the students, then there is the actual case of getting some suitable videos! I think it is easy to set up, it's just going to be a nightmare giving feedback!:) Maybe the students will have forgotten all the mistakes they made in their recording... I will obviously limit the length of a recording to about 2 minutes.
I can give each group one class a week and have them do the recording each week. This way I will bring a lot of my work into the day and I'll also be able to teach more classes. Taking one class a week won't be difficult and the speech presentation will ensure each student works on their English every week.

Hehe, actually articulating it now makes it sound a bit better. Of course half the problem is not having other English teachers at the workplace to discuss these problems with. Any other feedback from anyone would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks again!

[eslweb]

I tend to be around quite a lot on ESLCafe and it does give everybody a chance to talk to other teachers, especially for those working out in the wild-east on their own.

What you said reminded me of the other obvious point....

A lot of language labs these days have computers and you can extend the teaching time by giving them 30 mins to an hour of computer time? The other way to stretch the time out for more advanced students is to give them group projects to do and then you assess them by presentation or their written reports.

For example, I asked my students to write a magazine and next week I am going to ask them to find out what's the best school in the area and make a report.

James