Job Discussion Forums

[yamahuh]

What in God's name are they?
Perhaps I'm being idealistic or even naive here, but I thought that my job was to improve my student's oral English, improve their pronunciation, vocabulary and comprehension skills, touch on grammar if necessary and generally make them more able to communicate and be understood in English.
I'm getting a bit frustrated by the seeming trend of some of the schools that I work at who just want me to 'entertain' the students / keep them happy.

I work for a language school that places me in public and private schools around the city. Last year I had great reviews from the majority of my students, Chinese teachers and employer. I teach mostly seniors and junior high school students in classes of up to 80 per.

This term I've been placed for a few classes a week in a new school and it's making me crazy. Getting the kids to talk is like pulling teeth, the teacher told me yesterday that my class had been 'boring' but she was the one who had told me what to focus on for that class.

Basically the kids didn't want to go over the same reading exercise that they had done earlier with their Chinese English teacher so they thought it was boring; when I selected some to roleplay the conversations however, the pronunciation mistakes were abysmal.
So my perspective is that "OK, maybe they've done it before, but YOU told me to do it and there is still room for some serious improvement in their oral English capability"

Am I wrong??

I don't want to be a 'teacher' who shows up to class ; does all the talking while staring at a sea of blank faces; shows some pictures; plays some games and calls it 'teaching'. I understand that there is room in the classroom for all of the things I just mentioned but where is the compromise?

Sorry for the long (ranting) post...

[struelle]

I totally hear you.

This probably sounds trite, but it helps to know that in some way, you are making a difference for these kids.

I got some emails from teachers and my former FAO at a boarding school I taught at two years ago. While I was full of complaints at the time, the feedback I received now was unexpectedly good.

Many of the students I had taught in Senior 2 now graduated from Senior 3. Some got excellent scores on the speaking component of tests, and the written component of the 'gao kao'. As well, more than a few got accepted into universities abroad. I can't claim credit for what my students did, but the feedback was such that they had the *confidence* to take on challenges in their final year.

While it was super frustrating to teach English skills in that environment, I focused more on confidence building as it was easier to do that.

I'm now in a different situation where I've got more opportunities to focus on teaching skills, but the problem is 'political correctness' or an extremely litigous society that makes it difficult to just say what I want to say.

Anways, as with all teaching situations, you take the good with the bad.

Steve

[Chris_Crossley]

[Volodiya]

Teaching, as often as not, is a mixed bag. Having the students, parents, colleagues and administrators all happy with you at the same time is a rare alignment of the planets, indeed.

[yamahuh]

[Brian Caulfield]

I hear you . I just quit my job in Beijing for the same reason . You work hard at many schools where the Chinese English impared teacher admonishes you for not speaking slowly enough . Usually this teachers has memorized a speech they laid on the last English teacher .
Our problem here is the system of regarding a good teacher as being someone who can control large classes .
The big delema I have encountered here is the tendency to give the foreigner the garbage that the Chinese teacher doesn't want to teach . The low level students. If they were serious they would have us teach the graduating students so we could polish their English and they would teach the beginner who needs translation of words . But if they did this the Chinese teachers would lose out on the envelopes of money that parents pay them for preferential treatment of their children.

[Roger]

The perfect excuse to finally come down on Chinese English exams and Chiense English teachers!
Empower FTs to run rigorous exams and to decide what level students belong to, and how large classes should be.
Exams should be done as external exercises - the teacher ought not to know his or her students. No friendship relationships between students and their t
And performances should be geared to real life dialogues, not bae based on translations of Chinese-style debates and disucssions!
Perhaps some elements of IELTS can be incorporated. Chinese teachers teach lower levels, and weaker senior students.

Perhaps the adoption of English as a medium of teaching in selected subjects - geography, world history, PE - would mend matters. Of course, only for those who can cope with English instruction.

[yamahuh]

[Starry Night]

[yamahuh]

it doesn't exactly correlate with the learning environment these students are used to. They're either noisy or silent in class, there's no in between

That's so true, they're either yammering at each other in Chinese or trying to crawl under their desks when you ask them to speak.

without examinations or report cards, the Oral English class may never be taken completely seriously, but it should at least be a pleasant experience for both the FT and students alikes.

That's really all I'm trying to do here; have a good class that the students enjoy and get some benefit from and that they actively participate in.
I'm so sick of having to 'force' them to speak. I try to plan interesting lessons with visual aids, and lots of opportunities for them to speak. But when I ask for volunteers they sit on their hands hoping that they've become invisible....
I wouldn't mind this so much if, when they did speak, they were terrible. I could at least understand their reticence, but most of the time they're perfectly capable of doing the required task.

I keep reminding them that it's an ORAL ENGLISH CLASS and if they don't speak there's not much I can really do to help them improve.

[SimonM]

[SimonM]

[yamahuh]

Jeeeeesus!!
That was probably my worst day ever..
In addition to having 3 classes of capable but non participatory kids this morning, I get to my afternoon class and everything goes to hell in a handbasket.
I spent most of Wednesday afternoon trying to download a programme for my CD burner and burning some travel related songs for my class of seniors today. I had previously looked up lyrics on the internet and made a cloze-gap sheet of two songs - The Monkee's 'Last train to Clarksville' & America's 'Horse with no name'; figuring it would be a fun way to end the week before the holiday.
Unfortunately I had no way to test the CD except on a computer at work. It played fine, but I don't own a CD player and neither does the company I work for so I couldnt try it in one
So after all that messing around I show up for class, the VCD player I had been promised access to wasn't there, so a student is sent out to round up a CD player but the f**kin' CD won't play; turns out it's only set up to play on a computer!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!

I compromised by having the kids use the words that were missing from the songs (but printed at the bottom of the sheet) work in pairs to 'fill in the blanks' but it wasn't anything like what I had hoped for the class.

Sometimes I really, really wonder...

[tw]

[latefordinner]

Random comments, respond or ignore as you see fit
tw: