Job Discussion Forums

[Tessio]

I appreciate all of the responses to my other post regarding lecture topic ideas and am sure that my lectures will be fine. Thanks.

Now, in anticipation of teaching regularly at a university in September, I have begun to put together a simple syllabus which will outline the course objectives - Oral/Conversational English. Is this necessary?

What I have "written" so far deals with attendance, classroom rules etc.. Do you actually do the same? Do most universities require you, the teacher, to submit a syllabus? If so, what does it consist of?

As you most likely know, there are a plethora of websites with Lesson Plans, but I have found only 1 website with information about what should be in the syllabus. Where can I find a model syllabus?

I plan on asking the students at the beginning of the course to list, then vote on, topics to be discussed. They will determine what will be talked about. The 10 most popular topics will become a part of the syllabus. What I would like to do now is create a general syllabus which says that the specific objectives and class schedule will be determined later.
What do you think?

[busterfriendly]

A weekly plan for each of your lessons on topic, aims and language/grammar points will do the trick. Nothing to concrete, but give yourself something to work with as it'll make your planning for the rest of the semester a whole lot easier.

Give or display a copy to your classes/students/head of dept. This will give them some confidence that your not one of the more typical foreigner teachers who just turn for up each class and wing it.

Good planning, showing that you're linking lessons and recycling langauge/vocab would also do a lot for their confidence in you.

Finally, I would suggest being careful about asking your students what they want in the first few weeks, as this is more likely to freak them out that get them on your side. Go easy on them initially; your students just won't be used to a teacher asking them what they want.

[NorbertRadd]

make it student oriented and really freak them out. to freak them out even more, have every student take turns leading the class. the ultimate freak would be to have everyone do a 20 minute presentation for their final, 50% of the grade on content. maybe they might learn to express themselves rather than just be test-takers. good luck

[Roger]

While I would go with Norbert's suggestion ("freak them out..." with presentations of 20 minutes' length!) I have to say you will first have to get to know your students and their English level.
You might be in for two shocks:
a) class size (if each of them is to make a presentation of 20 minutes, do you have enough semester classroom time for all to do that???);
b) their English often needs too much remedial work for you to do!
You should, therefore, not come to China with preconceived lesson plans! Wait and see! What does your employer want you to do? What materials will they put in your hands?

And, you mustn't expect your students to jump with joy at the rare opportunity to produce English in the presence of a native speaker! Most only take these courses in order to get more credits. You must therefore ensure they learn to work for their credits!
Attendance no doubt is one thing; take attendance by roll-call; DO NOT CIRCULATE the attendance sheet! (They would cheat!).
I do not know whether students can make up their mind on which topics to "discuss"; when the time comes for each and every one to do their part publicly they will balk at it. They are great at making demands, talking in CHinese, but they are not folks that take action. I find the idea of them making presentations GREAT; but the problem usually is that the class won't be listening (they don't have the habit of listening!). You must therefore resort to some draconian measures to ensure each and everyone pays attention to the speaker! This is, of course, a great opportunity to show up their pronunciation and botched grammar difficulties! If their speech is so mangled as to be unintelligible then the whole class has something to learn from it.

I am doing something I had never thought of before: I am teaching them in the last few weeks to learn to use the IPT correctly (so that they can look up the pronunciation of new words on their own!). I only cover the vowels, then talk about the lengths (short versus long) of syllables. Some of the consonants have to be covered too, of course.

Your students only attend your lessons because they feel it is a laid-back sort of class, easy to get extra credits. You must take the lead and teach them something (which they have to take notes of - enforce that, as it is also very hard for them to get used to!).

[Tessio]

Thanks for the input. I like Norberts idea about the Presentation. I was planning on having each student give a 5 minute speech about a topic of their choosing. In order to ensure that the others are listening, I thought that I would require them to write at least 1 question concerning the presentation (in-class homework). But, as Roger said, I will have alot of students (around 50 per class) so I'll wait and see.

I am wondering, what is an IPT? Is it an electronic dictionary? Beyond that, besides taking attendance orally, do you use a sitting chart? or do the students sit where ever they feel like it?

Also, what do you think about English and the Internet? I read an article written by Niu Qiang which advocates linking the study of English with computer usage. I thought that perhaps I would require them, as part of the 5 minute Presentation, to find and research their topic via an English language website. The students would have to submit a print-out of what they found via Google or whatever as their source.

