Job Discussion Forums

[moderntime]

I'm currently teaching part of a program that will prepare students to take the IELTS exam in November of 2006. I'm working off the New Interchange Books while the students are simultaneously exposed to more difficult material with their Chinese English teachers, which I find a little ridiculous since we, the native English speakers, should be teaching to at least that level or higher.

I met with all of my students individually as a midterm evaluation. Not only did I tell them how they were doing and what they could improve, but I specifically asked for their feedback to make the classes more of a dialogue instead of this constant teacher-centered stuff. What my students seem to like most are presentations (we do them at least once a week), role play, and free talk. At the same time, there is quite a bit of the class that is focused on grammar, which they actually know rather a bit better than I do. They've had years of the stuff, I've done one week in high school. Our main difference, of course, is that I know how to use grammar while they are struggling.

I'm trying to orient my teaching so that it is less fixed to the book, challenging but will still reinforce the basic grammar and listening skills that are in the book. I definitely want to move away from so much recorded listening exercises. Ideally I'd like to center the classes around ideas that will get them to think and express their opinions in English, which is a fundamental part of the IELTS exam and just good for their overall development in general. How can I do this without sacrificing the grammar and the boring bits?

Keep in mind that I'm a bit of a newbie to all of this--I taught elementary school but not university in my previous teaching life--so anything that you might have, even very basic, would be extremely useful.

[kev7161]

I think there are several threads about this as well as the New Interchange books, but I think the main idea is to get them away from SCRIPTED activities - - whether it be reading from the book or them writing a dialogue or presentation on their own (and then reading from it). The more spontaneous things you can do to get them to speak off the top of their head, the better. However, using the text is not a bad thing, just balance it with non-text activities. For example:

1. There is a whole list of vocabulary words in the back of the book that correspond with the subject matter of the chapter. After you've finished a unit and have discussed vocab words the students may not be familiar with, can you have the students stand up and use a word properly in a sentence? Can they use the proper grammar around it? Can they use the proper tense should it be a verb?

2. Each unit of New Interchange has a conversation topic at the beginning of each unit. How can you expand on this topic to make it more relevant and interesting to the student? Can you tweak it a little to have some meaning to your Chinese student? Can you compare/contrast a certain topic with some sort of similar cultural topic of China? (holidays, for example) Your students will probably like to talk about things they know.

3. There's nothing wrong with covering the grammar in the book. My suggestion is not to dwell so long on it. It's usually one page for each grammar lesson, yes? Use 15 to 20 minutes of your classtime, cover the lesson in their textbook, have them do the practice exercises in class and go over them, then send them away with their workbooks and have them do those on their own. Your challenge is to make sure they can use these grammar rules while carrying on a simple conversation. What kind of games/activities can you com up with to insure this? One idea is to present one sentence to each student on a piece of paper. Two students will have "almost" the same sentence, one being grammatically correct, the other "almost" so, but not quite. It's the student's job to find his classmate with the similar sentence and then they should decide which is correct and which is not. Then have the pair come to the front of the class and explain, in English, why one is correct and one is not. They can use your chalkboard for help.

The bottom line is make a list of 15 or 20 outside-the-book activities you can do. It's okay to re-use the ideas in different units, but 20 activities certainly gives you a good base to shake up your class a little. Good luck!

[Roger]

I thought I could detect a contradiction in your post: you feel a FT rather than a Chinese one should do the more challenging parts of teaching yet you admit that your students "know" quite abit about English grammar.
Apart from that, I understand your situation although you are obviously labouring under some illusions. First of all: how do you know they "know" grammar so well? Knowing rules is not understanding grammar; they must internalise them. This they have probably never really done; we did that (in other foreign languages) by doing exercises in which we, for example, conjugated verbs. To conjugate verbs can be boring but it requires a certain presence-of-mind which needs to take place so students develop the right competency.

I don't really know whether your students have learnt how to form their personal opinions; generally they acquire theirs from their teachers and textbooks. Thinking independently is not a goal in China's education, much though it is desirable for foreign teachers.

Why don't you use IELTS materials rather than NEW INTERCHANGE? I am not a friend of that book series but it might have some good topics. I guess, you should find out their needs and remedy the varaious problem areas they have in English; you will see there is a lot more than meets the eye at first glance. How do they pronounce diphtongs, long syllables? Do they use the correct tenses? Do they listen to what one of them is saying during a presentation in front of them?
You know, these guys learn in order to pass exams, not because they are in love with English.