Job Discussion Forums

[7969]

one of my weekly classes (two periods) consists of "teaching" chinese english teachers. we've met once so far, me and abut 30 of them, a couple holding the rank of dean, and the rest teachers.

i asked for ideas on what they're interested in, and got some good feedback from a few of them, and we had a good discussion (again with the same few) on what might/should happen when we meet.

i sent out an email asking all of them to submit to me one piece of english lit they might be interested in analyzing/discussing, and to scan english news media for any articles they might be interested in talking about.

if our last meeting (most teachers silent), and the total number of emails i've received from the group so far (1) are an indication of our future, i'm not sure how successful we're going to be.

has anyone been tasked with this sort of thing before, and if so, how did you deal with it? how did you make it successful (if you did)? it seems to me that most of them are only there because they've been ordered to be there, and i can understand if they're not interested, but it's going to be a shame if the group is largely made up of people who arent interested....

any advice is welcome. 7969

PS: one naughty high rank was nodding off last week LOL

[vikdk]

when I have done this I had the same problem as you � the class consisting of a small number of super (even over) enthusiastic individuals surrounded by the majority with a glazed looks in their eyes and of course one or two who even seem hostile.

Those who are interested are generally after �
1. method � they just want to find out what kind of practical method we use, but are not interested in any theory why we use it � in short just to learn new lesson plans.
2. getting an English lesson themselves � that�s why I think there is so much apparent disinterest � it�s body language for I�m an English teacher but I can�t understand this English.

The teacher I�ve taught are kindy teachers � so now in those kindergartens interested in getting teaching training � the enthusiastic teachers come to my lessons � and we use them as a foundation for training.

I know this post isn�t much help in your situation, but confirms that in this aspect of teaching it seems to be the norm � I would also like to find out if anyone has been successful.

[7969]

your post was helpful. a couple of them are of course interested in teaching methodology, linguistics and so on. i told them up front that i am not a professor or english, i am not an expert on linguistics, and i am not a qualified teacher in the true sense of the occupation. and i can't pretend to be any of those things (altho i've done a good job so far LOL).

i dont mind meeting with them and discussing things with them casually (i dont consider this a lesson and i dont consider myself to be their teacher, we're colleagues exchanging info), but if they have to be there, why dont they try to make it enjoyable? by that i mean, give me some ideas. otherwise we're going to discuss what i want to discuss and what the vocal few want to discuss. i dont want to look out at those faces every week and watch people sleep, chat with their neighbours, or otherwise distract things.

7969

[Midlothian Mapleheart]

Edited to remove offensive content.

Middy

[dajiang]

Man, good luck.
We did this once in the private language school that I was working at. It was much harder than I thought it would be.

Anyway, the thing was that I was really young at the time (22), and they (and myself too btw) felt that it wasn't really my place to tell experienced teachers how to teach. This was an age thing I'm sure, even though I was just trying to tell them about the differences between our teaching styles. Well, it didn't work anyway. The other teachers took over and I went back to my regular classes.

I had two colleagues at the time who were much older than I, and they had much more succes. If I were to go about it again (4 years later with lots more experience) I'd invite the group of teachers to my regular class, have them make notes, and we'd do a discussion of things they had noticed or thought was strange. They might even disagree with somethings, and give me advice. That would be interesting I think.

Dajiang

[Roger]

You didn't let on how good their English is in practical terms such as ability to follow an English lesson using English as the medium of instruction.
I had kindy teachers and to me it was a hell of a pleasure except for one person who happend to be the instigator of the whole idea - she was the headmistress, and her English was virttually zero, zero after 3 years of intermittent classes by different teachers.

Her example showed that motivation is the main point. She thought she could get a freebie and improve her educational level, but she lagged behind every total newbie she herself hired to teach preschoolers basic English (and those newcomers often were about as old as her daughter).

I guess what I am trying to say is there is no foolproof methodology or approach. I was relatively strict, teaching COMPREHENSION, no new vocabulary apart from new lexical items that cropped up and had to be checked in dictionaries by the teachers themselves (only if they didn't know the meaning).
It worked fine, but it could also have worked less well had I had bad rapport with my colleagues.

