Job Discussion Forums

[Non Sequitur]

Comments on another thread like this example are a good start point for another topic::
I honestly think that lesson prep and power point presentations are a waste of time at uni level in China as long as you have a decent textbook to teach oral, writing or listening English from.
The thread 'Job Offer Checklist' has been going for a few years and occasionally gets refreshed - especially in the hiring seasons. It has had multiple contributions from many teachers.
I’m trying to replicate this type of 'information mine’ and this thread invites contributions on the topic of class resources. In particular for Oral English, since that is the teaching task most of us end up with.
As a framework I suggest we consider resources to cover an 18-week semester, with a 2x50 minute classes per week. 45-50 students per class should be catered for.
In my view the ideal resource would be a total package or ‘one-stop shop’. A relatively inexperienced teacher should be able to use the resource and get something going from the first hour. There must be sufficient ‘hard graft’ materials that students can be assessed against. Two or three person dialogues would probably be the norm here. However in my experience, it’s impossible to maintain sanity (let alone interest) across 2x50 minute sessions of dialogues, so we need other free-form activities like songs and games.
In a couple of weeks the newbes, who have been tearing their hair over health checks, offer letters and visas, will have their next challenge. That is 'fronting' their first classes of 45-50 young Chinese.
My first ideas:
Not sure whether dialogues need to be provided as audio in addition to print, BUT their should be 15-20 of them. They should be 2 or sometimes 3 characters and take no more than 5 mins to read. I use these as my primary class time assessment tool. More than 3 student characters per dialogue makes getting a handle on how each student is progressing, hard to assess.

[wangdaning]

Getting students to perform in front of the class is always good. It could go with the dialogue mentioned by NS. They practice with thier group and then some groups come up and perform. I like to get students to prepare a skit with the vocab and grammar we covered.

Assuming your students have paper and pens, there are many games and it's always fun. Draw what your partner describes (will vary based on topics that came before).

[Non Sequitur]

I call dialogues from the book 'supported speech'. Same with the songs. They have the words and mostly they sing along to a CD.
Over the semester, I gradually withdraw the support and the final assessment is an oral topic sketch which the students develop and perform.
'How are you settling into university life' is broad enough to let the creative juices flow.

[donkeydonkey]

I use dialogues also, but I don't use them for assessment. My assessments revolve around the student and I discussing a topic. One example would be that they come to my desk and I ask them "What did you do this weekend?" or "What do you like most about your hometown?" they then have to answer several questions about the topic that I have not given them. I do this so that they cannot repeat memorized answers that their roommate has written down for them.

Ideas for Classroom activities.
1) Even at the university level, I do pronunciation drills. The usual targets are "th," "r," "L,"V," and "w" sounds. In addition to repeating the vocabulary and sounds several times, I will write tongue twisters on the board.You can make these funny and the students enjoy them. Of course, do not overuse this or the students will get bored.

2) Story time. In smaller classes with a higher language level, have each student make up a line or two of a story. Then have the next student do the same. Make the students use the vocabulary, grammar point, or topic that you covered that day. This will only work in small classes because in large classes it will take too long to get to the back of the classroom. This will lead to the students getting bored and having nothing to do. Also, lower level students will struggle with this.

3) Listening Practice. Write key vocabulary, difficult words, or unfamiliar words on the board and review them. Read a small portion of a book. Then ask the students questions about what has been read. Then summarize one more time and review the vocabulary. I use Lou Holtz biography and Cinderella(A whitewashed children's version not the one where they cut off feet). Lou Holtz, the old Notre Dame Football coach, goes over real well as it is very simple language and it is full of the sort of positive aphorisms that so many Chinese students love.

[donkeydonkey]

Classroom ideas(continued because I have some time to kill)

4)Chinese students love talking about love. I do a week(two class days) on love for my Freshmen. The first day is pretty standard. I ask them "What do you want in a boyfriend or girlfriend?" "What is a dream husband or wife like?" "Is their job, looks, education important?" "When is a good time to start dating?"
The second day I begin with a Jimmy Kimmel skit where he goes to the street and asks children "what is love?" Kids are cute so this goes over well. I pose the same question to the students and we talk about the differences between loving your parents and loving your spouse. Then I play the song "Love stinks" by the J.Geils band and talk about when love goes bad, unrequited love, and the negative side. It's a cheesy song which helps bring a little humor.

5) Fairy tales. I summarize little Red Ridinghood, The Frog prince, The little mermaid, and Sleeping beauty. We discuss the plot, characters and morals of each as well as specific vocabulary. I use some pictures and video clips that I downloaded. Often the students are familiar with at least some of these stories. They will remeber when they see the pictures as the names may be unfamiliar to them. I then play a video in which Hollywood Make-up artists re-imagine these fairy tales and create costumes and sets based on these re-imaginings. For example: Little red ridinghood in a post-appocalyptic future. This is for more advanced students, obviously.

[Non Sequitur]

Interesting Donkeyx2.
In a 50+ student class I find it difficult to allow enough time for 1 on 1 exchanges. My mid-semester and end-of-semester assessments* take 3x50 min periods each to run through even with students paired (or trios sometimes).
These assessments are free form around a basic theme as noted in OP.
The 'minimise teacher talk time' mantra also suggests that my conversation contributions take time away from the students.
The mid semester assessment + the book dialogues, make up the 60 percent weighting I'm required to give class work.
Additional 'away from the book' student talking is provided by cocktail party games. I agree about the love angle and the cocktail party question set includes 'What makes a good boy/girl friend?' and 'Would you marry a man/woman who is 10 years older than you are?'
Relationship-themed questions are deleted from high school student activities.
One of the problems with mingle-type activities is finding a venue close to the classroom but away from other classes. The noise levels tend to get high and it's not uncommon for Chinese teachers to complain.
* I take the students into the hallway for the final assessments as it gives me the opportunity to get feedback on the semester as a whole and to thank particularly motivated students.

