Job Discussion Forums

[kungfupanda]

I'm considering signing a contract with a university right now but I'm not sure how much work it is going to be. I'm currently working at a training school and I work roughly 20 hours a week but those are just teaching hours. The university says I'd be teaching about 15 hours a week but how much time do you guys spend preparing each week? I'm mainly considering working at a college because I think it would be beneficial for improving my Chinese but if its going to be more work then I'm not sure its for me.

[Lobster]

How much estra time you'll spend will depend on a number of things.

1. Do they have a set curriculum or text you follow? If so, how easy is it to use?

2. Do you have to prepare exams, mark and grade?

3. Do you have to teach writing? How many students?

4. Do you have a large stock of materials you have developed yourself, and are you free to use them?

5. How many different groups do you have?

6. How experienced are you at lesson planning and prep?

For example, in my uni work I have 3 oral classes; 2 graded and one non-graded. About 30 in each class.

Graded classes have a text, but it's of marginal usefulness. I am free to use my own materials. I must prepare exams twice a term, mark them and submit grades. Maybe 10-12 hours' work per term all told. Because I have a hoard of self-developed materials, my prep time per class is 0 when using my own stuff, and about 10 minutes max when using the text. I mean, the classes are 40 minutes, how much prep time do you need?

For my training centre work, it's about the same. Look at the chapter, pick out the vocab, discussion and grammar points. Do I have supplementary materials. Max 10 minutes.

Come to think of it, my business classes are about the same too. Yes, I'm a busy guy and do admin stuff too.

I spend way more time developing my handouts and making new PPTs than I do preparing for individual lessons.

My uni work doesn't help my Chinese any more than the other work. I just keep my Chinese study book in the bathroom and go through it as I take care of business. That may explain why, after 10 years in China, I have the conversation skills of a 4 year old. People say my Chinese is 'bu cuo", which is a polite way of saying, "It's better than most foreigners', but it still sucks."

RED

[Non Sequitur]

Get oral English classes.
Boy those writing class and the grading of multiple papers which are all subsets of one already plagiarised effort, are torture!

[7969]

[roadwalker]

I agree with the above statements, even if they contradict. Oral English takes a lot of energy but after you have taught it a while, it takes the least preparation, usually. That assumes you can change gears on the fly when a lesson that went gangbusters with Class A is now dead in the water with Class B. Letting them struggle with uncomfortable silences is ok, but it's good to have lots of backup activities too, when there's just no way they are going to involve themselves in the original lesson plan/outline.

I have taught at private schools (not in China) and there is more preparation expected to get through a level-based list of grammar points. (My experience was the "communicative method.") Some of that is beneficial for oral English, but as a whole, English majors will have good grammar -on paper- and aren't interested in it. I mainly try to get the students to express themselves, good grammar or bad, since I find that confidence to speak is the most valuable lesson to be learned. But I do go over grammar points, especially when the usual Chinglish is confusing or I just don't like the sound of it. Still, I don't make that the center of the "lesson". If you keep the grammar points to only the most useful, or to counter the most confusing Chinglish, you can return to them week after week.

The most frustrating for me have been writing classes due to plagiarism and lack of competency or interest on the part of the students. Chinese students are taught to pass exams, not compose a grammatical sentence, let alone paragraph. And I couldn't accept the Chinese colleagues advice to "just mark/correct every third/fifth error, otherwise it will take all of your time." Writing classes, with a decent text, pre-determined course, won't take TOO much preparation but will take a lot of time for correction, unless you really don't care, and a long temper as you google the homework and find a one-to-one correspondence between your students homework and an easily searchable published work/blog. Jane Austin it ain't (unless it is).

A substantive class such as literature or culture would most likely entail a lot of preparation, but only for the first time it's taught. If you stay at the same school or get a similar course at the next school, you can re-use your notes and ppt. etc. Of course this being China, you have to deal with technology failure. That computer in the classroom may not even work, except to admit an annoying hum which can't be shut off. So you might have to figure out workarounds such as printing handouts or whiteboard/blackboard writing before class.

As for learning Chinese, it seems to be the case that all of the free lessons I'm offered in the contract take place when I'm teaching English. I've sat in on an occasional class but it might take some doing to get into a class that you can keep up with by attending all classes. I DON'T speak Chinese with my students since they need the experience speaking English, and that's my job. Hiring an upper-class student to be a tutor is an option if the classes are during your teaching time.

[GuestBob]

[Non Sequitur]

Nice one Gbob!
But I dunno about the dissertation.
I was asked to look one over for a Chinese student.
She had cut and pasted vast tracts from Wikipedia and hadn't even deleted the 'citation required' notes!

[Silent Shadow]