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[Roger]

So, how are you faring in your oral English/English listening & speaking class? A nightmare, a recurrent headache, or a piece of cake?

As far as I am concerned, my classes meld into one another. It's easy-peasy, plain sailing although it does require adequate diligence - on the parts of both myself and my learners!

I have learnt a few lessons over the years, many of which were traumatising. I know how you get jolted by students saying "could you find more interesting topics" or "we would like to make a suggestion"...

I guess, the key to success is knowing where your students stand in their English-learning career, not relying on their self-assessment nor on that of their teachers.

And it's necessary too to show leadership - competency, expertise. An English teacher should act as a guide to an exotic territory; he should not be led there by his students!
But just that is happening if you submit to your students' suggestions, advice and ideas!
You should know what your students need, and you should know how they can get that. You must understand your students better than they understand themselves! Think about this the following way: who knows YOU best? Not you - it was your mother! Likewise, you as a mother tongue English teacher ought to know English better than your students - in all its aspects!

I am, like most of you out there, hampered in my genuine and sincere efforts by a dearth of teaching materials good in more ways than just one, completely comatose students and a terribly indifferent administration.

The books I am supposed to use are way, way over the intellectual powers of my learners; in addition they come with VCDs that I am not given, and the English of my students is simply hopeless to do such a job well. Who cares?

I do! And luckily, I enjoy the same latitude that most of you enjoy in how to run our classes. Thus I can set my own goals!
I decided a long time ago to set far more modest goals than are normally prescribed by the powers-that-be. I encourage my students to hold speeches and presentations but I do not force them any more. Why should I? None of them has the gab of a Martin Luther King, and hardly any can deliver a speech anyone else would want to listen to for more than 1 minute! Their attention span is equally pathetic!

But there is scope and space to do meaningful English lessons! Quite some space, indeed!

Let me add one more ingredient to success: it is of vital importance that YOU ENJOY DOING YOUR JOB! And that's why I am soliciting your feedback in this thread!

I decided a long time back that what my students need is more quality teaching, not quantity rehearsals of reproduced spoken English. I go back to the roots of the ills in their English, and there are too many to worry about going out of work!

My classes are modular, interlocking, like building blocks: I start at the phonetic level. In fact, I go back to teaching how to write: yes, they often don't know how to properly write their own names in Roman letters! Why - the very phrase 'Roman letters" is a neologism to them! But it shouldnt!
They also need quite a bit of pushing into the culturally sensitive area of how to address people properly - what is a surname, what is a first name? No, a 'first name' is not a surname - they have to be taught that because they mistranslate from Chinese into English (where the order of names is reversed!).

Phonetics then: 'vowels', 'semivowels' and consonants'. While letters are letters, they also are representations of phonemes or clusters of phonemes; 'A' can be pronounced in 5 different ways; my students by now are adept at doing research on words whose 'A' is pronounced as 'A' as in Chinese 'Anhui'.
They also learn about how certain consonants change the behaviour of other consonants or of vowels: double'C' surrounded by 'A's or 'O's is like double'K', but replace one of them with an 'I', and then your students realise why their pronunciation of 'assident' is unlike ours of 'accident'.

I ask 5 individuals to come to the blackboard, and give them but one chance to get it right: they poise, prepare to get it right, and still don't always succeed: each gets a different word as follows:

test taste text tax taxi

Guess how many of them get it right? Never all of them!

From phonetics to grammar. We need to understand each other; students need to exercise a little discipline in making their utterances; these utterances ought to sound natural, sound, harmonious - the verb must agree with the subject, the tense must be correct, the numbers must be the right ones. No easy feat when considering how long they have been allowed to ride roughshod over the most common rules! Thus we have to develop a METALANGUAGE. My students all know what 'adj.' means in Chinese, but they do not know (or not all of them do) that it is an abbreviation of 'adjective'. I need to tell them quite frequently that "safety' is a NOUN, and it must not be used in front of a noun that is asking to be qualified by an adjective! "A safety car" is not necessarily a "safe car".

Of course, you need to know how to transcribe English words in the IPT - but that's no big challenge since anyone can copy from a dictionary; in fact all our students are pretty adept at this! So we should learn to be on a par with them. After all, we still have to explain to them how to pronounce 'Z' - which for a reason I don't understand is nearlyalways mispronounced, as are 'TH', 'X', and all vowels if they are diphtongs!

And it's not boring lecturing! All these lessons involve the students in a direct person-to-person manner: I always ask students to come up to the board and write what I want them to pronounce. I make the English sounds visual on the board.

