Job Discussion Forums

[Tamil_Tiger]

I was liking my first week of teaching just fine until the day I had to face the young students. I had 5 classes of 1st and second graders, many of whom who had never had an english class before. The worst part of this is that I had no teaching assistants really. I mean I had an occaisonal assistant after I complained a bit in the teachers' office, but it was hard to come by. Today I faced the slightly older third graders. They also have little experience in English and understand little. I got frustrated and decided to sandbag the lesson. I started drawing shapes and things like line, dot, square, circle, and just counted numbers from 1 to 100 and back down again. I took liberal amounts of time erasing the chalk board, too, just so the lesson would end. I've tried games and activities but they don't get the directions. they're too impatient to try to learn by context and with gestures. Is this nuts or what? Isn't the school just wasting money with this? if they don't have a chinese english teacher, then what's the point? It creates a headache for me, misery for the students who have to sit through these lessons where they understand nothing, and inefficient for the school. Is anybody else in the same situation? How do you handle this? How can you explain games and activities when the gestures don't work, and one's putonghua is limited?

[Sekhmet]

I totally sympathise with your situation... Teaching complete beginners when you don't speak their language at all is very hard. But my advice is pictures and lots of them. Do everything with pictures. Model everything as many times as you need to, and it really does help.
I had the same problem - thrown in at the deep end, totally new teacher... The only way I could make it work was drilling. But give them time, and they start picking it up. Much better to have kids with no language than adults, anyway!!!!!!!!
Feel free to PM me if u want any more details...

[Guest]

I can appreciate what you are going through as I was in the same situation at this time last year. I had never taught before and I was confronted with students from Junior 1 through to Junior 5. I managed Grades 4 and 5 reasonably well, but Grades 1, 2 & 3 were a nightmare!

After a couple of weeks of struggling with the classes, I decided that survival was indeed the strongest instinct and I went out and bought heaps of crayons and coloured pencils (which are never sharpened when you buy them in China by the way). I then printed out pages pf pictures from the Internet and when I had Grades 1 to 3, I would write the names of each item on the blackboard and have them copy the name under the picture and then I would place a handful of crayons on each group of desks and tell them to "colour". They soon got the idea and even though I felt guilty that I was not teaching them anything, there really was no alternative.

After a few months of this, I asked to be relieved of Grades 1 and 2, which I was and for the remainder of the year I had Grades 3, 4 & 5 plus some Junior 2 classes. I still struggled all year with Grade 3's, and I did not do much better with Grade 4. Grade 5 was okay.

This year I stipulated that I did not wish to teach the younger children and so I was given all Junior 1 and Junior 2 classes, and so far I am really enjoying teaching for the first time in over a year.

The little ones also like to sing a song and most of them know A B C D E F G etc. and Head and shoulders, knees and toes etc. See if you can get them singing. Also, have them stand up and tell them to jump (while showing them), turn around, etc. If you do it, they will soon copy you.

The only other way to survive is to insist on a Chinese teacher in the room with you, but I know that did not work for me as they would show up for one lesson and then they would disappear and I would be back to square one.

Good luck

[Roger]

[quote="Tamil_Tiger"]and with gestures. Is this nuts or what? Isn't the school just wasting money with this? if they don't have a chinese english teacher, then what's the point?

So, what do you need a Chinese teacher for? I mean if you cannot communicate with them then obviously their English is not up to scratch.
There should at no time be any translation provided for foreign English students! If they do need that I suppose your efforts are wasted.
Why don't Chinese English teachers do your job? Surely it doesn't matter what your first lingo is?

[Tamil_Tiger]

Yeah, that's my feeling exactly. I don't think the students are really any worse off learning from a Chinese English teacher than from me. The Chinese english teacher is much more effective for students of this age in my opinion. The middle school students are great learners and absorb the lessons of the foreign teachers very well. Let the Chinese teachers teach the little kids, and up the frequency of the middle school lessons. I really enjoy teaching them, and I feel like they make progress, and they like learning from a foreign teacher.

To some extent I think the rationale for young learners learning from foreign teachers has something to do with the enhanced ability of younger learners to acquire languages. I think though that this depends on immersion. The chinese schools may wish for their students to be immersed in english but a daily english activity, 1 class a week in english from a waiguo laoshi and a daily class from a chinese english teacher is far from immersion. I met a couple people who attended true immersion schools and their language skills were more truly bilingual than any of the results achieved by all of these English classes in China. I think language immersion works, but then you'd have to have like 50% of your classes in that language. Not just english, but math, science, history, music, etc. Maybe the 20 somethings who are chinese english teachers here didn't have the same level or intensity of language training as exists in China today, but their spoken english tends to be poor. All those sentence patterns that the teachers drill into the students makes it so that they sound good and professional for all of ten minutes until you throw them some sentence construction they've never heard before, and then suddenly that look of confusion, and the quick nod of feigned understanding.

