Job Discussion Forums

[velmeran]

So I find my self this week with a lesson plan a little to ambitious. All I teach right now is reading comprehension and speed (haha, speed readin, when they barely understand the language, it cracks me up). I was going to have a short story about 5 pages long we would work through in class, but it seems these five pages of a story on friendship are WAY over their heads.

So now I find myself with two classes wasted this week since we didn't get anywhere, and three more classes I need to somehow salvage instead of ripping my hair out explaining vocabulary over and over again. I am not their vocab teacher, they have a whole other class for that, I'm here to make them read between the lines as it is and actaully THINK about what the story says.

I'm still hoping to use the same theme for my classes, which is friendship so I might possibly include something about it on my next quiz, but I am not exactly sure how well it will work. Atleast the remaining classes aren't full of rude little snots like my first two (monday class is full of people that don't shut the *beep* up, tuesday I have 9 of 40 students show up). I'm thinking of having them write a description of the person next to them, and then randomizing, handing them back out, and using the description to find the person described, but I have doubts it will work well.

Also, do any of you have problems with students coming to class with no materials? I think I see 1/3rd of my students with a little notepad, and a few don't even bring pencils. I know I'm working at a little private college thats a daycare center for 4 years then they recieve a degree that says we changed their diaper, but this is just sad. Makes it a royal pain to try and get class participation at times also.

Back to the topic though, anyone else had lesson plans that obviously over-shot the students abilities and maybe have a good way of getting back on track? I have no text book or anything, I'm just getting a run around from the school and have told the students they should go get a english book from the library or a shop, will see how that works out next week. Only thing keeping me sane in class are the few students that are good and want to learn, it helps me ignore those who just show up and do nothing.

[Shan-Shan]

[smitten13]

when all else fails - feign a seizure or heart-attack and just get carried out.

That's my plan B!

[in_asia_bill]

[Mydnight]

Depends on what the students can do. I usually have some random activities or games in the back of my mind to serve as fodder if my usually poorly planned lessons go awry. I'm not beyond stopping and saying, "ok, this is not working" and then pulling out some kind of game that vaguely relates to the topic for the day.

I'm getting better. I at least now HAVE a topic I want to cover. heh.

[velmeran]

Haha In_Asia_Bill, your like the douche everyone thinks about when we talk about douches on web forums. You awnser questions, but not with out little inflamatory remarks made to make yourself look bigger and better then the person posting. Way to go, you win the interwebs!

Yes, I am a new teacher, I'm mostly monolingual because the chinese I know and use isn't always applicable to the lesson I have, or the odd word that trips them up. If I was bi-lingual though, I wouldn't be a new teacher (how many people were totally fluent in chinese before they arrived? not many from what I can tell) most likely. Though from the sounds of it you also think its pointless to teach my class since the students in China are completely devoid of thinking.

I have some good students in every class I have, they've worked through my lessons and been able to answer questions about the meaning of stories or what kind of a character if someone with out too much of a problem. As for my first two classes in the week, they have been my trouble classes since my first day teaching, with very little respect for me or their classmates. But my other three classes are great, the students are attentive, don't talk when others are talking, and generally try and do the work assigned.

As for the speed reading, I don't think they are ready for it yet, not until I can fix some basic problems they have with understanding locational, descriptive, and emotional language. Right now about half the class can't draw a room correctly from a simple description because they don't understand "sits to the right of" or "the desk is on the wall" (they put it floating up on the wall somewhere). Their biggest problem is that they tend to read linearly, and if I put things in that make you back track, they get lost and don't know what to do.

Right now I am just going to shorten the 5 page story down to a page and continue with the exercise, I think that will make them feel it's less daunting.

[in_asia_bill]

[velmeran]

[in_asia_bill]

[velmeran]

http://www.homestarrunner.com/fhqwhgads.html I'm too the LIMIT!

Seriously though, you can go on and on about me being some awful teacher if you want, doesn't stop me from doing my best with what I have. Go ahead and keep being negative, just makes me laugh and all my friends I have pointed at this topic.

Oh, and the private messages, classic

[Steppenwolf]

[patsy]

Yes, I can understand you. At hunan women's college (which should not even be categorized as a "college"), the students often don't bring notepads or pens. just their mp3 players. They act like it's such a pain if i ask them to write something down. Many of them skip classes, as it won't matter, the english dept. will give them their final passing grade. I've also had many lesson plans bomb. maybe try just doing pronounciation exercises if other things aren't working, they like to repeat after the teacher.

[Steppenwolf]

Sorry, Velmeran, for the unsympathetic reception you got here from that other poster...after your challenging classroom experience. I know how you feel, and there is no need to blame you for what's happening in your class.

I would say the goals of that class have been set too high.

I once taught Literature to college students who majored in English...and for two thirds of them my efforts were in vain because of their lackadaisical cooperation.

I don't presume I know what is best in your situation but I would try to speed-read in the following way: sentence after sentence, have the students work out the gist of the sentence, ignoring words they don't understand. Have them identify subject and predicate, and object if any, then adverbial clauses.

As for vocabulary, even FTs often labour under the erroneous assumption that the teacher must always prepare a list of new words for their students. I say: why? What for? From a certain level on students ought to be able to look after their own needs by identifying gaps in their knowledge and using dictionaries whenever necessary. The pseudo-study (rote-learning) of new vocables only takes up too much precious time! You will quickly discover that some students are ahead of others, AND YOU CAN ACTUALLY HARNESS THEIR SKILLS TO HELP THE LAGGARDS.
In addition, just about any text contains words the students have never covered before - and even bilingual versions won't list a translatjon for every new item.
Recently I found that my present college students consider as "new" a number of roll-of-the-mill verbs such as think, go, run - whenever their past or participle forms showed up! Yes, I had to explain to some the meaning of "thought", "ran" and "went"...

[tw]

[velmeran]

Yes, I make use of the better students at times when a word or phrase is causing problems for the rest, usually I have them come up and write a sentence with the word thats in a different context, and maybe even write what they think it's best meaning is in chinese, though I have become less then impressed with the chinese-english electronic dictionaries they have, which is why I have started to put in the chinese for the words so I have a better feeling it's closer.

I find the www.chinese-tools.com english-chinese dictionary to give alot better varied uses for a word then most, though google's beta translator isn't bad either as long as you make sure to double check it. Sometimes I ask one of the other english teachers here for help with a word when those all fail and they don't seem to mind since I don't try and eat up more then a few minutes of their time.

But like I said, my class isn't a vocab class, so I'm not trying to test them on that, I am trying more to extract their comprehension of the material in a educational way. Words that they don't know I go over, but I am not handing them out a vocab sheet each lesson, they need to either recognize they don't know the words and learn them, or be faced with the word on the quiz later. I make all my test using the lessons I have done and don't add any new words, so if they paid attention in class they shouldn't have problems with the test, which the results have shown to be true.

So far the best class activity I had was the one on describing a room, I had the students write out a description of their dorm room, and then would have another student come up and put the objects in the general place. Most of the time it required the students to ask the student who wrote the description to clarify things more and so they had to ask questions to each other in english with a little help from me. The students even said that was their favorite class since I spent very little time lecturing, but allowed the students to talk more to each other in english.