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jeffinflorida

Today's 3rd and 4th period class had a surprise for me...The University doubled up the class and gave me 66 students in one class - 2 classes for this period.

Can I effectively teach Business English to 66 students when we meet for 1 1/2 hours once a week?

I truthfully do not believe that i can have much impact on so many students for such a short class time.

I have complained to my teaching assistant who said he will speak to the dean...but i do not hold my breath on change.

YearOfTheDog · Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2005 5:30 am Post subject:

66 kids...Try classes of 80 highschool students who don't want to be there.

JonnyB · Joined: 16 Mar 2005 Posts: 44

latefordinner · Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Posts: 973

Welcome to China, Jeff.
One thing you might do is offer to split the class and teach two classes, if (big if) you can manage the extra time. This could become a minefield though, so stipulate a maximum number of students in each class (say 35), no addttions. You don't want to end up with two classes of 60 to 70 students.

nolefan · Joined: 14 Jan 2004 Posts: 1458 Location: on the run

lanaluv · Joined: 15 Jun 2005 Posts: 21

Try teaching oral English to 99 students in a class! That's what I have. My other classes are all over 70 students.

Queenslander · Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2005 8:04 am Post subject:

I am teaching post graduate students at what is supposed to be a prestigious university (aren't they all?). I get 3 classes twice a week for Oral English. They are all around 50 students. Once a week they come to me for Written English - all three of them at once. That's almost 150 students. The room holds exactly 150, but there are no resources to speak of. There was no syllabus - we were expected to write that ourselves - but no criteria or benchmark was given. No indication was given of what the expectations were. Do your own thing, write your own exam. If I spend 2 minutes per student marking their written work I will be at it for 5 hours. The bottom line is - the Uni doesn't give a shit. They are told to hire a white face, preferably qualified, to teach English. And they have done that. They call us foreign experts, but are not interested in using our expertise. I found out by accident that my students have a Chinese person teaching them English Reading. You'd think they would have introduced her to me from the start so we could combine our efforts and so provide the best for our students. You ask is it doable? The answer "This is China!"

Freestyle T · Joined: 15 Jul 2005 Posts: 494 Location: Charming Chengdu

It is NOT doable unless you are teaching a highly-motivated class of students who know why they're there and want to learn.

I taught an oral english class of 84 students last year. It was ridiculous. Of the 84 students, about 9 actually wanted to learn and did any work at all.

The remaining 75 students? About 40 hardly ever bothered to turn up and the other 35 slept, played with phones, studied for other subjects and all the rest of the usual suspects. They were not the least bit interested in group work, activities, presentations or anything like that. My instructions were met with rolled eyes and hostility, followed by complete non-compliance. They only wanted to talk to me, but that was never going to work. I really disliked that class.

wok · Joined: 14 Feb 2005 Posts: 6

WOW!
I haven't been in China for very long, but you guys are making me feel pretty good. My class have a total of 25 students. 15 in one and 10 in the other. Teaching young children seems like a wise decision. At least for me anyway. I couldn't ask for a better job. Good luck with your huge classes.

bubblebubble · Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2005 7:21 am Post subject:

welcome to the real world. i have very large classes too and it's doable. design a lot of pair work / role play. pick a few to do deomonstrate in front of every one. i usually run around the lecture theatre with a wirless mic. i 'interview' students and ask them to speak into the mic. this is quite exciting. sometimes i call a few students down to the front and do a little role play. when focusing on pronounciation, ask the whole class to repeat it a few times.gesture and pretend you can't hear them so they all shout in the lecture theatre. just make it a fun and enjoyable time for them.

i guess it all depends on the teacher and whether or not you are able to motivate them... it's like theatre arts, arouse your audience. (of course, students have to be a bit motivated as well). don't worry about how effective your lessons are, if they want to learn, then they will learn no matter how hostile the environment is. you never know, the least expected happens all the time. good luck!

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

My college gave me some classes of about 75 students and I was expected to teach them oral english. After some fancy talking to the head of the department, I was allowed to spilt the class into 2 and teach each one for 45 minutes instead of 1 1/2 hours to all at once. I used the arguement that they would get more out of 45 minutes in a smaller class than 1 1/2 hours in a big one.

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

I certainly admire anyone who can do things with huge classes, but I would never want to walk in their shoes. The thing is, in my opinion, trying to keep that energy level for a full school year - - running around, play acting, etc. And I agree with other posters: Getting a large group filled mostly with attentive, interested students is few and far between (from what I read here and hear from others).

Is it DOABLE? Sure, of course - - most anything is. Maybe the question should be: Is it DESIRABLE?

Chris_Crossley · Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2005 5:19 am Post subject: Class "farce"

The biggest audience I ever had was around 100, but this was thankfully a one-off, at least for me. The "students" were, in fact, full-time workers at a telecommunications company, and the idea was for me to give them an idea of the sort of "classes" that any teacher from the school I was teaching at (albeit temporarily for 4 weeks this summer just passed) would give. The two-hour class was divided into two 60-minute discussion sessions, one about Western festivals and the other about transportation.

As I fully predicted, the vast majority of the "students" were completely dispassionate and disinterested for the simple reason that "the management" had ordered their workers to go to the "class" instead of allowing them to go home after work. Nearly all of the audience, having been forced to give up two hours of their spare time listening to a foreigner talk in a language they probably had no use for whatsoever, could not wait to leave. Neither could I, for that matter.

The whole situation was a farce and was a waste of two hours both for me and for them, thanks to "the management", which probably did not give a toss and was conspicuous by their own absence. One of my then-Chinese colleagues took the next such "class" the following week and he told me the next day that, again, the workers were simply not interested, understandable though that was, since English is of little or no use to blue boiler-suited telephone workers.

Basically, the teachers and the workers were the victims caught in the middle of all this.

KarenB · Joined: 20 Sep 2005 Posts: 227 Location: Hainan

I alway write into the contract that the max class size is 45.

If the class is any larger than that, it's too hard to keep tabs on the individual students. And trying to give them some sort of score at the end of the term is nigh impossible.

Even with other topics (Writing, Business English, etc.) -- the grading can be a real challenge.

I did teach 4 years ago for one semester at the neighboring high school and had about 80 students (and alternating classes -- one class one week, another class the next week). But I wasn't responsible for grading. I told the leaders that the students would benefit more from having smaller classes every week, but I guess they were more interested in quantity than quality. They gave me what were supposedly the "best" students, but I did have a hard time keeping their attention (and usually that isn't a problem for me). I don't think any of them improved their English as a result of my class, but I did make some friends with some of the students who come by and visit from time to time, and their English has improved through just hanging out.

Freestyle T · Joined: 15 Jul 2005 Posts: 494 Location: Charming Chengdu

Well, it's a simple formula.

DOABLE - motivated, keen-to-learn students. The environment doesn't matter so much. They'll do the activities you suggest and put effort into it.

NOT DOABLE - hostile, bored, don't-want-to-be-there students. It's all very well to say "motivate them! do pair work! do groupwork!" but if they simply don't want to be there, you're pushing dung uphill, I'm afraid. You can have great resources and support, but it's not going to make a difference.