Job Discussion Forums

[Gregor]

English Corner:
Like anything else that is an an unavoidable part of daily (or weekly or whateverly) life, there are only so many general approaches:

A) Don't do it.
B) Suffer through it one way or another.
C) Find some way to tolerate or even enjoy it.

English Corners are like babysitting, or paying income tax. See above. There are ways to do A (i.e. find a job/family that doesn't require it, or find a COUNTRY that doesn't require it, or go freelance and hope for the best), and B is pretty well self-explanitory.

With C, you first have to understand what it is:
English Corners are FREE to the students, and NOT classes. The students want to practice their English. That's all.
Babysitting requires that you make sure that the child involved (rarely a baby) survives the period of time during which the sitter (you) is responsible, intact and in health equal to or better than that which it had when the care was first introduced.
Paying income tax requires the payee to give a certain percentage of his or her income (i.e. all quantifiable wealth coming to the payee) to the government(s) in question

When you look at it like this, it's less daunting.
With English Corners, I have asked students to explain how to set my mobile phone's clock, or got them (rather, HER, and she was cute) to describe, in detail, their previous day. If you have a lesson tomorrow, you can run your game and activities ideas past them and see what they think, or else ask them if they have any ideas for a past simple game or whatever. You might just be surprised at how helpful they can be in this regard.
Even if you have low-level students - an EC is meant for English practice. So ask them to clean your whiteboard or pick up trash in the teachers' room - it's an English Corner. If they are low level AND complain that they had to work, tell your boss that you had ASKED them to talk, but they wouldn't, so you had to "test their ability to comprehend" your instructions.
In short, there is no reason for an EC to be a waste of your time.

As for babysitting or paying tax...I have similar ideas, but that's for another time.

[Roger]

The concept of "English COrner" is to give an informal setting where Chinese English learners can practise their English orally.
This is a top-down way of delegating jobs: instead of requiring Chinese English teachers to use the subject they teach as a medium of instruction, the wild white humanoids are used to give their students the illusion that their faces alone provoke Chinese into spontaneous ENglish reaction.

It seldom works, and the fact that it is informal adds to your worries: you are judged by how many students you can retain, and you can only retain those who are sufficiently proficient and also more open-minded then the average Chinese learner.

As other posters have said Chinese are very repetitive people who love nothing more than to repeat the same question others have asked you or they have asked 1001 times before - it gives them "face" and they can lull themselves into the belief their fluency has improved...
Don't ever think they will improve their communcations skills! Or comprehension! What they cannot understand they will make no effort at understanding!

[vikdk]

[Teababy]

[DirtGuy]

Teababy,

Is there any way you could find out some more info about this particular EC? If this actually works as well as you say, such info would be beneficial to many of us.

Thanks.

DirtGuy

[SheZook]

[lf_aristotle69]

[vikdk]

[lf_aristotle69]

[KWhitehead]

english corners are evil. even if you have a topic, and try very hard to stick to it, it will be hijacked by students and turned into "have you been to any other cities in china?" "do you have a chinese name?" "where are you from?" "what do you think of china?" "what do you think of chinese people?"

my advice is to have a few beers before going.

[lf_aristotle69]

[Lobster]

In Nanjing we have a real "ESL Cafe". It's a small place where foreigners can hang out and drink free coffee and Chinese people, mostly from the uni, bounce from table to table for small talk. Nobody has to go there, but lots of foreigners do. If it was part of my paid hours, I think it would be great. We also have an outdoor, weekly EC at a park. Some schools send teachers filling their work quotas, and some just drop by to hang out and meet some locals and other FTs.

I have some opinions about public conversations and learning activities. One is that as an FT, you'd better get used to the idea of having people asking you the same questions over and over again. Don't expect me to commiserate on this one. Pity the poor doctor, who day after day has to listen to people complain that they don't feel well. You're being self centred. Maybe you've heard the question upteen times, but it's the first time THAT person asked you. If you have no patience and tolerance, make that a sh tload of patience and tolerance, you won't last long as a teacher anywhere. If it's a private conversation and non-EC situation, you can extract some useful Mandarin.

My second opinion concerns making the most of any learning activity. These things are what you make of them, how much you can prepare, and what your organizational skills are. Why not take your photo album of pix from back home and discuss them with people, take your MP3 player and some portable speakers along, or print out some pictures of various artworks to display? How about some group games similar to what you'd do in a classroom? How about using some creativity instead of using all your energy on self pity? You can make the best of what you have or where you are, or you can wallow around and moan.

RED

[lf_aristotle69]

[Voldermort]

[Teababy]

I'll try and find out more, but from what I've heard, this school doesn't have foreign teachers, and has run the EC with or without any foreigners attending. So, somehow, they seem to have built up a culture or expectation that EC is for English communication.

I'll have a look into it.