Of course, my students do have opportunities to engage in activities. They can do reasearch in class, usually in teams. There is competition between the teams as they try to come up with the most results that they put on the board!

And periodically I read aloud a story or a joke. I know from years of experience they understand the words but not the story and its punchline. The reason is simple: too little exposure to fluid speaking and reading, too much listening to teachers saying single words, with students merely repeating them after the teacher.
These listening exercises, in which I dictate the story word by word, punctuation mark by punctuation mark ('no, a comma is a comma, it doesn't mean 'come on!"), are the cherry in the pie. They love them. I read aloud slowly, repeating myself once, usually a whole clause or a couple of phrases.
Do they need any translationj? No! Even if some totally new word crops up - it falls into its semantic place in the context of the whole passage or story. Thus they learn new words and expressions! On top of it, they get exercise in producing accurate English - subject-verb-agreement above all!

And I require them to identify their own mistakes and correct them - quite new to most of them! I usually form them into teams of 4 or 5 - they choose their team partners, normally a proportionate number of girls and boys, and I tell them if one team makes mistakes all of them are responsible for these mistakes! They thus learn how to proofread!
The stories have between 200 and 250 words and are in what's conventionally called "simplified English"; this is a variety that uses the 1800 most commonly used English vocables. Still, most students get stumped in every story when I only tell it to them; they understand them after dictation - when all the written parts fit together!

I have my work cut out for the whole semester; I can easily extend it to suit the needs of an entire academic year. Of course, I would have to adapt parts of this to the level of middle-school students if a similar teaching plan for a middle school were asked of me.

And for kindergartens I have wholly different programmes.

But here is my request: can any of you contribute more ideas to my existing ones? Can you think of what you would want to see in a RESOURCES BOOK for FTs?
This is supposing you too are not happy with your teaching materials and have decided to rely on your own ones; if you could find a reference book that has all ideas and suggestions in its body, what would you expect to find there?

OF course, I also play games with my students.

[KES]

Exellent post Roger.

Such a resource book would need to include resources for ALL FTs, even the newbies.

I have no doubt that you have long mastered the art of maintaining class order and discipline (I pity the child that pronounces Z as "Zee" in your class ). Yet such a guide would have to include such things too.

I'd include:

- Phonics games

- Most common mistakes of Chinese learners

- Test construction and evaluation (not all FTs know the difference between Norm and Criterion Referenced Testing, Item Analysis etc.).

- Using TPR and TPR-S

- Learning styles

Anyway, that's just a start. I'm sure others, especially those with much experience here, will have their own contributions.

Good thread topic.

[pancakes]

(*DISCLAIMER: I write the following with a primary-school bias, having never taught university students.)


It's interesting you threw in the bit about games right at the end, Roger. Why "of course"? There are ways to make your lessons fun and interesting - many ways that you posted above - without playing games... so what's the point of games? I think that's what I'd like to see reinforced in a resource book (I assume we're looking at something quite comprehensive); that games are always for a reason. Usually that reason would be to implement the target language, or review previous lessons, although sometimes just to get quiet students up and active. But a game for the sake of playing a game is a waste of everyone's time.

I've found myself in the position of having to basically create my own syllabus for my classes, since the textbook I'm required to use is universally acknowledged as APPALLING (Cambridge Young Learner's series, if you care). So in a teacher's resource book I would want some tips and ideas about creating a curriculum from scratch while maintaining flow from lesson to lesson and allowing the students to show an obvious increase in their language skills.

If you're going for a hardcore intensive book, you could share some of your experiences getting information and resources from your FAO/school headmaster. Also what resources are essential for quality lessons? (Is a blackboard, desks and chairs enough?)

Also, I'd be wary of glossing over some things that might be obvious to you, but difficult for a newbie. Such as: how to go about modelling and practicing sounds, how to teach fonetiks, the teacher's presence and so on. This is the sort of thing that is covered in TESOL training courses and higher teaching-related education, but remember that many people coming to take oral English classes in China are NOT trained in any way, and many have never been to university.

Perhaps these things vary from the direction you wish to take the book, but they are the only things that come to my mind. I'll think some more and maybe have another crack later.