[donkeydonkey]

My grading requirements are a little different and greatly affect what I can do. The English department requires my final exam to be 60% of the grade. I also am required to turn in a % for attendance, a % for Participation, and a % for homework/quizes. It would fall under the quizes portion of the grade if I did assessments for dialogues. All of the dialogues combined would be around 5% of the final grade and would be combined with homework to make up 10%. As you can see, the other 40% is divided up to the point that assessments other than the final are pretty insignificant. When I spoke of the assessments before I should have said that this is only midterms and finals that I call the students to my desk. Even the midterm is fairly irrelevant, but Chinese students respond to the word "test" so they don't really seem to catch on to the fact that it is pretty insignificant. I, of course, give them the weight of each category at the beginning of the semester, but they still jump for the word midterm. Even when the midterm has been as little as 10% of the grade. I only give a midterm because I find that it helps keep the students focused. One semester I didn't give a midterm because I wanted greater weight on daily work. The lack of attention and attendance was the worst that I have ever had while teaching. The only meaningful grade being 4 months away is just too long for the students. It's too easy to say screw it, I'll start showing up at the end of the semester. That's probably what I would have done at 18 or 19 so I can't really blame them for that. I think the dialogues are probably a better form of assessment if you can make it work. I haven't been able to make it work yet. When I have tied a meaningful grade to the dialogues the students show up with memorized robotic answers, the strong students lead the weaker students and dominated the dialogue in order to help their friends, or they work whatever other angle they come up with. My individual conversations for the exams eat through about 3 X50 minute class periods as you mentioned. I just don't really have a better way to do it. I would be curious to see the weight you give to each category in your grading. Maybe I can adjust something to make it work a little better even though I have the restrictions that I have. Here's mine
Final Exam 60%
Midterm 15%
Attendance 10%
Homework/quizes 10%
Participation 5%
I've tried getting rid of the midterm with negative consequences as stated earlier. I've also moved the values around from 5-20% in the other categories. At the moment, my thinking is that participation, homework/quizes, and attendance really just form one category that is weighted at 25% and could just be called Participation or something similar. I would like for my mid term and final combined to be around 40-50% of the grade with the rest class work, quizes, and attendance, but my requirements are what they are. I have asked before about removing these requirements, but there is just an entrenchment of the idea that a big all or nothing test should be present.

[donkeydonkey]

I can take a second nip off the OP. I mean nip in the sense of a whiskey bottle and not in the sense of a bite from a small, overly aggressive dog. I agree that power point presentations are useless at the Uni level in ESL. In fact, when I call someone a power point teacher I mean it in a derogatory way. Something akin to a lazy, disinterested, and just coasting teacher. I can't imagine not doing some lesson planning. I like to use short videos or songs interwoven into my lessons because I think that they make the class interesting and help to break up the 2x50 class structure that I always have. This inherently means doing some planning, getting materials and media together,and knowing what you are going to do before hand. I also am always trying to improve and so that naturally evolves into planning something different than the way you did it last class or last year. It is not a very formal plan and is very basic since I have been teaching the same classes for a few years and know what I'm going to cover, how I'm going to cover it, and what media I will include in most of my classes. I don't write out long, overly detailed lesson plans and I rarely use the books. There are some dialogues that I like in some of the books, but I have made my own over the years and often prefer to use those. In general, I find the books have too many errors, very robotic and formal sounding language, and odd diction. Also, don't be fooled. Students absolutely know when they have a lazy, disorganized teacher who just walks in and says open the book to page whatever. Their performance will mirror yours in a lot of ways. In addition, I have to turn in my weekly topics before each semester. These are always based on the IELTS test topics, CET4, or CET6 depending on the class level. I will wander in other directions during the semester based on experience, interest, and opportunities. Mentioning these test topics also gets the students attention. I don't teach to the test or anything, but a lot of the topics are covered so maybe that helps my students a little. For new teachers who got a Uni job and now realize that you are designing the class, an internet search will bring up many lists of common questions and topics for these tests. Education, Home, Television, Family, Hometown, work etc. If you're looking for a general idea about how to structure a class and have absolutely no idea then that would be one possible place to begin.

[Non Sequitur]

Response Part 1.
I need to think about your comments Donkeyx2 but my initial reaction is that your main split of marking weight is the flip of mine. 60 percent for final!
You operate in a very prescriptive environment.
I'll read your other comments carefully and get back.
I use songs as warm up and warm down. I know it's rote but a short route to getting energy levels up especially for late Friday pm and morning (8am) classes.
Singing at the end enables us to finish on a positive note, especially if there have been issues during class time.
Best

[Non Sequitur]

This inherently means doing some planning, getting materials and media together,and knowing what you are going to do before hand.

This is important and I only reached that level of preparedness after a couple of semesters.
Newbes should take on board that the semester is only 18 weeks and if you take the first class to get the roll nailed and do your intros plus introducing new ideas like the assessment regime, the actual run of the mill classes aren't so many.
Having an armament of grab and go resources, which you know work (cocktail party questions for example) makes the job easier and allows time for self-reflection on how to improve for next time.