I realize I may be thinking over the students head, but it is easier to come down than suddenly go up, at least for me.
Thanks for your suggestions.

[Roger]

IPT = International Phonetic Transcription (the slightly stylised Roman letters between brackets in a dictionary that indicate how to pronounce the word).

On the Internet and computers: Personally I don't feel too comfortable using the electronic gadgets such as computers for the acquisition of a language - it's too artificial.
Various studies suggest Chinese students are fast becoming serikously addicted to such gadgets. All my students have electronic dictionaries - and once in a while they give out, either because their batteries are low, or they are at the end of their life span! That's always a perfect excuse for not doing one's assignments... Seriously, many students spend too many hours behind computers - too many hours.

I wouldn't allow them to choose what to talk about; this will lead to rehearsals in class of well-memorised speeches translated from some official Chinese version.
Don't expect them to be able to arrive at some well-thought out conclusion! Expect them to simply learn how to say the most inane, mundane and basic things. FOrce them to speak ACCURATELY. And force them to speak concisely - dropping all their "ands"s and "and so on"s, repetitions, "hmmm"s. And force them to take a contrarian view to one expounded in the positive - don't give them the right to enumerate all the pros and cons - that's too easy and will lead to, again, memorising of some text somewhere.

[kev7161]

Concerning presentations:

One thing you can do is have the student(s) giving the presentation to come up with a "worksheet" that goes along with their presentation. Multiple choice questions, true/false, open ended questions - - whatever they can come up with. Whatever's on the work sheet must, obviously, be in their presentation. They give the worksheet to the teacher about a week ahead of time, the teacher can then format it into a legible worksheet on his computer and get copies made. Then, the student(s) can pass it out to their classmates before the presentation. Not only will the students giving the presentation be graded for their speaking skills, but the audience will be graded on their listening skills (via the worksheet). You can instruct the students to keep it simple - - no more than 5 or 6 questions, perhaps.

A little tricky, I know and perhaps a bit unrealistic - - but talk about your student-centered activities!

[Jolly]

[Tessio]

Thanks everyone. I appreciate your suggestions and more importantly, the time you took to help. It is obvious that most of the people who contribute to Daves's ESL Cafe teach in and out of the classroom.

I would like to take this opportunity to express gratitude to Jolly for publicly sharing his work-product as well as pointing out what I felt was the wisest advice.

Ya know Roger, like you're ahh alright Dude. Uhhm, Take it Easy, See You Around, OK.

[wonderd]

Wow. Some very good ideas in here. I would like to post how I handled my university classes and get constructive feedback about it. I have to admit, I'm at a bit of a loss for time so it may be a little short and sweet.

First class I like to do testing. I have four tests that I do with the class (they hate it, even though I explain again and again it's not for grading).
I should also mention that my classes were an ideal size of 18 students, so it was easy to do activities with them. The tests I do are
1. Interviews (asking them questions about themselves, family, interests, history, etc.) I try to keep the questions different for each student so I have a list of somewhere between 80 - 100 questions (I haven't counted). Many of them are the same question just worded differently. I also make sure other students don't help other students for this one activity.
2. Cloze exercise. I have some articles from Reader's Digest that I omit some of the words. I read the passage to the class twice. Once slow, once regular. Then I hand out the sheet with the words omitted and give them a couple of minutes to finish.
3. Recital activity. This is the one they hate. I have another article that I got from a textbook, but any passage would be good I guess. It's just over 300 words. I read the passage to the class at regular speed. I tell them to listen carefully, but I don't tell them why. Then I give them all a sheet of paper and tell them I will read the passage again. Once relatively slowly, and the other at regular speed. They must write down as much as they can about what I am talking about. I read the passage with breaks of about 10 seconds between sentences, at a relatively slow speed. I give them a minute, then read it again at regular speed. They tend to go a little nuts, because everyone wants to be perfect. I tell them the exercise is difficult for native speakers, yet alone second language students, but they still want perfection.
4. I cut out some newspaper articles from the Chinese newspaper, give one to a student, and give them a minute or two to look it over and translate it back to me.

Later, this gives me a good idea at the listening, speaking, and understanding level of the classes English.