Peace,

pancakes

[friedrich nietzsche]

What comes to mind instantly is a good description of common learning styles of Chinese learners. Those trained in the West carry assumptions about how learners ought to behave and study. A newbie in China must come to terms with the fact that Chinese learners behave differently than they are trained to expect.
In terms of activities and/or topics of study, I would like to see a lot of dictation activities that are followed by strong activational tasks. Gap-based dictations are exceptionally useful; especially when different sets of sttudents have different gaps, and after the dictation they must put the pieces together. This produces vast amounts of content rich conversation as students explain things to each other. They develop language awareness and are required to be both receptively and productively active.
In such a resource book, I would expect to find lessons that merge the 4 skills. University teachers often teach for up to two hours per session, so there is more than enough time to use all skills in a single session.
Given China's student teacher ratio, it is clear that a task-based approach could be useful. With large groups, it is more effective to give tasks that allow the learners to notice and produce target language.For example, students could be given the task of planning a holiday based on their research of real materials. Such materials are easily located on the internet, and can be copied. I am talking here about the various blogs, travel journals, travel agencies and so on. Do things like setting a budget becasue this narrows the task by creating a point of discussion. Each group could then present/sell their holiday to the class. There could be debate/discussion about which group has completed the task well. Presentation of key vocab. and grammatical matgerial could be included in the task. The idea is that at all stages of the activity, the students are noticing and communicating. They are forced to take risks and make mistakes. Another key benefit of such tasks is that they uncover problems and gives the teacher a good feel of what language areas need to be focused on. It can force embedded mistakes out into the open.
Such activites would be beneficial for inclusion in the resource book and could be easily assembled from the web.

[friedrich nietzsche]

One thing that I found was that several course books have material that is adaptable for use without the books. It might be a useful thing to have adapted lessons from decent course books. I mean adapted in the sense of being stripped down orre-presented in a simpler form. This would provide access to decent level of material without the students having to buy lots of books. It would be particulualry useful in the process of slelecting graded laguage.

[nolefan]

Mr nietzsche, like his namesake, has a good point.

Any book dealing with teaching in China should begin by giving a minimum of background regarding the Chinese educational system and philisophy. I strongly believe that an understanding of the system helps the teachers in getting the job done and dealing with some of the potential issues that WILL arise during their tenure in China.

What I find useful in my classes is communicating with the students from the get go in terms of expectations for both parties and classroom rules. My first lesson is usually an introduction while the second one aims invariably to teach them how to ask questions and when to ask questions. This serves two purposes: it encourages communication between the two parties and it paves the way for further classes.

[kev7161]

In American schools, we have 3 levels of teaching the SAME lesson: Remediation, "Normal", Extensions.

Remediations are used for those individual students who just don't get it and need the subject at hand explained in a simpler way.

Extensions challenge those upper-level students to flex their brain muscles by giving them more advanced lesson activities.

This is something we as teachers in China need to be aware. If you have 10 different classes of the same level, you can't simply teach the exact same lesson 10 different times. A book like Roger describes would need to have the "regular lesson" formulated in detail but also have REMEDIATIONS and EXTENSION ideas as well. Also, you have to be aware that each level of student/class will not grasp the same ideas and concepts at the same speed. You certainly may need to take it slower with some kids than with others. Can you do this? Do you have alternate plans? Do you have back-ups in case something isn't working?

I also think a book/manual such as this should offer several ideas for the "multiple intelligences" - - your visual/spatial learner, your kinesthetic learner, etc. (along the lines of TPR, I suppose)

The larger your classes are, it's obvious you are not going to be able to reach every student every lesson; it's folly to even think you will (in my opinion). However, if you can touch certain kinds of learners with different lesson styles, by the end of the year, you will have gotten to everyone to one degree or another.

Now, saying all this, we are not teaching in a utopian society. All of us with only a small amount of experience know that we have sleepers, talkers, text-messagers, daydreamers, and plain ol' lazy students out there. I think it is important when creating lesson ideas to, yes, have the basic lecture-style lesson at the beginning, but to make sure this breaks off into student-centered lessons where all get the opportunity to practice
English with their peers and with an honest-to-gosh actual English speaker hovering where they can ask questions.

Would this text/manual have warm-up activities? "Five alive" activities? (those are 5 to 10 minute games/activities usually used at the end of the classtime to sort of wind down the lesson) Will your classroom have computers? DVD player w/TV? CD/Tape player? Moveable desks and chairs? All these will factor into what kind of lesson you can teach. This manual will definitely have to have alternative lesson ideas if one has no access to, say, a DVD player (if you were discussing different styles of movies and wanted to show clips from a variety of films).

So, when do we get started?

[Bethany123]

[frigginhippie]

It seems your main points are leadership, competency, assessment, resources, �enjoyment�, and student self-correction. so...

