Job Discussion Forums

ttrtaft · Joined: 13 Oct 2004 Posts: 17

Hi,
I will be teaching at a private university. I will be teaching 80 to 100 freshmen university students. I will be teaching listening and conversational English. How do I go about teaching conversational English to 80 to 100 students? Thank-you for any advice.

Thanks

beck's · Joined: 06 Apr 2003 Posts: 426

You can't effectively teach conversational English to classes that are that large. Don't tell me you got sucked into a job at Yang En University?!

lily · Joined: 02 Aug 2004 Posts: 200

Group work. Show a bit of a movie - sound off. Have the students write the diaogue, then do it in front of the class, with the movie on in the back, sound still off.

Prepare a short story using simple English. I heard rumour of a list that has 1800 common words that students should know - anyone know where people could get hold of that list? Dictate it to students, then have them check each other's work for mistakes.

Good luck!

Babala · Joined: 28 Jan 2005 Posts: 1303 Location: Henan

How long are the classes? When I taught uni and the classes were 1 1/2 hours, I divided the class in half and gave them each a 45min lesson. I discussed it with the head of the university and reasoned that they would get more speaking practice in the 45min than they would get in 1 1/2 hours if I had so many of them. They approved my request.

anthyp · Joined: 16 Apr 2004 Posts: 1320 Location: Chicago, IL USA

kev7161 · Joined: 06 Feb 2004 Posts: 5880 Location: Suzhou, China

I think dividing them into groups of 10 is a great idea. To motivate them, have them come up with a team name, a team coat-of-arms, a team slogan/motto, a team color combination, etc. Many of your activities can be in the form of competitions. Have the other 8 groups that aren't competing at the time do a "viewer survey" or a feedback, if you will to award points (do your own as well and your feedback is worth more).

On the TV show Survivor and The Apprentice, sometimes they regroup teams as one side may become much smaller as time goes by and as people are eliminated. Naturally, you don't want to eliminate anyone, but teams that consistently score lower points in activities/competitions may need a reshuffling. You could have some fun with that as groups have to "vote out" one or two members and they have to go to another. Or, so nobody gets hurt feelings, you could have elimination competitions (all English-based, naturally) within the groups. The one or two that scores the lowest, must move onto another group of your choosing.

Regardless of what you plan to do, Chinese students are very competitive in general and if you can come up with a bunch of games and such for them to win, then you may have a successful class. Don't forget to have some sort of simple prize (like candy bars for all) and also a trophy or plaque that can rotate amongst the winning group for that month.

Volodiya · Posted: Sat May 07, 2005 12:36 pm Post subject:

Oh, my. Taft, are you daft? For your first teaching job in China? You'll need a whip and chair, instead of a chalk, to control this mob.

Big classes are for experienced teachers, with a lot of practical skill dealing with the pandemonium and, even they will have a hard time delivering anything of value in this setting.

I'm under the impression that you don't have a degree, but can't you keep looking for something a little less demanding?- say, something about the size of the group (ten) you were working with back home?

ResiWorld · Posted: Sat May 07, 2005 1:06 pm Post subject:

I taught 1 class like that (1 as in an instance) with all 2nd graders. It was the most stressfull 150 kuai I've made in 50 minutes. Now there is a better arrangement. More small classes, more money.

Roger · Joined: 19 Jan 2003 Posts: 9138

Your ability to maintain order and discipline will be far more important than pulling off speaking exercises. Anyway, as Lily pointed out, you can use their and your time to train their comprehension - which is, in my opinion, their weakest skill, by dictating a story from a short story textbook readily available from Xinhua or a FOreign Language bookstore. These short stories are graded by how many words they use; some use 1800 of the most common English vocabulary, some use over 2000 words, etc. In my experience, not even college graduates with 7 or 8 years of formal classroom English to their belt can competently handle 1800 words, let alone understand coherent texts using a fraction of their vocabulary.
There is, perhaps, another problem you must consider: if you dictate these stories your students will always copy from one another... divide your class in two groups by separating one row parallel to the aisle from the next, so students cannot turn their heads to spy on their neigbhours, and you dictate two stories to the two different groups - requires a little extra coordination, but it's quite manageable, far more manageable than a dialogue with a minority of your students!

Make sure they enter new lexical items or phrases in a ledger and learn them. My experience shows that they do understand these stories the minute they have gone to the extra trouble of writing every word in its correct form down and observe grammar structures. Get one student to write on the blackboard in front, and have class correct him or her.
You will at times be amused by their extraordinary ways of confusing words: "taxi" becomes "test" or even "tax"; "although" gets mistaken for "also" etc. However, when they correct such mistakes the whole story's picture settles ninto place.
If there is time left for discussion - and there will be! - then the story might be an ideal basis for that.

go with the flow · Joined: 08 May 2005 Posts: 18

A couple of things - while 80 students in a class is no one's idea of optimum, it is by no means impossible. Large and small group assignments, individual presentations, dialogues, and choral speaking are all useful. Students who wish to learn will do so regardless of class size - even if they could learn more in a smaller situation; that decision is not the teacher's. And who ever said you need a whip and chair obviously hasn't taught at Yeng En - the university students are very polite. I taught middle school for two decades in North America and I know discipline problems when I see them. Discipline at Yeng En is going to be the least of your worries.
And "suckered in" also gives a bit of a false impression. There are negatives at Yeng En (class size being one; a foreign affairs type who wouldn't do much until his boss lights a fire under him; a little isolated). But there are also positives (higher than usual salary; very good treatment; a secure environment; a large contingent of foreign teachers (many of them Canadian, just about the nicest people in the world); a chance to explore a rural China that many others don't see; low working hours). Like any job, you have to decide what's important, what you can live with, and what you can't live without. The very few perfect jobs in the world are held by people who aren't telling the rest of us about them.
If, indeed, you are coming to Yeng En University, be prepared for some adjustments and frustrations. If you're going to any other ESL teaching position anywhere else in the world, be prepared for the same!

rickinbeijing · Joined: 22 Jan 2005 Posts: 252 Location: Beijing, China

Taft,

This is worse than the Taft-Harding Bill.

To put it bluntly, if the university expects you to effectively teach this many students conversational English they are either engaged in consummate wishful thinking or completely ignorant of classroom dynamics. Either way, unless they reduce the class size I would tell them to stick it where the "sun don't shine."

Really.