[vikdk]

hey Roger - when you teach teachers do you use the Basil Fawlty or the Mr. Bean method?

[voodikon]

i don't know whether you'd considered the aspects dajiang touched upon briefly--those relating to face and status and how the chinese teachers feel about having you teach them. while they might say they are enthusiastic to attend, their actions might speak louder than their words. depending on what your/the school's purpose of holding this class is, you might consider proposing a change to the format of the class to make it more of a discussion group than a class.

at my school, i felt that the teachers completely lacked cohesion even though we were teaching in many cases the same group of students. so i proposed we start a teacher discussion group. at first, the boss, as well as the other teachers, kept referring to it as a teacher-training seminar, but i made sure to clarify repeatedly that it was neither training nor a seminar but a time to meet as colleagues, peers, and, in short, equals, to discuss issues at work. so it's not only a weekly staff meeting (something i find a lot of schools, at least in china, seem to lack) but i also stumbled upon a few books in one of the bookstores here describing various methodologies and practical classroom application. i've seen these books around a few stores, so you might see if you can get your hands on them (titles below). they start as a good starting point for our discussions (i broke up the readings into 30-50-page sections for each week), but often our discussions go beyond simply the readings. i also suggested we observe one another's classes (each teacher observing one FT's class and one CT's class), and i think that was somewhat helpful. there was an evaluation sheet in one of the books as well that we used.

that's not to say this hasn't been without problems. while my few years of teaching experience is greater than that of most of my fresh-graduate chinese colleagues', there are two senior staff members who've studied abroad and completed master's degrees in education. i told my boss i thought attendance should be voluntary, but she said she wanted it to be compulsory for the chinese staff. i think this caused some resentment in the two senior staff members, and they participate grudgingly, at all, in my reading of the situation. moreover, these same staff members have recently announced they're scheduling an additional class for one of the FTs right over the time we hold our weekly meeting, and when we pointed out the conflict, he stated adamantly that the class (a pronunciation class for the other chinese teachers--a whole other bitch-worthy topic, but i'll save that for another time) took priority. when we mentioned this to the boss, she seemed to indicate that this was not the case. so i'm fairly certain this certain staff member is not too keen on the reading group idea. the other chinese teachers are mixed: mostly they seem unsure of how to react; they've so far been pretty quiet and only a few of them have enthusiastically completed the observations. one of them claimed that they couldn't be bothered because they have all the morning periods, and then they "must" take the early, rather than late, bus home--apparently asking them to take the late bus home once is just too much.

so, ok, in retrospect, it's looking like this wasn't such a good idea after all. well, at least the FTs are enjoying it and getting something out of it, i think.

[Jazz2000]

Hi,

I've done quite a bit of work with Chinese English teachers, and it's not always easy. If you have a few headteachers in there, it can make it worse. Often the teachers don't want to speak out as they are worried that their mistakes will be noted by their boss. They also risk showing their headteacher up if they have better English.

Chinese English teachers have a hard time. They have classes of over 50 students and are rated on the exam results of their students. So a foreigner comming in and telling them how to teach English often goes down badly. The methods our teachers used to teach us languages are very difficult to impliment in such big classes. Plus, the university enterance exam has a huge weighing on vocab and gramma, so that's what the teachers teach. You can't really blame them, as their jobs depend on student results.

What I found worked best was giving them cultural info that they could take back and give to their students. So I prepared classes on travel, festivals, sports etc. They were then able to take this info back, in some cases using my power points, and hopefully use it to inspire their students. I would try and throw in some oportunities for discussions in pairs or groups, but I'd always take care not to show up any weak English.
Just always be careful not to attack the Chinese Education system too much, they know its flaws, but are not capable of changing it!!

[7969]

well i've met with this group twice now. a pleasant enough bunch, but most of them (the majority out of a group of 30) are pretty silent overall, much like the regular classes with students with the same few people doing all the talking.

i have no intention of teaching these people anything, i want it to be just an informal meeting where we can exchange ideas, discuss a bit of literature and current events, and play a game or two. however i've been told i should give them a test of some sort.... on what i have no idea. i think that'll just blow over at some point in time and i wont have to do it.

at any rate, thanks for the comments. i'll just see what happens as time goes by.

