Job Discussion Forums

[FredBlork]

Hey guys and girls,

I wanted to get some input on a few things I'm having a bit of trouble with.

First, some background.
This is my first job teaching in China. When I first got here, I got given some textbooks and a timetable, and when I asked about the content of the classes, I was told that I could use the text or my own material - no syllabus or anything like that, pretty much just the text and the name of the subject. I don't know how common that is here. The teacher assigned to help me had a lot of trouble understanding my English (I'm sure he was doing his best . He understood enough to tell me that he didn't know which textbook went with which class, and that he couldn't get me a class list.

Without getting too specific, all of my classse are 1.5 hours. I have firstly speaking and/or listening classes, varying in size from 30 - 90 students. Some of them have ok textbooks which I use for about 45 min per lesson, some of them have terrible textbooks, which I use as little as possible. I also have some large classes (>150 students when everyone turns up, usually only for the exam). The students can't follow the text for this subject, but it's basically meant to be about English speaking countries.

My problem is this, I have practically zero free time. I work the standard Uni teaching hours as far as I know, ~15 hours. So far, so good. But my preparation time is ridiculous. I spend a small amount of time (~half an hour) on the ok-textbook classes, a large amount of time (2-4 hours) on the crap-textbook classes, and the rest of my free time either preparing lecture slides about stuff I know next to nothing about, or trying not to think about how little time I have to do my next 50 powerpoint slides (50 slides equals one class, presented twice per week).

It's nearly the end of term, about another month of classes, so I guess this an attempt to learn something from the experience rather than a "help me" message - although anything suggested that assists me through the next month will be greatly appreciated

I should also make the point that I am not blaming anyone else for my situation, I'm just wondering what other people would do if they found themselves here. Or if anyone is in a similar situation, what are you doing to deal with it? Apparently past teachers at this place also found the lectures a lot of work.

Thanks for reading my lengthy post, any comments or suggestions will be appreciated.

[johntpartee]

For the listening and speaking classes, let the students do the work. Have each student get up in front of the class and give a 3-5 minute talk about anything they wish (family, hometown, future plans, etc.). Listen for the most common errors in pronunciation, syntax, verb tense.....Prepare speaking exercises for the most common pronunciation problems (usually the "th" and "v" sounds). Make up sentences with these sounds dominating. Have each student say the sentence and correct their pronunciation. Next time, have each student give a talk about something they have read; a book, magazine article, newspaper. Let them do the speaking while everybody else (including you) listens.

[mike w]

[Jayray]

For the oral classes, create short role-playing scenarios from which the students can create their own dialogues. If you can, create scenarios which require the participation of 2-4 students at a time.

They can be as simple as this:

Three students. One is a waiter/waitress. The other two are customers. The customers discuss their choices among themselves. The waiter takes their order. The customers ask questions about the food. The waiter answers their questions.

You can make it more challenging:

As above. When the food arrives, one customer tells the waiter/waitress that he has brought the wrong food. The waiter says that he brought exactly what was ordered. The customers disagree. The waiter must try to make his customers happy, but he must not change the order.

As above. The food arrives, but there's a fly in the soup. The waiter doesn't see it.

I have found that this is an excellent way to get the not-so-experienced students to talk. You can create twenty scenarios that you can rotate around the class for weeks. I do this when the school has inappropriate-or-no books and allows me to do as I wish.

You can create a form that requires the student to write his name, class period and the date plus the criteria that you set forth. All you need to do is check each criterion or write a short comment as the students perform.

Create criteria for grading:

pronunciation_______

volume_______

use of vocabulary_______

creativity_______

body language_______

Since you are new to TEFL in China, it will take you awhile for you to find your way. Make it easy for yourself. The students should be doing the work. True, your prep time will seem overwhelming at first, but if you keep your assignments, you can add to them as you go along. I've got assignments that I have reworked and reused for four schools.

You can get the rest of the class involved by requiring everyone to write comments about the groups' performances on small pieces of paper. This helps you to maintain control of the class and it requires the others to listen critically. You will find that eventually, the performers will value their classmates' feedback as much as the teacher's.

You WILL find that at first, the "audience" will give non-critical feedback such as "Good work!" even when the performance is bad. In time, however, the performers will expect their classmates to give "real" criticism.

I hope that this helps.