Thanks for the advice about the pictures and crayons. I mean, coloring pictures seems like a sandbagging tactic in a way since the amount of English covered during this time is less than otherwise, but maybe the process of coloring the picture and really focusing in on it, makes the words stick like glue in their minds. Perhaps fewer things thoroughly covered rather than many things quickly glossed over is a better thing. I think I've done the latter rather than the former. Time to change tack with this one.

What are some simple games that little kids would understand the rules to that I could try. I tried hangman with the slightly older kids, and I guess there is a chinese version, so there was no need for much explanation. Are there any others that a little 1st or 2nd grader would possibly know that is remotely educational?

[kev7161]

I teach Senior 1, 2, & 3 kids and I'm amazed at how many don't know or choose not to use English! However, they have English lessons from their Chinese teachers (some who have such bad pronunciation skills that I even have trouble understanding them - imagine how the students must struggle) every day of the school week and they see me only once or twice per week. I have 10 different groups of kids this year. I'd much rather have fewer groups and see them more often throughout the week. I've had comments from some of my students along the same lines. I am sure the kids would pick up some basic English just by being around me more often and picking up some of my habitual phrases I use - plus I feel I give pretty good lessons as well.

[Seth]

think about your school activities when you were in 1st grade. my mom saved a lot of my old schoolwork and i was looking through it a few months ago. it involved a lot of coloring, pasting, construction paper, work books, and activities of that nature. i don't remember any teachers standing at the front of the class and lecturing. kids don't have the attention span for that.

when i taught those grades i used a lot of activities that involved coloring and creating things. kids love it and it generally keeps them quiet and happy. which keeps the school and parents happy.

i had them create their own english book out of folded and stapled sheets of paper. they'd copy short phrases from the board and draw pictures illustrating the meaning of the phrase. on page 3 i had them write 'i like animals' and underneath draw and color a picture of their favorite animal. then write 'this is a _____' for whatever animal they drew. then i'd have them recite from their book. works like a charm.

but i speak chinese so i guess a have an advantage. sometimes kids would come up to me and ask me how to write a certain chinese character.

[Joe B]

TPR (Total Physical Response) works well with kids. You can break doing something down into a series of actions and turn the sentences into imperative commands. You can TPR cooking, opening a door, or any activity. Have the kids role play the actions while they say the sentences.

Look up TPR (Total Physical Response) James Asher and you should find info about this teaching method.

Best of Luck,

- Joe

[kev7161]

Some educational theorists say that a child's attention span is roughly equal to his age - especially when it comes to school activities. It is important to have 3 or 4 activities planned for a 40 or 45 minute period. I think there is NOTHING wrong (when teaching young kids) to picking out 3 or 4 words to learn for a lesson, repeating them a few times, showing them the picture, then letting them color for "x" amount of time. While the student is doing this (with the word "DUCK" or whatever printed at the bottom of the page), the teacher should walk around saying such things as "very good" or "wonderful". Believe it or not, the student is going to pick up those words as well and understand, in general, what they mean. Sure, if you spoke Chinese, then you might be able to do a more in-depth lesson, but the attention-span theory would still hold. The lessons will become more complicated as they get older and are able to grasp the language a bit more easily.

[Chris_Crossley]

Roger wrote:

[kev7161]

Ten different groups? This is madness!

Tell me about it. My Senior Two and Three kids are going to be okay (I hope!), but I already fear I'm going to blow a fuse with some of my Senior One classes. I know my patience is going to wear thin (especially to the lazy, do-nothing students . . . I've already asked two boys to leave and don't bother coming back) and it won't be long before I start mixing up lessons: whom I've taught what to and where did we stop in the book. I'm keeping careful records in my daily planner, but it's only a matter of time . . .

[Larry Parnell]

[quote="kev7161"]Ten different groups? This is madness!

Only ten different groups? You lightweight. I get twenty different groups for 40 minutes once a week.
I can only imagine how their English will improve cos it sure ain't actually going to happen!

[Tamil_Tiger]

Thanks for the ideas about the pictures rhonda,


I did this today in all of my grade 1 and 2 classes and it went over like a charm. This also allowed me to make rounds around the class room and talk to each student individually. I think this is something these students need, as the class sizes are big with 35-40 students per class. It's nice to have a little individual attention every once in a while, even if its just a 30 second period a day or so.

[stillnosheep]

Thank you RP.

keep on keepin on!

sns