Job Discussion Forums

[mitylene]

I am currently teaching at a GAC Centre. I just started teaching level 2. I have one question.

Do most students actually make it through level 2 and level 3 to enter university? Or do most apply to Uni around Level 1/in the middle of Level2?

It seems like the lack of research materials while high requirements to write high quality science reports/business reports is pretty crazy.

It almost seems like my students would have a better chance applying for Uni with their level 1 scores + IELTS rather than try their hearts out for like a D- in level 3?

Any opinion would be much appreciated!

[GoPies]

We are in the middle of Level 2 now and a number of kids are starting to miss classes. They are going to visit their agent or doing IELTS preparation.
Our experience in previous years is that there is a high drop-out rate. One year we ended up with 2 kids from the original 18, but they were the best two kids and they got into good universities in the States.
I think kids should be encouraged to complete GAC for the experience of being taught in a western mode by English-speaking teachers, not merely for the piece of paper at the end of the course.

[englishgibson]

as far as i know, GAC centers have a mandatory 25 students enrollment policy, so your 18 must've been only one year experience, has it? and, what kinda contract have your students/their parents been signing prior to their GAC courses?


while both of you have raised some fine points on, i can't help wondering about you.

mitylene, i remember your last GAC can of... i hope that after we eat this one, you'll take care of the can..will ya?

gopies, what are you exactly teaching this time, or at all times there?

mitylene, what are you facilitating? and, have you really heard of the high GPA after level 1 that could well help into unis???

cheers and beers to our real experiences on

[GoPies]

This is my fourth GAC course in two centres and we have always had around 17/18 students in a class.
No idea about parent contracts - not my business.
I teach maths and computers. I did teach science as well but we have gone for social studies this year.

[Neilhrd]

You are learning what every GAC centre discovers: the wheels come off in Level 2. There are several reasons for this:

1. Distractions such as IELTS, TOEFL and ACT tests. You need to minimise these as far as possible. It is not easy but try to get all your students to take either IELTS or TOEFL so you don't have both running at the same time. They test different skill sets and require different test preparation techniques as well as using different test dates. Try to get all your students booked into the same test centre on the same day to minimise timetable disruption. In Nanning this means planning months in advance and even then is sometimes impossible.

2. Further distractions due to students who have not finished high school having to go back to complete various formalities. These include registering for the College Entrance Test, and attendance at various monkey shows in order to be classified as having completed high school even when they haven't. The latter is necessary to qualify for a visa in some cases. Collecting various documents they need to submit to US universities is another time waster. These could easily be sent to your centre by post but our local high schools are not cooperative about this sort of thing. Most of our students lose several days of classes during Levels 2 and 3 for these type of reasons. Often they won't tell the foreign teachers the truth about what they are doing either. i don't know why but it means we never know when we will have a full class and when not.

3. GAC fails to enforce its rule that teaching centres should have sufficient academic resources to support a research based course. We have adequate computer access now but it took a year to force the university to let us install modems in the students' dormitories. We still have no access to the university library and can't teach the sections in the books on using online databases, the structure of western academic textbooks or referencing printed sources. This is vital preparatory information for western studies and frustrates me.

4. In fairness the students don't help themselves. There are two other libraries in Nanning which have some usable material but students won't travel to them. I have even tried to organise field trips to show them round the Guangxi library, show them how to use it and get them enrolled. They were not interested. Students in Nanning think that books are old fashioned and don't believe what we tell them about the amount of reading required in western universities.

5. The students have no previous experience of even the most basic research. They assume that if they wait long enough the information they need to complete assessments will appear in the text book. They cannot or will not grasp that in western education students are expected to find their own information. This is a cultural problem that extends far beyond GAC but the books could do a lot more to overcome it if the research skills sections were better organised and co-ordinated.

6. Inadequate basic English level. GAC expects that students English level will improve substantially in Level 1 to enable them to cope with the demands of Level 2. This is a fallacy. The assessment methods used in GAc are so unfamiliar to Chinese students that most of the available class time is used familiarising students with the assessment techniques. Students who have an English level of around IELTS 6.0 on entry do well on GAC as long as they are motivated. Those who don't rarely improve their English during the course. In fact many regress because the course is over their heads and they realise this in Level 2 and lose confidence.

6. Lack of support or exemplars to give clarity to what the required standards are. I have pointed this out many times to the RAMs but they didn't know what I was talking about.

7. A related problem is that most of our students are rich kids who have never been marked honestly let alone failed in their lives. They expect 100% and flattery every time and in some cases are too immature to handle critical feedback or failure. Instead of trying to improve the standard response in other Nanning universities is to bribe the Chinese administrator into over turning the foreign teachers marks and passing the student regardless. If the foreign teacher objects he is fired. Two guys I know of have lost their jobs this way recently. If that doesn't work, for example with IELTS, the response is to keep taking the test over and over again until the student has a lucky day and gets a topic he knows or a soft examiner. These expectations are deeply ingrained in China and it is very hard for students to grasp that GAC and western universities are different.