[FredBlork]

Hi, and thanks for the quick replies!

About the speaking classes:
Yeah, I hear you about getting the students to do the work, johntpartee, and when I first got here I tried to get every student to do a presentation each class, but it seemed like it took too long. Even with a class of only 30, the students have to wait for another 29 presentations with not much to do, and they got pretty bored (and so did I). How did you avoid this problem? Also, after 9 months of this, my lack of a 'grand plan' is all too obvious. I do revisit pronunciation, but how do you tie it all together?

I have used role plays, Jayray, but your idea of adding to the role plays during class, and getting the students to give feedback (this addresses the question above to johntpartee) is something I will have to try. Also, marking each student every time they talk is something I had not considered, although I use this sort of system for my end of year exams.

About the listening classes: I have trouble finding things at an appropriate level for the students to listen to. They often just stare at me blankly if I give them anything other than 'fill in the blanks' dialogues to do while listening to recordings. Actually preparing these fill in the blanks exercises is one of the things that takes me ages. Ideas?

mike_w, yes, 50 slides is a lot, and I can't pm people yet. One reason that I need 50 slides for a 90 minute lecture is that I don't know anything about the history or culture of Canada (for example), and so I need to have more notes to refer to than someone who had that knowledge. Just finding and sorting through sources of information (like wikipedia) takes up time, as does actually writing the slides.

Thanks for the input

[MisterButtkins]

[johntpartee]

While the students are giving their talks to the class, you can be listening and thinking of a couple of questions to ask the student about the presentation. This way the student is thinking about what they are saying, otherwise you'll find that many of them are just reciting something from memory. Even if you are bored, try to feign interest, that's part of being a teacher. If you're having fun, they will, too. As far as the students being bored, they need to be listening as well, that's the nature of the beast; unfortunately they're going to have to do some "work" (speaking and listening), it can't be all play time. I've found that there will always be a couple of hams among the students who like to get up and entertain everybody; I get singers, actors, mimes, comedians; that's always a good thing. When the others see a speaker getting a good reaction to their antics, it encourages them to do the same.

[Jayray]

You don't have to give a grade for every presentation. A check mark or a quick comment will do. Save the grades for the most important presentations. If they become accustomed to speaking in front of the class without a grade, they're much more likely to relax when they are being graded.

Again, make it easy on yourself. I have evaluation forms printed with four 2.25" forms printed on each page. I then have them cut. I try to keep 100 printed at all times.

A quick check and comment such as "Improved!" or "Needs more work" will thrill the students because it seems that their Chinese teachers (on the whole) don't give them much feedback.

The greatest gift that you can give your students is the gift of confidence and self esteem. Just a little feedback from their performance will go a long way.

Re: Grades. grade in multiples of 5. with, say, four performance grades per term, plus one or two homework grades or something of their choosing. Staying with multiples of 5 and keeping the number of grades low will speed evaluation at the end of the term.

Keep it light. Be supportive, and keep a sense of humor and smile and laugh when you are pleased and when something is funny.

I have found that half of the battle with Chinese university students is just getting them to relax and to trust me.

And don't be a hard@ss with the grades if you have loose guidelines. It doesn't hurt to give extra points for special effort or for creativity. I stress this over and over: We're not here to make grades. We're here to speak English and to become more comfortable with it. It always works for me.

[MisterButtkins]

[FredBlork]

Very helpful posts from everyone, thanks.

I guess I have a few things to develop with my classes, lots of room for improvement, especially with my speaking and listening classes.

As far as the lectures go, I think I'll be trying to screen future jobs for these sorts of things and just avoid them. I don't know if that's possible with the system here, but I'm sure I don't want to do anything like it again, despite the good suggestions.

The subject is called society and culture of english speaking countries, and I don't think I could do weekly 1.5hr lectures for a whole year on Australian BBQs and kangaroos. There's not enough subject matter in my head for that many classes, and the students would be (rightly) feeling short-changed. Perhaps other teachers have more knowledge of culture and society than I do, but I don't think it would be unreasonable to try to find schools that only require me to teach the english language. Do you guys think that would be practical? Or is it just the luck of the draw which subjects you get stuck with?

[johntpartee]

VERY practical. Most foreign teachers (at least the ones I'm familiar with) teach oral English.