[Gregor]

7969,
What is your background? Do you have a TEFL certificate? If not, disregard this post.
Otherwise...
I have had to train Chinese English teachers, and I have been met with resistance. But, dammit, they need to learn, in a serious way.
You want to show them how to teach English using ONLY English. Start with a very basic lesson in another language that you know. Teach them how to order a beer, say, in Spanish. But ONLY speak Spanish. Make them understand you with your body language and so on, and they will slowly get the idea of how to teach without using Chinese.
If you can't do this in English, then you are very much ill-suited for the job. Because this is WHAT WE DO.
After that lesson, go into the hows and whys: HOW can you do a lesson without using Chinese? WHY shouldn't we use Chinese? Give examples and demonstrations.
One of the biggest misconceptions is that students have to understand everything that the teacher says.
NO! NO NO NO! There has to be a goal, "After this lesson, the students will know what an apple is." Or something. At a higher level, "The students will be able to understand the difference between past simple and present perfect." At a MUCH higher level, "The students will use the past simple or the present perfect as is appropriate."
What a lot - no, I should say, THE VAST MAJORITY - of teachers do is expect that a student understand stuff that is well outside of the curriculum.
It's great if they DO, but if they can keep up with what is strictly expected of them, then they are making progress.
Also - if the teachers are asking us white folk to teach English, then I'm guessing that they want to improve the students' speaking skills. This requires that the students SPEAK.
This seems obvious, but most of the teachers have to be not only TOLD this, but also DEMONSTRATED to.
When training teachers, you have to show them what a good lesson is like. Give them an ENGLISH lesson. Show them that it can be done without Chinese.

I was given the task of teaching Chinese English teachers once, and what I had to do was force them to watch me give a lesson to their own classes - level 0, level 1, levels that our boss considered HAD to be taught by Chinese teachers, IN Chinese.
I knew no Chinese at the time, and I did lessons that made the students ask for ME to be the teacher for their class. Levels that I, as a foreigner, couldn't teach. I mean, after ME, they didn't want the Chinese teacher.
The Chinese teachers learned a LOT from that.
In short - if you're doing teacher training, you need to show them how to teach, IN ENGLISH.

[Jizzo T. Clown]

Good stuff, Gregor.

My two cents...I had to teach a group of hotel managers how to teach their staff English. Basically I would go in and teach a lesson, then have them tell me what I did and how they would improve it. Of course it was an extremely heterogeneous class regarding level, but it seemed to work ok. The reason I had them tell the class about the techniques used is because they grew very tired very quickly of me explaining what I was doing, either while I was doing it or after I finished.

Now, I'm teaching a group of Chinese education majors here in the states, and it's much, much easier! I have a pair of students give a one hour presentation every week on anything they want. The stipulations are that they must have a lesson plan and they must only use English. The results have ranged from hysterical to surprisingly intelligent.

[7969]

[Roger]

Gregor shows up a truism about teaching: if both sides have to resort to speaking/communicating in a third lingo then both sides have to make appropriate efforts at understanding each other.
And that is why teaching Chinese English teachers isn't that easy; they come with a brain full of preconceived ideas of their own about teaching a foreign tongue, and they have "learnt" that foreign tongue that way, so they are unlikely to take your input without a big lump of salt.
And most feel superior to you because they consider themselves "bilingual", which some of us are not.

There is another approach that could yield good results: call in the kids!
Yes, demonstrate how you communicate with kids younger than 7 years of age. For some of us, teaching preschoolers is the most rewarding job, and the results are tangible and demonstrable.
This might be a way of changing some of those bad ingrained Chinese teaching mannerisms.

I often let off a list of DO's & DON'Ts:
- Don't practise reading aloud! (That takes them all by surprprise!).
- Immerse yourself in the written medium of English so as to get
the feel for the language;
- learn to listen more carefully;
- learn to GUESS at the meanings of words new to you rather than
rely on a word-by-word translation;
- if you do want to practise speaking aloud, practise silently at first until
you feel comfortable enough, then speak the whole sentence (without
those halting breaks and 'hmmms', while you tape-record it for later
listening to and gauge the quality of your own English pronuncation).

[Gregor]

7969 said,