8. Contractual problems. It should be written into students contracts with the school that help with the university application process, reference letters etc are conditional on continuous effort and success on the GAC program and not an automatic right.

So what is the result of all this? We have had four classes through the system with an average of 12 students each. We are limited to this number by the size of our computer room. In two classes only 1 student graduated. In the other two around half made it. So you are not alone.

[kenzhu]

Echoing GoPies, I think you need to tell the students that GAC will prepare them for a Western educational environment. I keep telling them that the Western system is different from the Chinese and as a result they need to learn what the universities they attend will require from them. GAC does a good job introducing those requirement to them.

Regarding students not understanding research. You need to drum it in their heads during level 1 what research is and what they need to do. Neilhrd is right, they don't understand what it is as they haven't been exposed to it before. I insist that they show me their research during the level and before the assignment is due. It doesn't work all the time but the more serious students get the message.

[englishgibson]

welcome on board, kenzhu. i hope you won't mind my curiosity, but what do you teach and how long have you been with GAC?


with regards to the encouraging students techinques, i really do not believe that that'll do the magic. here below is a part of the magic

[GoPies]

[kenzhu]

englishgibson, This is my second year teaching reading and writing, and serving as DOS. This is also my first year teaching social science.

I think there is some confusion. During the first level, students take a course called Communications Skills. This is labeled as Science, Business and Social Science 1. However it is not a social science class. Rather it designed to get the students working together as there are group projects in the other modules. Independent Study Skills is another course that is only taught the first level.

[englishgibson]

kenzhu, i feel the same way about the level 1 "communication skills". my bet's that it is meant to mislead and, as i've said we only have the first level of it. have you seen the level 2, or 3 of this subject?

gopies, have you looked at the china's gac centers offered on the web? you can click on any chinese center from the site except the ones that're "blacklisted" by our head office. 18 students per year might put you on that list of the dark color, although there're some other reasons for it too.

[GoPies]

English, I think you are a conspiracy theorist. We are not "blacklisted" but nor are any other centres. The fact they are in black means there is no link to their site. Maybe they don't have English webpages, but they certainly haven't been "blacklisted".
I said "Social Studies". The correct name of the unit is "Social Science" as Kenzhu indicated.
You'll have to ask a DOS about GPAs.

[englishgibson]

ohh, conspiracy theorist, please

there's no "maybe" to webpages of these so called "troubled centers" as they are referred to. your "certainly" is well appreciated. no offence, but i can see how eager you are to get to the bottom of this barrel.

[Neilhrd]

In my experience a lot of the problems in GAC Level 2 and Level 3 stem from the fact that the students are unable or unwilling to study independently. GAC requires that they are given 20 hours of independent study for each 12 week module and we do timetable this. The students can't complain about the facilities. They have desks, bookshelves, personal computers and modems in their dormitories. We don't have access to any kind of academic library but even without these facilities they should be doing much better than they are. Despite constant stress on the need to manage time to succeed on the GAC course they will not start any research or writing assessment until the last minute.

I have always taken the view that they are not babies and if we are preparing them for study in American universities we shouldn't be holding their hands because the Americans won't. But am I right?

Some people at my centre are suggesting that it is unreasonable to expect the students to jump straight from the robotic treadmill of a Chinese high school to fully independent study in one go. They argue that we should have periods of supervised homework in the evenings and maybe at weekends although it is not clear who would do the supervising.

What do other GAC centres do about this issue? For that matter what do other university preparation programmes in China do?

[Robin53]

Replying to the problem of the lack of good libraries for students doing Level 2 and 3 research, here's what I did: I took my class to Xinhua bookshop once a week and let them loose to browse and find books in Chinese about their research topics. They found books on their topics, took notes, and got the necessary author names and reference details needed for their essays and research assignments. A Xinhua bookshop is as close as any of them will get to a real library, and its OK for people to spend hours browsing in them.

For anyone who remembers me from the Off-topic discussions on GAC/ACT teaching, I got no leads about jobs in other GAC/ACT centres, so am now working in a state university in the same city on a third of the salary but a lot more laid back and less stressful. Although I was on a good salary teaching GAC, tax took a quarter of it, and I'm not paying any in my new job. I do miss the GAC curriculum though which was a pleasure to teach. I came in at the end of a 2 year program to teach level 3, and the school has invited me back for the students' graduation which I'll go to. GAC will possibly start at the school again later in the year if they get enough enrollments.

Good luck to the GAC teachers - you are pretty much on your own, and working without any real professional guidance. Hang in there!