[Andre 3000]

Fred, give yourself a pat on the back for getting this far through the term with all the preparation needed.
I used to do a 'culture' class whilst working at a language centre, and after 6 months I was out of ideas for topics.
The only thing I might say is are you exploiting your lecture classes' material enough? At the end of each class, I would have a quiz on the material covered and this proved to be a popular activity. To do it, you'll need half a dozen photocopies of the questions that you have asked and a small reward for the winners (chocolate works well). 12 questions in total got me about 20 odd minutes of class time:
1 Put students into teams and tell them to find names for their teams.
2 Ask students 90% of the questions on your question sheet - give a point for correct answers, but leave 2/3 questions unasked.
3 Explain to the students that you will give them the question sheet, but that there remains 2/3 questions that you didn't ask - give a question sheet to each group and reward whoever finds the unasked questions first.
4 Add up points and award your prize accordingly.
As regards listening, do you know the VOA website?
http://www1.voanews.com/learningenglish/about-us/help/#
I haven't used it recently, but they used to have lots of broadcasts done at a slower speed, making it easier to understand for non-native speakers. I don't know if you have access to a language lab, but I used to come up with a list of comprehension questions then let the students in pairs listen to the recording as many times as they wanted and then we would work on the text.
Hope this helps.

[xiaolongbaolaoxi]

I echo Andre3000's ideas. One thing that can help if you somehow provide a review of your own course... [this also helps to prevent students from magically caring about your course only the day before the final.] A simple game of Jeopardy! could go over well... I simply typed the "answers" into a 5x5 Word chart and put it up on the projector. Can go forever with this, particularly if you enforce the "you must answer in the form of a question" rule. There are also Jeopardy templates that can be found, but I found that they tended to crash at the worst moment. Granted this may not work so hot if you have a 90+group, but maybe pick three of the leading lights in the class the first time around, and see what happens.

In the same vein [perhaps vain would be more appropriate], I have found that Wheel of Fortune does wonders. Hangman is fun, but it can get old. Simply explain it as "Hangman with money." Grab a piece of posterboard divided into eight sections, they spin a pin [not a bottle!] and away you go! Most likely, they will be cheering for the "Bankrupt" part... good way to cover vocabulary, phrases, events, etc.

You can download whole episodes from the net... by accident, I happened to pick a Christmas eve episode of Wheel, so there was added interest.
Group presentations can save you a lot of time [granted, they have to be willing to talk]. I made a list of ten-ish topics, and they chose from there, giving them a few weeks to figure out what they wanted to do. It is worth noting that the instant they figured out they could use powerpoint, the classroom dynamic changed dramatically and for the better; I think [actually, I know] they were used to simply standing and reciting... one group did an amazing parody of the Oscar awards [movies], another one had a family reunion between a local statue and Venus de Milo [they focused on acid rain for the environmental topic], and one group did how to identify vampires [TV, but knowing the students involved, it would have been all Drac all the time no matter what the topic].

Warning: getting groups that have spoken to "respectfully listen" will be difficult. Somewhat heavyhanded but effective= I can't hear that group, your grade goes down in 10% increments. Problem solved.

If you have access, yt videos can be a great way to draw students in an reduce prep... find appropriate songs, Muppet clips, news reports about the subject, etc. [Kind of like the VOA recommendation.]

It sounds like you are a powerpoint warrior who is spending a serious amount of time in on a subject that you don't quite like... save everything you've done as an example of how you delivered a curriculum that you were in no way prepared for ..."I didn't know a lot about it, but I spent a lot of time and energy developing these lessons and the semester as a whole, and from that I learned to incorporate these things in to my other classes... I learned that for me these things don't work... I learned that I thought they would love x but really actually liked y, so I..." interview type questions.

You're almost done! Congratulations on the hard work!

XLB

[ShanghaiSurprise]

[mike w]

It's very easy to have four subjects on one slide - you don't need four slides.

If you use the 'animation' feature in PPT, then you bring each subject onto the screen as it is being discussed. So there is no reading ahead, they can only read the title of the subject you are talking about, and you greatly reduce the number of slides in your presentation.

Don't equate the number of slides with the interest factor. The PPT is only a visual aid to the presentation, it is not the presentation. If the students become bored, that is not because there are insufficient slides. It is more likely because the presenter doesn't know how to make the subject of the presentation interesting, or maybe it is just a boring subject.