Job Discussion Forums

[JohnCassius]

I'm looking into contracts and considering the importance of class size and lesson planning in my decision of where to teach. I feel a little uncomfortable with the idea of teaching a huge 30-50 student class because I think I might prefer to give closer attention to fewer students and have an easier time monitoring individual progress and managing the class. Should this really be a major concern for me choosing a class or have you found it isn't too important?

Secondly, I noticed some schools advertise that they provide finished lesson plans, which implies to me that much of the guess work and extra hours of planning is removed from the equation. I think it would be much easier for me, a new teacher with no real experience, to have lessons laid out for me ahead of time. Am I correct in my assumptions? Do the lesson plans promised tend to be adequate or total crap?

Thanks for any feedback, guys!

[johntpartee]

Thirty students is a relatively small class, very easy to manage. Fifty is getting up there; I've had as many as seventy-five in a class. The only real problem was remembering all of the students names. Any expectations of individual attention to students will quickly fall by the wayside, I usually try to find "common ground" where MOST of the students need help.

[Non Sequitur]

Depends on the subject you're being asked to teach.
If there are a lot of writing classes, then above 30 students per class is going to create an indigestible load of script marking in your non-contact hours.
Oral English can be OK up to about 50 students and you can adopt strategies to hear each student's oral production both during semester and at the end when it's assessment time.
Sorry to answer a question with a question.
I'd also be keen to know if your classes are one contact hour say 50 mins or two contact hours with a short break in between.

[xiguagua]

All depends on what level you're teaching I think since most teachers are automatically recruited for oral English. If you're teaching junior students, i've had classes of 90+ which is near impossible to teach everyone individually.

Whether it's junior school, middle school, or university, there's going to people people who simply don't care and don't want to try. You can do everything in your power to excite them and get them interested, but sometimes it doesn't work. So you can focus on the people who do care rather than people who don't.

50 isn't really a big number though. You'd be surprised when you get into the classroom that it's not so bad. Even 90 didn't feel like 90 when I was doing it. It's manageable, just need the XP.

I would never use a lesson plan created by the school. Partly because I don't trust others to do my work for me, also because most of their lesson plans are crap, too boring for the students, not very exciting for anyone. i'm sure there are schools and training schools that do make good lessons, but I think for the most part they don't. Part of being a teacher is finding your classes needs so you can work on those needs with them. If you just use premade lessons, it might fail to acknowledge some key problems students are having. And as a teacher, I think it's our duty to create lessons, or at least know how to.

Trial and error is the only thing you can do. Make a lesson and try it out, if it sucks.....well....that's too bad, go back and change some things and try to see what works to get them interested. Everyone has bad lessons, but teaching is also a learning experience.

[johntpartee]

[igorG]

Every teacher is different and so no lesson plan ought to be the same.

To my knowledge, local schools literally steal FTs lesson plans, and then provide future FTs with them to demonstrate some level of professionalism. That stinks.

[johntpartee]

[Non Sequitur]

I think the galling thing about the larger classes ie 60 or above is that about 80% turn up most days, but the other 20% only appears at assessment time AND EXPECTS TO BE GIVEN A PASS!

[johntpartee]

....and they WILL be given a pass. By the school.

[7969]

Classes of 40-50 can be a bit intimidating for the first timer, but once you get used to it and work out your strategy they become fairly routine. 35-40 is the average size for a class of English majors at our school, 50 is average for the classes in the Chinese dept that we also teach.

The advantage to bigger English classes (at least the ones at our school) is this: 95% of them are young women and don't cause problems for you (not implying the guys in class are troublemakers but with women less chance of it).

As an aside, the previous school I worked in in 2005 sprung classes of 100-120 students on me for some principles of business management class. The upside was that other than Week 1 and the final exam at the end, most of them never showed up.

[Denim-Maniac]

I think you are quite right to consider class sizes and the type of teaching, lesson materials and possibly also the support that might be available.

I personally WOULDNT look at working in the type of school that would give me such large class sizes. When I teach EFL in the UK, I have a maximum class size of 15. That can be problematic as I dont feel students get enough individual attention....larger classes would be even worse. Another consideration there is large classes may not always be grouped by ability...so you could have elementary students mixed in with upper intermediates. It has its advantages of course....I personally found I had to plan a lot less, but ultimately I found I delivered a lot less and the actual teaching itself was less than fufilling when I worked in that kind of environment.

I now work in an adult training centre, and this is my second time in this job. In the last 4 months my maximum class size has been 9 students...but its typically 4 or 5. All of whom are grouped by ability. This is far more satisfying a job for me, as I can work on and correct very specific language points and issues.....and I honestly dont feel this can be achieved in large class sizes.

The downside for my type of work is that it does require a lot more planning and organisation. A class of 4 students may complete an activity a heck of a lot quicker...and I have a lot of contact hours with each class too so I have to continually find and prepare lessons. (I dont work many hours per week...but I do work many hours with each class).

I disagree with some of the previous comments about lesson material and lesson plans. If you can find an employer who offers lesson material, or even better, a set syllabus to follow, life can be a lot easier and classes may be a lot more successful.

Countless websites have 'print and teach' lesson plans...some of which you need to pay for. Course books are plentiful and are popular all around the world for this simple reason: They work. Every class is different, and every teacher is different...but in a very general sense...English and the skills needed to use it often remain the same. Course material or well designed print and teach material is normally written by people far more experienced and qualified than I am...and it has normally been tested in 1000s of class hours. Through a process of adapting it, and writing a lesson plan to suit your learners needs and your teaching styles you should find that course material/books can be a godsend.

I find writing and developing lesson material is often a pointless task, and I was often told during my teacher training that there is no need to re-invent the wheel. If you want to teach superlatives, or second conditional structures...lesson material is already there for you to use in the form of course materials. I have developed some of my own lessons plans...some have taken almost two years to nail down 100%, and while its nice to have those genuine, self generated materials...they do take a lot of time to get right IMO. Teachers do need to be able to create lessons, and more importantly supplement existing lessons with relevant and exciting material, but it isnt a key skill for being a good teacher IMO. If you remember your own student experience, lots of your work would have been from course materials, and if you observed lessons in well regarded employers such as the British Council, they will also use course books, materials and set lesson plans.

I think if you consider the teaching element to your Chinese adventure, the odds on you having a good time here are improved. We spend a lot of time in the classroom...and teaching is our bread and butter here so it makes a lot of sense to make careful decisions about the type of teaching you let yourself in for.

[igorG]

[randyj]

In a university, if a teacher did happen to be assigned a larger class, which I personally define as more than fifty, then one option would be to weed out the non-performers on the first day. Intimidate the less motivated to not come to class by presenting an extremely difficult syllabus. How many of us experienced first-day snow jobs by professors in college?

[Mike E]