Job Discussion Forums

[MarquisMark]

After a couple years of watching as my mind and soul slowly atrophy within an office cubicle, I have decided to return to the TEFL world.

My last TEFL job was in Germany. I taught there for nearly three years and taught mainly professionals...engineers, salesmen, secretaries, insurance people, etc. The lessons with them were usually very conversation heavy and consisted in revisiting certain grammar trouble spots, "office-use English," correcting ingrained mistakes, learning advanced vocabulary, and advanced reading comphrension (magazine & newspaper articles). As far as my part went...it was pretty low maintenance....I was basically paid to talk to people all day long.

However, this time around I am looking towards Asia and from the research I've been doing, it looks like I will be mostly teaching children instead of adults (I've applied for JET but if I'm not accepted there I will apply to some schools in China or Macau). In Germany, I taught one teenager once for a week. Needless to say, I don't have much experience with teaching children and don't quite know what to expect. I definitely feel more comfortable working with adults, but I'm also willing to learn how to work with kids.

Have any of you had to make this change in your TEFL carreers? From a country where you can speak the language with adults willing to discuss things to a country wehre you can't speak the language teaching children who are most likely not as eager to fully participate?

Do you have any advice, horror stories, or things to look out for when teaching children in Asia? I am totally looking forward to this new experience in a very different part of the world, but any tips you could give to ease the culture shock would be most helpful.

Cheers all.

[go_ABs]

Hi,

It seems to me that this particular forum moves very slowly, so you might not get huge numbers of respondants. Maybe look over in China Job-Related, or similar?

This is only my first year teaching, so I can't compare kids to adults but I'll share with you a few tips I've found work well with the Chinese kids I teach.

Kids love cartoons, colour, pretty things. And things that they can take home and proudly show their mother. Combining the two can work quite well to calm them down after a rowdy activity. For instance, at the very basic beginner level, have them practice a letter of the alphabet on some lines at the top of the page. Then, underneath that, colour in a big letter with pretty patterns, etc.

Kids have short attention spans. Change activity regularly. You can add in a few variations to the target language from activity to activity in order to keep it fresh.

Kids don't like to sit down for long. The best activities to use are those that involve some moving around - using as many senses as possible.

Kids appreciate routine. Something (very basically) along the lines of: 1. Warm up 2. Review 3. New language 4. Activity 5. Review and goodbye. Keep it similar in format each lesson and the kids will know what to expect, and be less scared. I think www.genkienglish.com has a very good sample lesson plan. Also lots of ideas for activities - check it out. Also the Kids section of the Idea Cookbook on this website.

Kids will respond to your enthusiasm. If you go into the class unsure and a bit spooked by kids, then they're likely to be a sceptical of you in return. But if you're keen to play like a kid and generally make a fool of yourself, then they'll love you.

I think the main difference will be that kids are more frustrating than adults. They are still learning basic things like the diff b/w right and wrong, classroom discipline, how to interact and share with others. They will test your limits.

On the other hand, I bet none of your adult students gave you a spontaneous hug before skipping away. Stuff like that is a shock at first, but can make your day.

In my opinion the most difficult thing about teaching kids is that your most complex English conversation you have for the day is: "What colour do you like?" "I like yellow." Over and over again. If you don't have someone else to talk to, you'll find you start talking to the walls at home, talking back to the tv, talking to stray animals, etc.

Hope this helps a bit.

[MarquisMark]

Thanks....those are some good tips.

[Roger]

My experience:
I came to China to teach students at the high-end of their scholastic lives and thought I could incorporate my very hands-on experience from learning foreign languages myself. That was a serious misconception.
The older the CHinese English student is the more frustrated you must get in teaching him or her anything useful because they normally have deeply ingrained learning habits or techniques that are at cross-purposes with your teaching skills.
For instance, I taught English Literature, and that's a subject too few Chinese study. Consequently, the few that do are supposedly "advanced" learners. So they are a tiny elite, that is, they were going to be English teachers themselves!
They expected me to tell them to memorise the pecking order of the British and American literature scenes starting with Shakespeare up to Bernard Shaw. I was given a course book with text excerpts from various periods and various authors' works to study, and I found not ten percent of my students ever reading up prior to coming to class.
In other words: you are letting yourself in in an entirely different teaching environment where the teacher is the Authority that dispenses Knowledge, and the student expects that "friendship" greases the palms of the teacher who marks their exam papers.
You will probably NEVER find yourself explaining grammar or other things to your students, and they will not accept your authority to the same extent as they do accept their CHinese English teacher's authority inb matters of import.
Thus, be prepared to find yourself sidelined!

When I got a chance of teaching at a kindergarten, I immediately knew what pedagogic errors I could avoid making myself since I didn't want to turn preschoolers as young as 3 years old into memorising robots. I can safely tell you, my kindergarten classes were the most fulfilling, emotionally rewarding and academically satisfying in several years of teaching at all levels. But I have to add a proviso:
Don't accept "advice" from Chinese parents or teacher colleagues unless you specifically asked for it! You will witness the most unbelievable classroom equivalents to a classical catch-22 situation: parents will insist that you "teach my child this book here..." but you will not be allowed to teach those 5-year olds how to write a letter "mamma A" and "baby a", so in essence your kids can't write nor read but they must "study" a TEXTbook...
Don't show any surprise if those poor kids hold their copy the wrong side