Job Discussion Forums

[theincredibleegg]

The school wants you to work from the assumption that oral English is not intertwined with grammar and vocabulary.

In China, employers tend to think that teaching grammars doesn't involve activities in which students speak. Only "oral English" involves speaking - as if people somehow picked up grammars without speaking. Grammars, to them, is filling in gap-sheets and memorizing past participles.

Before the first gap-sheet, people didn't speak in grammatical patterns. They only used oral English.

As for grading Oral English - It's pretty confusing.

You could sit and listen to your students pronounciation various words and then grade how accurately they can pronounce them. Imagine the lessons leading up to that exam: Hours and hours of drilling pronounciation. Great fun!

You could also make some kind of conversational test by having your student talk on a topic and then grade their fluency. This is however a bit problematic.

Wether a student is able to converse on topic X, will depend on if grammar/vocabulary was taught in a conversational context. This means that whatever score you give your students will depend on what the "grammar/writing/vocab"-teacher did in his/her lessons.

Unless you cooperate very well with their Chinese teacher (grammar/writing/vocab) and simultaneously plan every lesson with him/her, then you will have serious problems with grading your students.

The end result is most often that the oral English teacher walks in and does a bunch of meaningless activities. The acitivites don't help anyone at all and the students think they're pointless. Hence the low status of Oral english teachers in China.

Good luck!

[randyj]

The elements of language are not easily separated. I tell my oral English students that grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation are the enemy.

[sharpe88]

Heh, you must be new ? Most private schools are greatly overpriced language mills taught by unqualified foreigners.

Also, speaking practice is less than ideal but certainly possible in large classes. Just get them to speak in pairs or small groups.

[cmknight]

I like to use the Trinity College London GESE (Graded Examinations in Spoken English) syllabus, no matter what the textbook is. I generally throw the textbook out the window. It's about as useful as *beep* on a bull anyway. During the first two classes, I assess the students' levels according to the GESE syllabus and DVD, and plan my lessons from there. I also use the "Pronunciation Power" CD's in my classes. Great for showing them how their mouths are supposed to work when pronouncing individual phonemes. A good example is the pronunciation of /v/ and /f/. The mouth moves the same way in oth phonemes, but /f/ is unvoiced whilst /v/ is voiced. When I do it, I tell them to put two fingers on their Adam's Apple. They can then "feel" the difference in the two sounds.

[Chris_Crossley]

[sharpe88]

Nouns and verbs are hardly always the same. Chinese grammar is far more simple, but it doesn't mean it's less "sophisticated". Chinese lexis also includes many words with no equivalent translation in English and many ideas have multiple terms that only have one in English, if there is one at all.

Neither language should be considered "the enemy" but linguistic imperialism is probably worse than apologism!

[norwalkesl]

I have oral English classes here. The books are good, British. I get to work only 2 or 3 sections of each module, the rest is for the intensive teacher who covers grammar, etc. There is some room for input and I can create my own lesson, but it is all production based speaking. No reading silently, no writing at all, lots of vocabulary. Games, singing, etc. can be done as long as the students are talking.No transmission of a written message on the wall outside or such.

For a first job it will do nicely.

[dialogger]

In an Oral English class the teacher should not be talking for more than 40% of the time - hopefully less. The ESL courses call it TTT (Teacher Talk Time)
Whole continuous speech is what you're looking for and Chinese students can feel abandoned when the teacher doesn't correct all the time. This has been their lifetime experience from their Chinese Teachers.
Given that a lot of meaning is contextual I tell my students that I won't stop them unless they can't even attempt a word.
There a no good texts that I have come across for OE. In most the dialogues are way too short to give the student any sense of 'driving' something in English.
However, a good outcome for a student in OE can encourage him/her to have another go at grammar, vocab and the other stuff.