This is what Frigginhippie�s Resource and Teacher Guidebook would say:

Leadership: absolutely, hands down, without a doubt the most necessary ability of an FT in China. Leading a class of 8-80 students along a 45-120 minute journey, noting the significance of stops along the way, requires the PREPARATION of a leader. That is, one must know the lesson material by heart, understand it, be able to apply it in real-life situations, and explain it clearly for a 2nd language learner. This requires planning. The students will know whether or not you are a planner in the first class. Therefore:

The first class is the most important class of the year. In that class, you must show your competency, preparation, interest, understanding and care for your students education. How? Not through games, unless the game roots itself firmly in language acquisition. Not through long personal introductions, unless the introduction provides practical knowledge students may put to use outside the classroom. And not through completion of the first chapter of text in an attempt to enforce the �serious teacher� aura, unless ordered to do so by your boss

So how?
Show competency and understanding by teaching a bit of language through a simple introduction; a mistake you made as a 2nd language learner in school, and what you learned from it.
Show understanding by expressing the personal story through multiple eyes: how an observer/a friend/another student/a teacher would perceive your experience.
Show interest and care by being honest: �I won�t waste your time with useless trivia. We�ll work together to (insert course goals).� Be clear about your goals, and note progress throughout the term. Simple recognitions like "good question" and "well said" work wonders.
Show preparation and competency by giving them an actual lesson in the 1st class; Prepare an intellectual activity that strikes all levels of the class. What I do is hand out a single sheet of text to read (10-15mins). Then begin with simple questions about the location, time, characters, plot. Everyone answers. Move on to �how� the plot occurred. Many answer. Then �why� it was written, and bold students will venture their opinions. First �how did you feel reading it?� and then �why?� �What/who does it remind you of?� �Who do you think it was written for?�� (just some ideas, actually the only good ideas I have, works well for reading/writing classes)

Actual, meaningful in-class work (but not too much) on the first day teaches the students 2 things: our teacher is serious, and our teacher can help us. If students hold these 2 opinions, you're home free.

Assessment: this requires WORK by the teacher. Too often FTs (and teachers in their own countries by the way) shrug off their jobs as �easy money� or �school publicity�. In order to assess the students, the teacher must assign work to be collected, reviewed, analyzed and returned to students with suggestions, corrections or improvements. My classes are reading, so that�s not a problem. For conversation, the teacher must be able to assess each student individually. That means know who is speaking, and how. I admit, I don�t know many methods for this, other than meeting one-on-one or holding in-class debates, presentations and performances.

[dajiang]

Well, since the Internet is the largest resource we have, I'd definitely put lots of cool links in the book.
Actually... I'd make a weblog!
Like this one: http://eslmaniac.web-log.nl/

The disciplinary guidelines are a good idea btw. For different kinds of classes make different sets of guidelines/rules. Very useful for beginning teachers.

I reckon books with photocopyable materials are worth their weight in gold btw. So get some of that in there.

Dajiang

[Roger]

Timehasbeen drippingdown the hourglassfor days since dajiang's post and no new suggestions have been lodged; I wish to thank everyone for their contributions which will be duly noted in my considerations. Such a resources book may or may never come off the planning stage.
Letme add a little personal observation: I have experienced the same hardships that most of you have experienced, or are still experiencing. There was a time in the vortex of my memories when it seemed to me that every lesson would take a minimum of 2 hours of prep work. The temptation to take a shortcut was great but the opportunities to do so were extremely limited unless one was a daredevil who cared not one jota about one's own reputation and job security...

Obviously, Iwas at that time working myself to the bones for far less effect than was conscionable; the reason for this discrepancy was that my overlords and overladies gave me instructions that unequivocally conflicted with the academic levels of my students. I am sure you too have occasionally the impression your boss is deluding himself and his paying students. At some time comes the realisation that you must make a final decision and cross the Rubicon: either you take matters into your own hands, or you become complicit in a conspiracy to defraud your students of their tuition fees in the interest of your keeping your job. I am trying - and often succeeding! - to keep my job while serving my students in their own best interests - which very often means you have to do less popular things with them than they would like to perform. And that is thoroughly possible - at most schools. Thus I have little need to prepare my lessons in detail because I have laid the foundations over these years and I only need to recycle those building blocks that I have known through past experience to be workable and effective.