After these tests, I talk to the class about different topics we can go over for the term. I do have a general lesson guide that I follow, but with university students, I like to give them a little more choice. They know what's important to them. First I take their input (which usually isn't much as they're shy) on what they want to learn, and put it on the board. Usually it's just things like "Business English" and "Conversational English". Then spend some time with them going over various topics and lessons we can spend time on, and what's interesting for them. I follow this as about 66% of the course and the other 34% are things I think are necessary whether I like it or not...

Ooops... out of time... I find this forum quite interesting. Hope to get some feedback and thanks for the helpful posts already. In the future I plan to spend a lot more time here.

Take care

[wonderd]

That last post should say "things that I think are necessary whether THEY like it or not"... Looks like I still have a couple of minutes before I get started.

Jolly, you're post gave me some great ideas for improving in the future. My question to you (and to anyone is) do you have a course outline before or after the first class. I have a general outline that usually gets completely changed by the end of the first class.

One thing; the university I teach at (Shanghai Information Technology) doesn't use a textbook in my class, so it's all my material. Mine is more of an extra class to improve English. They do get graded, though. I've only taught one semester doing a course like this, so what I posted before has only been tried once (well, four times, four classes).

NOW I have to go. I don't usually stay on the computer after my class has come into class... BAD ME... BAD

[Roger]

Jolly, I too wish to thank you for sharing with us your introduction to your clases. Great, inspired, and really helpful - concise.
I don't know if the majority of my non-major English students would understand the language in it, but majors should.
The marks you explained seem to be thought out with fairness to be a top priority; that's dandy with me but in my experience they get too good marks anyway. Their grammar doesn't improve at all during a whole year - except in isolated cases. Today THREE of my students took a speech )oral English) test; not one of them respected the subject-verb agrement rule (third person singular noun or pronoun + verb...) though when I interrupted (which most of you probably feel is impolitic) one of them did correct himself.
A girl kept pronouncing the word "examination" as "e-ya-mination" - and I had taught them the difference between 'X' and 'S'.

So much for your hopes of affecting some improvements to the oral production of your students...

[Jolly]

Hi All! I'm really happy my syllabus was helpful to some of you. I'm impressed by this thread and happy. I'm happy to read such professional remarks from teachers who obviously care about teaching. I know you know what I mean by this!

I want to share a lesson plan using debate. The topic is the necessity of grammar. This is especially for Roger! This lesson plan was posted on my class website.

BTW, I'm a woman. There was a reference in someone's post about my being a man.

Forgive me if you find any gramatical or spelling errors in the following!
ha-ha


Conversation Lesson: Debate

The Necessity of Grammar

This lesson plan is based on the idea that having students support opinions that are not necessarily their own during debates can help improve students fluency. In this manner, students pragmatically focus on correct production skills in conversation rather than striving to "win" the argument. Of course, once students have become confident in their production skills, the can obviously argue the point they truly believe in.

Aim: Improve conversational skills when supporting a point of view

Activity: Debate concerning the necessity of concentrating on grammar - and not games, conversation, etc. - when learning English

Outline:

Review language used when expressing opinions, disagreeing, making comments on other person's point of view, etc.

Lead a short discussion asking the student's opinion on what they consider to be the most important aspects of learning English well.
Ask students to consider the following statement: The most important ingredient of learning English is Grammar. Playing games, discussing problems, and having a good time is important. However, if we don't focus on grammar it is all a waste of time.

Based on students' responses, divide groups up into two groups. One group arguing for the prime importance of learning grammar, one group for the idea that learning just grammar doesn't mean that you are able to use English effectively. Important: Make sure that groups are put into the group with the opposite opinion of what they seemed to believe in the warm-up conversation.

Give students worksheets including ideas pro and con. Have students develop arguments using the ideas on the worksheet as a springboard for further ideas and discussion.

Once students have prepared their opening arguments, begin with the debate. Each team has 5 minutes to present their principal ideas.
Have students prepare notes and make rebuttal to the expressed opinions.

While the debate is in progress, take notes on common errors made by the students.

At the end of debate, take time for a short focus on common mistakes. This is important, as students should not be too involved emotionally and therefore will be quite capable of recognizing language problems - as opposed to problems in beliefs!

First World Obligation

You are going to debate the correctness of the following statement:

The most important ingredient of learning English is Grammar. Playing games, discussing problems, and having a good time is important. However, if we don't focus on grammar it is all a waste of time.

It is important to remember that you have been placed in your group based on what seems to be the opposite of what you really think. Use the clues and ideas below to help you create an argument for your appointed point of view with your team members. Below you will find phrases and language helpful in expressing opinions, offering explanations and disagreeing.


Opinions, Preferences:

I think..., In my opinion..., I'd like to..., I'd rather..., I'd prefer..., The way I see it..., As far as I'm concerned..., If it were up to me..., I suppose..., I suspect that..., I'm pretty sure that..., It is fairly certain that..., I'm convinced that..., I honestly feel that, I strongly believe that..., Without a doubt,...,

Disagreeing:

I don't think that..., Don't you think it would be better..., I don't agree, I'd prefer..., Shouldn't we consider..., But what about..., I'm afraid I don't agree..., Frankly, I doubt if..., Let's face it, The truth of the matter is..., The problem with your point of view is that...

Giving Reasons and offering explanations: To start with, The reason why..., That's why..., For this reason..., That's the reason why..., Many people think...., Considering..., Allowing for the fact that..., When you consider that...


For the Importance of Focusing on Grammar

Without grammar, language doesn't exist.
How can I feel confident about using grammar if I don't understand the rules?

A solid knowledge of all the rules is necessary to speak a language well.
The best way to learn a language is practice, practice, practice the correct usage.

Good English means correct English.

Games do not promote learning, they promote having fun and nothing else.

Making mistakes reflect poor learning.

If we don't learn the rules we will not be able to improve our English when we are not attending English classes.

Communication Means More than Understanding Rules

Communication is possible even when we make mistakes
Understanding rules in my head doesn't mean that I can communicate.
There are many different styles of learning, some of which do not include "grammar banging".

The only thing that is important is that people can understand me and I can understand them.

Many native speakers make mistakes in grammar usage.
Doing grammar exercises all the time is boring and therefore leads to lack of attention.

Playing games is a great way to actually use the language - not just study it.
It is difficult to become fluent if the teacher interrupts me every 30 seconds to correct a grammar mistake.
Grammar is boring!


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First World Obligation

You are going to debate the correctness of the following statement:

The most important ingredient of learning English is Grammar. Playing games, discussing problems, and having a good time is important. However, if we don't focus on grammar it is all a waste of time.

It is important to remember that you have been placed in your group based on what seems to be the opposite of what you really think. Use the clues and ideas below to help you create an argument for your appointed point of view with your team members. Below you will find phrases and language helpful in expressing opinions, offering explanations and disagreeing.


Opinions, Preferences:

I think..., In my opinion..., I'd like to..., I'd rather..., I'd prefer..., The way I see it..., As far as I'm concerned..., If it were up to me..., I suppose..., I suspect that..., I'm pretty sure that..., It is fairly certain that..., I'm convinced that..., I honestly feel that, I strongly believe that..., Without a doubt,...,

Disagreeing:

I don't think that..., Don't you think it would be better..., I don't agree, I'd prefer..., Shouldn't we consider..., But what about..., I'm afraid I don't agree..., Frankly, I doubt if..., Let's face it, The truth of the matter is..., The problem with your point of view is that...

Giving Reasons and offering explanations: To start with, The reason why..., That's why..., For this reason..., That's the reason why..., Many people think...., Considering..., Allowing for the fact that..., When you consider that...


For the Importance of Focusing on Grammar


Without grammar, language doesn't exist.
How can I feel confident about using grammar if I don't understand the rules?

A solid knowledge of all the rules is necessary to speak a language well.
The best way to learn a language is practice, practice, practice the correct usage.

Good English means correct English.

Games do not promote learning, they promote having fun and nothing else.
Making mistakes reflect poor learning.
If we don't learn the rules we will not be able to improve our English when we are not attending English classes.

Communication Means More than Understanding Rules

Communication is possible even when we make mistakes
Understanding rules in my head doesn't mean that I can communicate.
There are many different styles of learning, some of which do not include "grammar banging".

The only thing that is important is that people can understand me and I can understand them.

Many native speakers make mistakes in grammar usage.
Doing grammar exercises all the time is boring and therefore leads to lack of attention.

Playing games is a great way to actually use the language - not just study it.
It is difficult to become fluent if the teacher interrupts me every 30 seconds to correct a grammar mistake.
Grammar is boring!
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