Job Discussion Forums

[parrothead]

[Apsara]

Long, long ago when I was teaching at Nova we had several students who said they were coming to Nova as therapy.

The problem was that two of them were so heavily medicated that all their movements were in a kind of slow-motion which freaked out the other students (one was nicknamed "turtle girl"), and the others who weren't medicated behaved so weirdly that they... freaked out the other students. I would have liked to have a talk with the doctor(s) who made that recommendation.

[stevenbhow]

I found that turning your class into a trivia style game show can sometimes get even the zombies to speak. Start with a question and then turn it into a discussion. Of course this usually only works with intermediate or advanced students.

[Bozo Yoroshiku]

[thermal]

One thing you have to realise with the sleep answer, is that a lot of them do sleep on their days off. This is because they are working insane hours or juggling university and part time jobs that they are totally exhausted, so when the do get some time they sleep.

On the other hand the Japanese are just so hard to manage as students sometimes. I usually have to rip every single English word out of them. Particulary annoying is when I walk into the classroom, say hello and no one responds.

I also hate the "How are you?" "I'm fine" sequence. I sometimes impose a rule that you can't say "I'm fine" so get them to actually think about how they are.

I think the Japanese staff at schools need to help manage this problem by telling students that the more they speak the faster they will improve, particuarly when they say things that are not easy. Another good way I find is to get them up out of their chairs and moving. This helps break the high school mentality they have of sit and absorb.

[Vince]

There was an antisocial girl at NOVA who had bought a lesson package several months earlier, took one lesson and didn't sign up for another, then later realized that the lesson tickets were about to expire. Not wanting the tickets to go to waste (but with no concern about actually learning English), she signed up for several lessons a day until the expiration date. She could barely communicate with other Japanese, let alone opening her mouth in an EFL lesson. She had bangs that came down to the middle of her eyes, and she'd just sit there for the whole lesson with no expression on her face as she peered through those bangs at the teacher. It was like something out of a Japanese horror movie. We later found out that lessons went slightly better with female teachers, because her father and brother had given her very parochial rules about talking to men.

[AgentMulderUK]

[alexcase]

I had an interview at one small chain of schools where they proudly explained their own materials as: "We used to give them all the questions, grammatical instructions and vocabulary, but then a receptionist suggested that students still won't know what to say, so now we give them the answers to all the questions too". And so they did, with things like the classic asking trivia questions, but with the person answering being given all the answers on their worksheet so that they couldn't be asked something they didn't know. And I thought a language was about really communicating and expressing yourself...

I absolutely agree with the imagination and lying (bluff games) recommendations with these kinds of students. As long as the format of the game is very simple and fixed (e.g. storytelling with picture or vocab prompt cards) they can surprise themselves with how much imagination they have. Another good one is to have a totally written out dialogue and then to get them to vary more information each time or to hide more and more of the text and let them reply any way including the original form.

Another one is to extend the sleep topic in simpler ways, e.g. What time did you go to bed? Doesn't your mother/ wife/ children wake you up?/ How many hours do you sleep in the whole week?/ Do you think siestas are a good idea?/ Do you sleep on the train, in cafes?/ If you sleep all day, don't you have problems sleeping the next night?

TEFLtastic blog- www.tefl.net/alexcase

[cornishmuppet]

Just started working at a high school, and there's this English teacher who seems to have a social problem. I sit next to him, but after two weeks he had neither spoken to me nor to any other teacher that I noticed. He had built this wall of shelves around his desk and would sit with his feet up a window ledge with his back to me, reading the advertising handouts that come in a local paper. Every 'good morning' I offered was ignored, and I even had a class with him and another teacher, in which the other teacher did the lesson while he sat at the back reading a grammar book. The other teachers told me he was 'just one of the staff' and 'we speak to him when we have to'.

Then, a few days ago, he just turns to me as though we're best mates or something, and says, with a big grin on his face,

'I love Jesus Christ.'

Me - 'Oh.'

Him - 'I read the bible in Japanese, and I really agreed with everything he said. I love Buddha too, though.'

Me - (in an attempt to continue the conversation) 'Have you ever read the Old Testament? Its a lot different.'

Him - (strange look, grunt, turns away, feet go back up on the window sill and advertising leaflet appears).

Very random. Today he turned to me and asked me if I have difficulty buying clothes in my size in Japan. When I tried to elaborate, he turned away again. Strange man. Even stranger that he's a teacher.

[AgentMulderUK]

[BradS]

Seriously guys all you have to do is cut the crap with the students. If they answer that they like to sleep simply tell them:

"Actually in English conversation that would be very strange. Normally we'd talk about regular interests (give examples). Let's try again".

And then after they try expand with...

"Great, now let's do that again. This time I want you to ask me a question after you answer (give an example if needed)."

Without sounding like I'm generalising, a lot of Japanese conversation between two strangers is just BS smalltalk that really serves no purpose and a lot of students aren't aware that in English (and other languages), more is required of them. Make this known to them. Explain it.

They may be boring but the reason could very well be that in the Japanese conversations they have "boring" works.

[AgentMulderUK]

[reasonJP]

[AgentMulderUK]

[gaijin4life]