So, in reply to the various contributors I wish to comment thus:

KES: I teach my students phonetics with a view of making them aware of
their own most common mistakes; I insist on students listening to
fellow students speaking to class so that students learn to differen-
tiate between their own English and correct pronuncation/accent!
I am also grateful to you for mentioning TESTS: that surely is
an important part of teaching; I am, however, one of those FTs
that don't know the meanings of Norm versus Criterion-referenced
Testing.
I also wholeheartedly embrace the TPR approach - in KG!

pancake: Learning styles? Several posters came up with this issue;
I wish I could pour out some wisdom on this but I wonder if
teachers of oral English have to spend much time thinking about
specific Chinese language-acquisition techniques since our job
boils down to actually practising and using what Chinese English
teachers are supposed to "teach" their and our students. Can one
practise oral English in different ways that reflect different
learning styles?
It is, on the other hand, true that a FT ought to acquaint himself
or herself with the defining features of Chinese L 2 instruction -
i.e. the overemphasis on the academic aspects of the subject,
rote-learning as the method to achieve the goal of passing
exams, and exams as the sole justification for students to
study the subject. It might be worthwhile to delve into the
psychological depths of this philosophy but on the whole, I
doubt much could be gained from theorising about China's
obviously anti-humanistic education system.
In reply to your suggestion that I explain WHY or HOW GAMES
be used, I can give you the following hints from a book
101 WORD GAMES:
- games to enhance one's memory;
- vocabulary games;
- number games;
- structure games;
- conversation games;
- spelling games;
- writing games;
- role play and dramatics.
This book dividies the games also according to language level, games for kids and games for homework.

Friedrich Nietzsche: I gladly noted you are also a fan of dictations;
I regularly do those so that my students learn to produce
good, complete and correct English sentences (SVA, correct
tenses, use of their logic to identify the correct word from
a selection of similar-sounding or even homophonous words).
I particularly welcomed your suggestion of using clozes.
As for patterning and modelling of sentences, I hold that
I need more input from others as I feel my students can
acquire sentence patterns through reading more readily
than through rote-learning and oral repetitions.
kev7161: The 3 levels - remediation, normal and extension have
been noted though I am not too sure whether CHinese English
classes have the potential for those 3 distinct levels; maybe I
would need to get a fuller picture of this concept of yours.
My feeling is that my students universally need remedial
action on their grammar, spelling, pronunciation.
Bethany123: I fully realise that kindergarten teachers need special
resources books. In fact, it was a kindergarten that taught
me to think of this kind of reference material since I had to
make do with the most ridiculous textbooks available; I then
consulted various sources and colleagues, and I found out
that a true and genuine kindergarten is a whole world apart
from a CHINEE kindergarten - the latter being an early
version of regular school, that is, bordering on a bootcamp!
As for DISCIPLINE, I would say, much depends on the
assistance extended to you; your own personality does
matter too.
frigginhippie: I chuckled at the term "leadership" - a word dear to me,
don't misunderstand me! I think, FTs often allow their Chinese
students to undermine their authority because they are too
friendly, or in Chinese eyes: "too soft"...
I am ever so friendly with my students, but I demand respect
in return, and if I don't get it then politeness is the operative
word, not "friendliness". Yes, I feel discipline in general should
be discussed in such a book. I will think of how to do that!

[vikdk]

Hey roger I'd sure like to help on the resource book - love to give you some tips on the kindergarten stuff - but before I give my thoughts Id like to ask a question -
You've stated before there is no point in teaching kindergarten kids English - but would you agree with me that FT's could use English in everyday kindergarten activities, and arange activities that use very simple english as a medium of instruction and communication - with the view of promoting both an interest in the langauge and as a foundation for further learning.
Waiting with bated breath for your expert views.

[Roger]

[vikdk]

a nice polite answer - good lad we're learning - yes you're right, your attack was actually about teaching english as an independant subject in the traditional academic manner - you know if you lay off your "Rogerspeak" you sometimes have some pretty good points.

However before we can start i have a little problem with the "Rogerspeak" that deals with - culturally-uninhibited learners! I take this to be your own theory dealing with trad Chinese teaching methods being wound together with the local culture and tradition - I have lsmall problem entirely excepting this, since western schools, of course a long long time ago, used to use similar methods, but were never influenced by Chinese culture. How do you explain this? Could this be something to do with employment of an outdated method that was felt to be effective for very large classes and examinations that required a regurgitation of facts rather than an analysis of knowledge - please answer in simple English.

[Roger]

Rogerspeak is precise and concise enough in most cases - at least if my opposite numbers have been endowed by the Creator with a normal human IQ!