Job Discussion Forums

[werkard]

Ok, so here I am a new arrival in China. The boss of my school wants to use me for conversation classes. Fair enough I do have some experience in this and afterall I am a native speaker. BUT how do you guys DO a conversation class with 40 students of Lower Intermediate level in the 13 to 16 year age range?.
How do you get THEM talking and where do you source material that they might be interested in and monitoring 40 students, hmmmmmmmmmm.
All (vaguely sensible)suggestions are very welcome

[Minhang Oz]

I don't like the sound of that.
With college/uni kids in that kind of situation, I've always been able to split the group, and teach each half for one lesson a week, rather than the whole group for two lessons. But I doubt if a middle school can accommodate that kind of arrangement. I haven't taught this age-group here, but in Australia they used to give their foreign language teachers merry hell, especially if the teachers were non-native English speakers: I can't see your situation being too different. So I think to stay sane [ie, in control], you'll need to adopt local teacher methodology. Front and centre teaching, lots of modelling, students repeating and reciting, asking individuals to stand and answer questions etc. Above all, you must be seen to be in control, even if you know there isn't much real learning going on.
It sounds terrible, but the alternative, total anarchy, is far, far worse.

[MartinK]

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[Roger]

Old China hands know my aversion to this type of "teaching" - absolutely not my cup of tea! I don't the heck see any benefit in having unwilling and totally disinterested kids "talk" in a language they have been told is "alien" and will remain so! All you get is Pavlovian reflexes.
Besides, conversations are good for mature people with a solid foundation in the language. These two requirements are not met by any Chinese students under 16 years of age, and even above that it's rare!

They lack intellectual maturity, the ability to relate to someone or something, and they lack an overall world view.

But to come back to your question - if it wasn't meant to be rhetorical:
The most likely "success" comes if you take the communitarian road, i.e. making the whole class parrot whole sentences after you. You can split them up into two groups and have them perform a dialogue.
You might eventually even have some modest success by having them memorise the parts of a drama.
tape-record them so as to enable them to hear themselves!
All those "free talk" sessions are a total waste of time - they only reinforce bad Chinglish!

[k2cloudz]

Perhaps you could break them into 4 groups of 10, and keep these groups for an extended period. Each group of 10 could then be assigned speaking excercises that allow them to get to know each other and form some sort of a bond, (the game "find someone who. . . " comes to mind). Once each group of 10 know eachother the class will be much more willing to participate in conversational activities, particularly if you can have some sort of competition going between the 4 groups. Maybe you give rewards to the group that wins some sort of debate on "debate day". I don't know, but I would deffinitally attempt to break the class up so it does not function as a whole, but 4 seperate entities.

[Freaky Deaky]

I tried doing conversation classes with 40 students in a middle school. The biggest waste of my time ever. I asked the school if I could pare the classes down to just the most fluent kids, but the didn't like that idea. I had kids who were left scratching their heads if I asked them 'How are you?'.

I did some activities like some games and stuff, but when one of the teachers saw me doing that I was asked to stop and teach them conversation. I got a book called 'Side by Side' and went through that. It was the most mind-numbingly boring time I've ever had.

The kids were useless generally. During the summer I had to do a summer school with them - this time it was just the best kids and only one class a day. I managed to get a budget out of the school and each class me and the kids would do stuff. We went to the zoo, an aquarium, loads of parks, shopping, etc. I think these kids learnt more in the summer than they did the rest of the year.

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Kids that age like weird stuff so the Riply's Believe It or Not', Guiness Books Of World Records, behaivors of dangerous animals and any Circus like stuff will get them interested and talking.

[Anne-Marie Gregory]

oh gawd....I have my first ever kiddy class on Friday.....80 beginners in a junior middle school and little time to prepare!

[Ted]

[Steiner]

Anne-Marie, that sounds awful. You have my full empathy. If I were Catholic I'd pay for a mass to be said to get you out of Purgatory soon.

[Freaky Deaky]

[Anne-Marie Gregory]

My mini hell gets even worse.....there just happens to be a TV crew in the school on the day of my first class AND I'm currently suffering from a very bad Chinese haircut.
I once gave a presentation to middle school teachers (in situ) with my previous job. They put on a well prepared Western culture class for the benefit of the local TV crew (even the wrong answers had been rehersed many times over). I was filmed bent right over a desk talking to a student....apparently my @rse in the air was the most prominant feature....that was then the only bit shown on TV....my favourite purveyers of North Face clothing recognised my butt!

If they haven't already got English names, that'll kill plenty of time, then we'll play tossing the javellina (soon to be re-named Mr Piggy) doing 'My name is X. What's your name?'...chuck cuddly toy. And then I'll have some stuff in a sack for them to ID and tell my what colour it is.....arghhh....their textbook uses American English....

[Steiner]

[Anne-Marie Gregory]

that idea sounds promising......and it'll can contribute to Beijing's goal of stabilizing China's population, so everyone'll be happy!?
And this is where Dave's really comes into it's own...tips on classroom management from an old hand!

[mr pink]

Werkard,

I agree with most of what everyone else has said.

In terms of the 15-16 year old age group, what works for me is puting together lesson plans that are activity oriented. Going into class with a discussion topic and vocab generally doesn't work for this age group very often...you do all the talking or feel like a reporter interviewing corpses in a morgue...or you end up playing the silence game until someone breaks down and starts talking...but maybe your students can't.

Calling on individual students is the most reliable way of getting complete sentences. With such large classes, pair work often becomes talk-in-Chinese-about-nothing-relavent-time. Performances work well, roleplay, anything to keep it all moving.

Like others have mentioned, they aren't ready to have REAL discussions, they don't even want to listen to each other.

Whether or not students learn in these classes is questionable, so much so, that my school doesn't include their conversation class grade in their report card, which leads to a whole nother bunch of problems.

However, the worst thing you could do would be to think that the class is as useless as everyone else thinks, esp. the school and the students.

Even though "conversation" isn't the right word for the class, the students can still get something out of it. They might have a Chinese teacher teaching them English grammar, listening, reading....you can find out what material they're using and then use your class to reinforce it.

Use your own material and review...basically treat it like any other English class. Bring in readings, tapes, have them draw, act, write to prepare their thoughts...anything to get them in the end TALKING in English....conversing might happen on a good day

mr pink